Abstract
In around 1720, Jai Singh II of Amber (c. 1686–1743), the Hindu ruler of Jaipur in Rajasthan, began to construct a series of large observatories, or jantar mantar, in Jaipur, Delhi, Benares, Mathura, and Ujjain (Figure 7.1).1 In pursuit of the latest natural philosophical knowledge, Jai Singh gathered around him Muslim astronomers, Hindu pundits, and Jesuit scholars.2 He sent observers to distant islands to make observations and despatched a delegation to Lisbon to acquire the latest scientific information. Like the Royal Society and their circle, Jai Singh and his assistants amassed and generated copies of earlier works of scholarship including the star catalogues of Ulugh Beg,3 the grandson of the conqueror Timur, who built an observatory in Samarkand. Jai Singh discusses the building plans for this observatory in his Zij-i Muhammad Shahi.4
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Andreas Volwahsen, Cosmic Architecture in India: The Astronomical Monuments of Maharaja Jai Singh II (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 2001), 65.
John Greaves, Quibus accesserunt, Insigniorum aliquot Stellarum Longitudines, et Latitudines, Ex Astronomicis Observationibus Ulug Beigi, Tamerlani Magni Nepotis (Oxoniae, 1648).
David Turnbull, Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2000).
Nicholas Hudson, ‘From “Nation” to “Race”: The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth Century Thought,’ Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29.3 (1996), 265.
Ronald B. Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
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Jos J.L. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London: Routledge, 2003), 203–206.
Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 23–55.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern; On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
Durba Ghosh, ‘Decoding the Nameless: Gender, Subjectivity, and Historical Methodologies in Reading the Archives of Colonial India,’ in Kathleen Wilson (ed.) A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
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© 2016 Anna Winterbottom
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Winterbottom, A. (2016). Conclusion. In: Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380203_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380203_8
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