A Sanskrit Astrolabe with Multiple Plates, North India, late-18th /early-19th century

in good overall condition, 3 plates, areas of pitting and patination to exterior and plates, pin and horse replaced, plates with impressions from engraving on reverse, as viewed
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The astrolabe appears to have been introduced into India in the eleventh century by al-Biruni who wrote extensively on this instrument and who claims to have composed two works on it in Sanskrit verse. The manufacture of the instrument commenced at Delhi in the latter half of the fourteenth century under Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq, who is said to have commissioned several astrolabes and also manuals in Persian and Sanskrit. But none of these survive, save the manual in Sanskrit composed by Mahendra Suri in 1370. Mahendra Suri was so impressed by the versatile functions of the astrolabe that he called it Yantraraja in Sanskrit, which means "king of instruments." Since then the astrolabe came to be known as Yantraraja in Sanskrit. (see Sarma, "Sultan, Suri and the Astrolabe")

Hindu astronomers responded enthusiastically to this king of instruments. Between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, they composed some fifteen manuals in Sanskrit. They also caused to be made a large number of astrolabes with legends in Sanskrit language and in Devanagari script. (see Sarma, "Yantraraja: The Astrolabe in Sanskrit"; idem, "Katapayadi Notation on a Sanskrit Astrolabe.")

These Sanskrit astrolabes, however, never reached the high level of workmanship exhibited by the Indo-Islamic astrolabes, especially those from the Lahore school. The Islamic astrolabes, whether in India or outside, were crafted by those who were astronomers as well as instrument makers. The same person prepared the technical design and then executed it from brass sheets. In the Hindu context, while the design was drawn by a Brahmin astronomer, the actual manufacture was done by a brass worker who may not even have been literate. Therefore, the calligraphy is generally of poor quality, often with orthographic errors. This dichotomy between the scholar and the artisan is more pronounced in the case of astronomical instrument making, because this craft never developed into a hereditary tradition as other craft forms did. Therefore, notwithstanding the great enthusiasm shown by the Hindu astronomers towards the astrolabe, the specimens they got made were far from being precision instruments like the Islamic prototypes; at the most, they could be used as convenient teaching tools.

Sanskrit astrolabes must have been produced already in the fourteenth century when the first manual was composed, but the extant ones are from the seventeenth century. The earliest of these was manufactured in 1607 at Ahmadabad; it was formerly in the Time Museum, Rockford, Ill., and is now in a private collection in Brussels (see Turner, no. 15, pp. 120-123, figs. 100-104). Today there exist some twenty Sanskrit astrolabes with multiple plates, which were produced in the seventeenth century and later. The majority of these do not follow the style of the predominant Lahore school, but some other school which is yet to be identified.

The present astrolabe is one of the few which follows the style of the Lahore school, in respect of its open work kursi, floral patterns on the rete, the curves for the meridian altitudes of the sun on the back and the ornate alidade. This brass astrolabe is attractively made, and the geometrical lines are drawn quite accurately. But the engraving of the Devanagari legends and numerals is very crude and not always complete. Particularly on the back, the letters in the two semi-circular scales in the lower half are incised with such force that the impressions can be seen on the inner side, and the geographical table incised on the inner side left impressions on the back.

The open work kursi (throne) with its simple elegance is reminiscent of the kursi in an astrolabe crafted by the great Diya' al-Din of the Lahore family in 1072/1663 (see Gingerich, "An Astrolabe from Lahore,"). The kursi, the back plate of the mater, and the circular limb are first made separately and then riveted together. A circular degree scale is engraved on the limb; groups of 6º are labelled as 6, 12, 18 ... 348, 354, 360, starting from the south point and proceeding clockwise.

The rete is graceful with floral motifs and is almost symmetric. Here circles of Capricorn and the ecliptic are fully represented. These are held together by the east-west bar with two counter-changes and by a floral tracery. The ecliptic circle is divided into the 12 signs of the zodiac and labelled as mesa, rasa (sic! read vrsa), mithuna, karka, simha, kanya, tula, vrnika (sic! vrscika), dhanu, makara, kumbha, mina. The bevelled edge is divided, but very irregularly, into units of 2º. The floral tracery filling the space between the circles of Capricorn and the ecliptic, and the space within the ecliptic circle, has many projecting tips to represent the star positions, but only the ten in the upper half are named; the engraver failed to name the star pointers in the lower half, i.e. below the horizontal bar. The named stars are - in the order of increasing longitude from the vernal equinox - pu(rva)pha(lguni) (delta ? Leo.) - citra (alpha Virg.) - svati (alpha Boot.) - dhanuhkoti (alpha Ophi.) // abhijit (alpha Lyr.) sravana ? (alpha Aqil.) - kukura (sic! kukkut apuccha (alpha Cygn.) - asvamukha (epsilon Peg.) - and two undecipherable names.

On the inner side of the mater, circles are drawn to accommodate three bands of a geographical gazetteer, but only two are filled. Again, in each band, cells are drawn for the name of the city, its latitude and longitude, but the longitudes are not given. Moreover, in the outer band, the gazetteer does not start at the zero point, but under 284º. In the second one, however, the place names begin from the zero point and proceed clockwise. In both the bands, an attempt was made to arrange the places with increasing latitudes, but not consistently. Sometimes, a place name occupies two, or even three cells. Total places mentioned are 32+25 = 57. Some of these names could not be deciphered because of the poor quality of engraving and also because of the impressions left by the engraving on the other side.

The outer band includes - to use the modern spelling - Rameswaram (at lat. 7º), Sri Lanka (10º), Bijapur (17º), Bidar (19º), Ahmad Nagar (19º), Aurangabad (20º), Surat (21º), Lahore (31º), Srinagar (31º), Sialkot (33º), Mewat (29º), Burhanpur (21º), Daulatabad (21º), Ahmadabad (23º), Sironj (24º), Golconda = Hyderabad (18º), and Badaun (28º). In the second annulus are mentioned Ajmer (26º), Gwalior (26º), Meerut (26º), Kanpur (26º), Ajamgarh (26º), Gorakhpur (27º), Jaipur (27º), Kannauj (27º), Mathura (27º), Anup Shahar (28º), Lucknow (26º), Hansi (30º), Panipat (29º), Dwaraka (27º), Patna (26º), Delhi (29º) and Kashi = Benares (26º).

There are three plates serving the latitudes 24, 26; 29, 32; 34, 36, the last one wrongly labelled as 25. Perhaps originally there were more plates. Of the extant three, the plate for the latitudes 29 and 32 is an important element in Mughal astrolabes, because it serves the two imperial cities of Delhi (roughly 29º) and Lahore (32º). The plates have a small slit at the bottom which fits into the plug on the mater, and helps the plates to stay in position. At the centre of the plate the latitude for which the plate is calibrated is given in numbers. In two cases (29, 34) the number is preceded by the term aksamsa, "degrees of latitude".

The projections and labels are not done uniformly on all plates. Altitude circles are drawn for each 2º of argument, but on the plate for 34º, these are given for every 1º. On some plates each fifth circle is highlighted with dots. Generally each alternate circle is numbered both on the left and right. Azimuth circles are drawn below the horizon for each 6º and labelled; on some plates each fifth of these is highlighted. Lines are drawn for seasonal hours and for equatorial hours after sunset and before sunrise. Sometimes the latter are distinguished by dotted lines. Just below the horizon is engraved purva "east" in the east and pa[scima] "west" in the west.

The back is divided into four quadrants by the vertical and horizontal diameters. The rim on the upper half contains two concentric scales; the inner one of single degrees. In the outer scale, groups of 5º are labelled, starting from the east and west points and reaching to the south point. In the upper left there is a sign graph constituted by 60 equidistant horizontal parallel lines. The upper right is occupied by a solar quadrant with axial scales and quarter circles for each sign of the solar longitude. Upon these are drawn six equal hour lines and three curves of solar meridian altitudes, which are not labelled. Presumably these are for the latitudes 27º, 29º, and 32º, on which lie respectively the three Mughal imperial cities of Agra, Delhi and Lahore. These solar meridian altitude graphs are a specific feature of Lahore astrolabes, which the maker of this Sanskrit astrolabe emulated.

In the lower half of the back, there are two shadow squares and the circumferential scales for determining shadows to bases 12 (left) and 7 (right). These are not labelled. The divisions in the square of 7 are numbered, but not those in the other square. Within the squares, a grid was drawn for some astrological table, but it was not filled either.

Around the squares, there are two concentric semi-circular scales, the outer one of the 12 zodiacal signs and the inner one of the 28 lunar mansions. The names of the signs are occasionally abbreviated and are preceded by serial numbers. The names of the lunar mansions are also abbreviated, generally with the initial syllables.

The alidade has ornate terminals and an ornate middle as in the Lahore astrolabes; its upper surface is divided into two longitudinal sections; the edge of one half is divided into 12 units, the other half is plain. A pin and a wedge complete the ensemble.

The astrolabe bears no signature of the maker, nor the date of its manufacture. Jaipur is mentioned in the geographical gazetteer engraved on the mater. Since this city was founded in 1728, the astrolabe must have been produced thereafter, either in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The gazetteer also contains a large number of cities from the area constituting the modern federal state of Uttar Pradesh. Several of these cities are not mentioned in any astrolabe. It is therefore quite possible that the astrolabe was produced somewhere in Uttar Pradesh.

General Bibliography:
AIOS: Fuat Sezgin et al., eds., Arabische Instrumente in orientalistischen Studien, 6 vols., Frankfurt, 1990-91, repr. as Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy, vols. 85-90 (1998), with 6 further volumes ibid., vols. 91-96 (1998).
Alain Brieux and Francis Maddison, Répertoire des facteurs d'astrolabes et de leurs oeuvres, to appear.
Joseph Frank and Max Meyerhof, "Ein Astrolab aus dem indischen Mogulreiche," Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925 (Heidelberger Akten der von-Portheim-Stiftung 13), reprinted in AIOS, VI, pp. 307-356
Owen Gingerich, David King and George Saliba, "The 'Abd al-A'imma Astrolabe Forgeries", Journal for the History of Astronomy 3 (1972), pp. 188-198, repr. in King, Islamic Astronomical Instruments.
Owen Gingerich, "An Astrolabe from Lahore," Sky and Telescope, 63 (1982), pp. 358360; reprinted in idem, The Great Copernicus Chase and other Adventures in Astronomical History, Cambridge, Mass. 1992, pp. 132-138.
Robert T. Gunther, Astrolabes of the World, 2 vols., Oxford, 1932, repr. in 1 vol., London, 1976.
David A. King, Islamic Astronomical Instruments, London, 1987, repr. Aldershot, 1995.
David A. King, World-Maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca - Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science, Leiden, 1999.
David A. King, In Synchrony with the Heavens - Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, 2 vols., Leiden, 2004-05
L. A. Mayer, Islamic Astrolabists and their Works, Geneva, 1956
William H. Morley, Description of a Planispheric Astrolabe Constructed for Sháh Sultán Husain Safawí ... , London, 1856, repr. as the introduction to Gunther, Astrolabes, I, and "Description of an Arabic Quadrant", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17 (1860), pp. 322-330 and 2 figs.
Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma, "Yantraraja: The Astrolabe in Sanskrit," Indian Journal of History of Science (Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi), 34 (1999), pp. 145-158.
S. R. Sarma, "Katapayadi Notation on a Sanskrit Astrolabe," ibid, 34 (1999), pp. 273-287.
S. R. Sarma, "Sultan, Suri and the Astrolabe," ibid, 35 (2000), pp. 129-147.
S. R. Sarma, A Catalogue of Indian Astronomical Instruments (in preparation).
Emilie Savage-Smith, Islamicate Celestial Globes - Their History, Construction, and Use, Washington, D.C., 1985.
A. J. Turner, The Time Museum, Catalogue of Collection, Vol. I, Part 1: Astrolabes, Astrolabe-related Instruments, Rockford 1985.