Venus transits at Pondicherry (1)

Text
The dependence of Indian astronomy on the Hellenistic and ultimately on Babylonian prototypes has long been recognized. In this process of transmission the interpretation of two Greek papyri concerning with the motion of the moon is important: P.Lund Inv. 35a from the time of Nero-Domitian (64-80 CE) and P.Ryl. 27 written around 250 CE. The methods displayed in these papyri are based on Babylonian parameters and procedures. Their exact counterparts had been found some centuries ago by Guillaume LeGentil (1725-1772) in South India where he attempted to observe the Venus transits of 1761 and 1769 from the French colony at Pondicherry. He missed the transits (first because of war and then because of clouds), but he succeeded in getting native Tamil scholars to compute for him the circumstances of a lunar eclipse using rules which were identical with the methods in the above-mentioned papyri. It is certainly no accident that a site near Pondicherry, Arikamedu, was a center of Roman trade in the early imperial period. No doubt the interest in astrology, a discipline brought to its highest development in Hellenistic Egypt, was the vehicle that transmitted also the strictly astronomical techniques to India.

Sources (list of abbreviations)
P.Lund Inv. 35a
P.Ryl. 27

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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