Abstract

It is well known that the Kerala school of astronomy, pioneered by Mādhava in the fourteenth century, made remarkable contributions to the development of calculus. In this chapter, we shall summarize the equally significant contribution made by the Kerala astronomers to the development of planetary theory. By 1500 CE, Nīlakaṇṭha Somayājī came up with a remarkable revision of the traditional Indian planetary theory, in which, for the first time in the History of Astronomy, he arrives at a correct formulation of the equation of center and the latitudinal motion of the interior planets, which in turn makes his model computationally equivalent to the Keplerian theory under certain approximation.