5 ms·

Slightly related, but in the Hanuman Chalisa by Hindu poet-saint, Tulsidas, who was born in 1497, mentioned that the distance from the earth to the sun is appro

Slightly related, but in the Hanuman Chalisa by Hindu poet-saint, Tulsidas, who was born in 1497, mentioned that the distance from the earth to the sun is approximately 108 times the width of the sun. yuga sahasra yojana para bhānū līlyo tāhi madhura phala jānū yuga-sahasra-yojana = 12000 x 1000 yojanas. Yojana is a Vedic measure of distance and approximately equals to 8 miles (according to the 14th century scholar Parameshvara, the originator of drgganita system). And 1 mile = 1.60934 kilometers. According to the calculation presented in Hanuman Chalisa Distance between Sun and Earth = 12000 x 1000 yojanas = 96 million miles = 153.6 million kms, which is much closer to the calculation of modern science. How could he have known this at that time?

skj 8y ago
I feel like the fraction of the sky taken by the sun gives you that ratio.
ColinWright 8y ago
> How could he have known this at that time? Fairly trivially. The Sun's angular size is about 0.5 degrees. If A is the angular size of the Sun then the distance to the Sun is 1/sin(A). Using the rough figure of 1/2 a degree, that makes the Sun about 114.6 times as far as its width. You can measure it more accurately and get a better figure. You don't need modern trigonometry to do this - part of the point of the linked post is how to do these calculations without knowing about modern trigonometry, just using distances and ratios.
- russdill 8y ago
  For the lazy, when an angle is small you can just approximate sin(theta) with theta. Theta of course has to be in radians. So 0.5 degrees is .0087267 radians. sin(0.5 degrees) is .0087265. Putting it all together, 1 / (0.5 * Pi / 180) = 114.6.
srean 8y ago
That would be child's play compared to the claim that they were doing plastic surgery and full head transplants even earlier. The claim was made , among others, by the current prime minister of India -- I kid ... not.

skj 8y ago

I feel like the fraction of the sky taken by the sun gives you that ratio.

ColinWright 8y ago

> How could he have known this at that time? Fairly trivially. The Sun's angular size is about 0.5 degrees. If A is the angular size of the Sun then the distance to the Sun is 1/sin(A). Using the rough figure of 1/2 a degree, that makes the Sun about 114.6 times as far as its width. You can measure it more accurately and get a better figure. You don't need modern trigonometry to do this - part of the point of the linked post is how to do these calculations without knowing about modern trigonometry, just using distances and ratios.

russdill 8y ago
For the lazy, when an angle is small you can just approximate sin(theta) with theta. Theta of course has to be in radians. So 0.5 degrees is .0087267 radians. sin(0.5 degrees) is .0087265. Putting it all together, 1 / (0.5 * Pi / 180) = 114.6.

srean 8y ago

That would be child's play compared to the claim that they were doing plastic surgery and full head transplants even earlier. The claim was made , among others, by the current prime minister of India -- I kid ... not.