Roots of Hindu astronomy -- RN Iyengar
(Dec. 2007)

A profile of Indian astronomy before the Siddhantic period: paper presented at the Iserve Conference at Hyderabad on 14 Dec. 2007.

That is, the state of Hindu astronomy, before the Common Era.

The reference to the list of 24 comets ending with dhumaketu is instructive. The knowledge about comets may explain the misunderstandings caused by misreading of some texts of Mahabharata -- a point effectively argued by Narahari Achar.

The astronomy related to comets, as also Saptarsi era, is as yet an untold story.

Thanks to Prof. RN Iyengar for the sheer brilliance with which he has provided a perspective and a method for tracing the evolution of hindu astronomy from Vedic times, and for the scintillating essay presenting an evaluation of early texts and the extremely complex technical terms used in these texts.

Dhanyavaadah. Kalyanaraman