Daśabala

astronomy.

Daśabala, the son of Vairocana and member of a family from Vallabhī in Saurāṣṭra, was a Buddhist with Śaivite leanings. He wrote two works on astronomy, both of which belong to the Brāhmapakṣa (see Essay IV), as modified by the Rājamṛgān̄ka (written 1042) of his contemporary, the Paramāra monarch Bhojarāja (fl. ca. 999–1056).

The Cintāmanṇisāraṇikā was written in Śaka 977 (a. d. 1055), while Bhoja was still in power. It contains six sections:

1. On tithis (sixty-two verses)
2. On nakṣatras (nineteen verses)
3. On yogas (twenty-one verses)
4. On diverse subjects (thirty-six verses)
5. On san̄krāntis (four verses)
6. On the sixty-year cycle of Jupiter (sixteen verses).

There is a commentary on it written by Mahādeva, the son of Lūṇiga, also a Gujarātī, in Śaka 1180 a. d. 1258).

Daśabala’s second work, the Karaṇakamalamārtaṇḍa, was written in Śaka 980 (a. d. 1058). It contains ten chapters with 270 verses:

1. On mean motions
2. On true longitudes
3. On the three questions relating to the diurnal motion
4. On lunar eclipses
5. On solar eclipses
6. On heliacal risings and settings
7. On the lunar crescent
8. On the mahāpātas
9. On conjunctions of the planets
10. On intercalary months and the sixty-year cycle of Jupiter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Cintāmaṇisāraṇikā has been edited by D. D. Kosambi in Journal of Oriental Research, 19 (1952), supp. The Karaṇakamalamärtaṇḍa is known only from the description in Ś. B. Dīkṣita. Bhāratīya Jyotiḥśāstra (Poona, 1896: repr., 1931), pp. 239–240.

David Pingree

Daśabala (Skt.; Pāli, dasabala). The ten powers of a Buddha which confer knowledge on him of: (i) what is possible and impossible; (ii) the consequence of actions (vipāka); (iii) the abilities of other beings; (iv) the direction of their lives; (v) the constituents of manifest appearances; (vi) the paths leading to the different domains of existence; (vii) those leading to purity and impurity; (viii) the states of meditation (samādhi) and absorptions (dhyāna); (ix) deaths and reappearances; (x) the eradication of all defilements (the three destructive poisons, Skt., āśrava Pāli, āsava: of desire, kāma, of becoming in manifest form, bhāva, and of ignorance, avidyā/avijja).