Essays

Long-form readings across the databases — every Sanskrit quotation verbatim from a cited e-text.

• The cup that refills
  The moon as the sky's account-book: drunk and refilled, named and numbered, address of the dead, mirror of the earth — every claim quoted verbatim from the Sanskrit texts.
• Five stars the texts kept watching
  Rohiṇī's Cart, Arundhatī, Agastya, Dhruva and the Seven Sages: how the Sanskrit texts used five fixed stars as omen-site, eye test, season bell, pivot and calendar — every claim quoted verbatim from a cited e-text.
• The instruments
  A stick, a bowl of water, a bowl for rain, and a globe that turns itself: the four instruments the Sanskrit texts specify, every claim quoted verbatim.
• The shadow explained
  From Svarbhānu piercing the sun to the earth's shadow computed: the Indian eclipse from myth to mechanism, every claim quoted verbatim.
• The sky that moved
  The Pleiades rose due east once, a 28th star fell out of the calendar, and the solstice changed its month — how the Sanskrit texts recorded a drifting sky, every claim quoted verbatim.
• The wanderers
  The planets stray, stop, and go backwards — and the Sanskrit texts name that loop in every register they own, from war-omen to speed taxonomy. Every claim quoted verbatim.