Kamalākara was one of the most erudite and forward-looking Indian astronomers who flourished in Varanasi during the seventeenth century. Belonging to a Maharashtrian stock, and born in about 1610, Kamalākara came from a long unbroken line of astronomers, originally settled at the village of Godā on the northern banks of the river Godāvarī. Towards AD 1500, the family migrated to Varanasi and came to be regarded as reputed astronomers and astrologers. Kamalākara studied traditional Hindu astronomy under his elder brother Divākara, but extended the range of his studies to Islamic astronomy, particularly to the school of Ulugh Beg of Samarkand. He also studied Greek astronomy in Arabic and Persian translations, particularly with reference to the elements of physics from Aristotle, geometry from Euclid, and astronomy from Ptolemy. He wrote both original treatises and commentaries on his own works and those of others.
Kamalākara’s most important work is the Siddhānta-Tattvaviveka, written...
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References
Dikshit, S. B. (1981). Bhāratiya Jyotish Sastra [History of Indian astronomy] (R. V. Vaidya, Trans.). Pt. II. History of astronomy during the scientific and modern periods. Calcutta, India: Positional Astronomy Centre, India Meteorological Department.
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Kamalākara, B. (1880–1885). Siddhānta-Tattvaviveka. A treatise on astronomy (with Śeṣavāsanā by the same author) (Ed. Sudhakara Dube). Benares: Benares Sanskrit Series (5 vols.). Revised by Muralidhara Jha, Benares: Krishna Das Gupta for Braj Bhusan Das, 1924–1935.
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Sarma, K.V. (2015). Kamalākara. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9576-2
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