Tantrasamgraha

Tantrasamgraha, or Tantrasangraha, (literally, A Compilation of the System) is an important astronomical treatise written by Nilakantha Somayaji, an astronomer/mathematician belonging to the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. The treatise was completed in 1501 CE. It consists of 432 verses in Sanskrit divided into eight chapters. Tantrasamgraha had spawned a few commentaries: Tantrasamgraha-vyakhya of anonymous authorship and Yuktibhāṣā authored by Jyeshtadeva in about 1550 CE. Tantrasangraha, together with its commentaries, bring forth the depths of the mathematical accomplishments the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics, in particular the achievements of the remarkable mathematician of the school Sangamagrama Madhava. In his Tantrasangraha, Nilakantha revised Aryabhata's model for the planets Mercury and Venus. His equation of the centre for these planets remained the most accurate until the time of Johannes Kepler in the 17th century. It was C.M. Whish, a civil servant of East India Company, who brought to the attention of the western scholarship the existence of Tantrasamgraha through a paper published in 1835. The other books mentioned by C.M. Whish in his paper were Yuktibhāṣā of Jyeshtadeva, Karanapaddhati of Puthumana Somayaji and Sadratnamala of Sankara Varman. Nilakantha Somayaji Nilakantha Somayaji, the author of Tantrasamgraha, was a Nambudiri belonging to the Gargya gotra and a resident of Trikkantiyur, near Tirur in central Kerala. The name of his Illam was Kelallur. He studied under Damodara, son of Paramesvara. The first and the last verses in Tantrasamgraha contain chronograms specifying the dates, in the form Kali days, of the commencement and of the completion of book. These work out to dates in 1500-01. A brief account of the contents of Tantrasamgraha is presented below. A descriptive account of the contents is available in Bharatheeya Vijnana/Sastra Dhara. Full details of the contents are available in an edition of Tantrasamgraha published in the Indian Journal of History of Science.