Devācārya, son of Gojanma and author of the astronomical manual Karaṇaratna (lit. Gem of a Manual), hailed from Kerala in South India. The epoch of Karaṇaratna, i.e. the date from which planetary computations were instructed to be commenced in that work, is the first day of the year 611 in the Śaka era, which corresponds to February 26 of AD 689. This places Devācārya in the latter half of the seventh century. We know he came from Kerala because he used the Kaṭapayādi system of letter numerals and the Śakābdasaṃskāra, which is a correction applied to the mean longitudes of the planets from the Śaka year 444 or AD 521, and a unique method of computing the solar eclipse, all of which are peculiar to Kerala, and because his work is popular in that part of the land.
Devācārya uses the elements of the Āryabhaṭan school of astronomy as the basis of his work, as he himself states towards the commencement of Karaaratna. His work is based both on the Āryabhaṭīyaand on the second work of...
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References
The Karaṇa‐ratna of Devācārya. Ed. Kripa Shankar Shukla. Lucknow: Department of Mathematics and Astronomy, Lucknow University, 1979.
Pingree, David. 1976. Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit. Series A, Vol. 3. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia: 121.
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Sarma, K.V. (2008). Devācārya. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9563
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