Surya Siddhanta

Surya Siddhanta, are the principles of astronomy, considered to be given by the Sun God himself to the Asura named Maya. He was the father-in-law of Ravana, the villain of the first ever epic ‘Ramayana.’

It holds the title ‘The oldest book on Astronomy’ known to the mankind till today.

Surya Siddhanta is a high knowledge and understanding of Cosmos and the planets given to the Asura in Treta Yuga (the second out of the four Yugas or ages of mankind, in the religion of Hinduism.) and later noted in the book in 480 B.C. and 6th Century.

What’s so special of these principles or this book is that they are quite accurate in terms of modern findings.

Surya Siddhanta covers various time periods, length of the year of gods and demons, day and night of god Brahma, the elapsed period since creation, how planets move eastwards and sidereal revolution. The length  of the Earth’s diameter and circumference is also given. Eclipses and colour of the eclipsed portion of the moon is mentioned and some shocking revelations like, earth as sphere and not flat, gravity being reason for objects falling on earth, were discovered millions of years ago.

Some of the excerpts of the Siddhanta are: –

1. The average length of the tropical year as 365.2421756 days, which is only 1.4 seconds shorter than the modern value of 365.2421904 days.

2. The average length of the sidereal year, the actual length of the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, as 365.2563627 days, which is virtually the same as the modern value of 365.25636305 days. This remained the most accurate estimate for the length of the sidereal year anywhere in the world for over a thousand years.

3. Not content to limit measurements to Earth, the Surya Siddhanta also states the motion, and diameters of the planets! For instance, the estimate for the diameter of Mercury is 3,008 miles, an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 3,032 miles. It also estimates the diameter of Saturn as 73,882 miles, which again has an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 74,580.

4. Its estimate for the diameter of Mars is 3,772 miles, which has an error within 11% of the currently accepted diameter of 4,218 miles.

5. It also estimated the diameter of Venus as 4,011 miles and Jupiter as 41,624 miles, which are roughly half the currently accepted values, 7,523 miles and 88,748 miles, respectively.

6. Aside from inventing the decimal system, zero and standard notation (giving the ancient Indians had the ability to calculate trillions when the rest of the world struggled with 10) the Surya Siddhanta also contains the roots of Trigonometry.

7. It used sine (jya), cosine (kojya or “perpendicular sine”) and inverse sine (otkram jya) for the first time!

8. “Objects fall on earth due to a force of attraction by the earth. therefore, the earth, the planets, constellations, the moon and the sun are held in orbit due to this attraction”. This was clearly mentioned in the Surya Siddhanta millions of years ago. It was not until the late 17th century in 1687, that Isaac Newton rediscovered the Law of Gravity.

 9. The Surya Siddhanta also goes into a detailed discussion about time cycles and that time flows differently in different circumstances, the roots of relativity.

Here we have a perfect example of Indian philosophy’s belief that science and religion are correlated. One does not have to dig and try all ways to force scientific truth from scriptures. This work shows that spirituality is all about the search for Truth (Satya) and that Science is as valid a path to God as living in a monastery. It is the search for one’s own personal Truth that will lead one ultimately to God.