Varāhamihira
A figure from the books
#Varahamihira
Varāhamihira · c. 505 – c. 587 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Astronomy, astrology and encyclopaedic science — summarizer of all five astronomical schools known to sixth-century India, author of the great compendium of everything a court needed to know.
“Fifteen hundred years before "who invented it first" became a culture war, India's most famous astronomer named his foreign sources, praised them, ranked them against the home-grown ones — and lost nothing by it. Candor about debts turned out to be a form of greatness.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Say where you got it. He compared India's five systems of astronomy — two of them openly named for the Greek-Roman West — ranked them by accuracy, and wrote that the Greeks, though "barbarians," deserved honour like sages because they had the science right.”
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