Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata with the Commentary of Bhaskara I and Somesvara

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Aryabhata (b. 476 A. D) occupies a prestigious position in the history of Indian astronomy and mathematics. In view of his important contributions, particularly to astronomy, he has been rightly regarded as the founder of scientific astronomy in India. His works, namely, the Aryabhatiya, which is available in its original form, and the Aryabhata-siddhanta which was epitomised by Brahmagupta in his Khanda-khad yaka, were hailed as works par excellence. The 1500th birth anniversary of the great astronomer and mathematician is being celebrated from November 2-4, 1976 under the auspices of the National Commission for the Compilation of History of Sciences in India set up by the Indian National Science Academy. The Academy is grateful to the esteemed Prime Minister of India, Shrimati Indira Gandhi, for graciously agreeing to inaugurate the celebration on November 2. 1976.

In commemoration of this occasion, the Indian National Science Academy is releasing the critical edition of the Aryabhatiya in three parts:

Part I: Text with English translation, notes and comments, along with introduction and appendices.

Part II: Text with the commentary of Bhaskara I and Somesvara, along with introduction and appendices.

Parvill Text with the commentary of Suryadeva Yaj- van, along with introduction and appendices.

It is hoped that these volumes will serve as books of reference to scholars interested in the field. On behalf of the Indian National Science Academy, I offer my sincere thanks to Drs K. S. Shukla and K.V. Sarma for their scholarly and painstaking work in preparing these volumes for the Academy.

The present volume, which forms Part II of our edition of the Aryabhatiya, contains the Sanskrit text of the Aryabhatiya along with its commentary in Sanskrit by Bhaskara who was considered to be the greatest authority on Aryabhata and who, in the words of his scholiast Govinda of the ninth century A.D, "stimulated and glorified the teachings of Aryabhata 1".

This Bhaskara is a different person from his namesake of the twelfth century A.D., the celebrated author of the Lilaratt and the Siddhanta-Hromant. He lived in the seventh century of the Christian era and was a contemporary of Brahmagupta (A.D. 628). To distinguish between the two, we designate the commentator of the Aryabhatiya as Bhaskara I and the author of the Lilavati as Bhaskara II.

Although Bhaskara I earned great name and fame as a teacher (guru) of astronomy and his works continued to be studied in South India up to the end of the sixteenth century A. D., and his writings existed even afterwards in the form of manuscripts in the Oriental Manuscripts Libraries and private collections, he was quite forgotten and was totally unknown to historians of mathematics and astronomy like sankara Balakısna Diksita and Sudhakara Dvivedi. It was in A.D. 1930 that Dr Bibhutibhushan Datta discovered his works and invited the attention of scholars to them in a paper entitled "The two Bhaskaras published in Indian Historical Quarterly.

The two original works of Bhaskara I, riz., the Maha-Bhas kariya and the Laghu-Bhaskariya, have already been edited and published with commentaries in Sanskrit written by Govinda-svami and Parame- svara (A.D. 1431), and English translations of both the works have also appeared along with detailed annotations and comments. Bhaskara I is thus no longer unknown to historians of science. His commentary on the Aryabhatiya, which may be described as an important historical document throwing light on mathematics and astronomy in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. in India, has not been published so far and is seeing the light of day, now, for the first time.