NāGEśA

(fl. Gujarat, India, ca. 1630)

astronomy.

Nagesa was born into a family of learned Brahmanas of the Gargyagotra, who resided at Khecaramandala in Gujarat. His father, Siva, and his grandfather, Kesava, are otherwise unknown to us; but his son, Siva, was the author of a Sankrantipatala on the entry of the sun into the signs of the zodiac. Nagesa’s principal astronomical work is an un-published Grahaprabodha in thirty-seven verses, which gives instructions for computing the true longitudes of the sun, the moon, and the planets according to the parameters of the Ganesapaksa founded by Ganesa in 1520 (see essay in Supplement); its epoch is 5 March 1619. In 1663 Nagesa’s pupil Yadava, wrote a set of tables based on the Grahaprabodha (see D. Pingree, Sanskrit Astronomical Tables in the United States [Philadelphia, 1968], 63a-64b, and Sanskrit Astronomical Tables in England [Madras, 1973], 149).

Nagesa also wrote a Nirnayatattva in 102 verses which describe the computation of the tithis in a synodic month. Based on the Nirnayasindhu, which was composed by Kamalakara Bhatta in 1612, the Nirayatattva uses as an example the year 1629–1630. A Parvadhikara on the syzygies is also attributed to Nagesa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aside from the articles mentioned above, see S. B. Diksita, Bharatiya Jyotihsdstra (Poona, 1896; repr. Poona, 1931), 285–286, and D. Pingree, “On the Classification of Indian Planetary Tables,”in Journal for the History of Astronomy, 1 (1970), 95–108, esp. 99 100.

David Pingree