# Brahmasphutasiddhanta

- id: brahmasphutasiddhanta
- original title: ब्राह्मस्फुटसिद्धान्त / Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta
- author: Brahmagupta
- language: Sanskrit
- composed: 628, Bhillamala
- field: astronomy

Brahmagupta's treatise of 628: planetary astronomy, and the first surviving systematic arithmetic of zero and negative numbers. Its school's methods reached Baghdad with an Indian embassy and became the Arabic Sindhind tradition.

## The chain

- **c. 771–775** Sanskrit -> Arabic, adaptation as "Zīj al-Sindhind al-kabīr" [probable]
  al-Fazari (translator), Yaqub ibn Tariq (translator), al-Mansur (commissioner), Baghdad
  An Indian embassy reached al-Mansur's court in 771 or 773 with an astronomer in its party. The Arabic Sindhind made from his text mixes Indian parameters with Persian and Greek material; the Sanskrit source was probably a sibling text of Brahmagupta's school rather than the Brahmasphutasiddhanta itself.
  Evidence: Pingree 1970 (reconstruction of the lost zij from quoted fragments); Hockey 2007
  - **c. 820** Arabic -> Arabic, adaptation as "Zīj al-Sindhind" [attested]
    al-Khwarizmi (author), Baghdad
    Al-Khwarizmi's own tables in the Sindhind tradition, drawn up under al-Ma'mun. The Arabic original is lost.
    Evidence: Toomer 1973; Hockey 2007
    - **c. 1000** Arabic -> Arabic, revision [attested]
      Maslama al-Majriti (reviser), Ibn al-Saffar (reviser), Cordoba
      Recomputed for the meridian of Cordoba and the Islamic calendar, around the turn of the millennium. This Andalusi recension is the only form in which al-Khwarizmi's tables survived.
      Evidence: Hockey 2007
      - **1126** Arabic -> Latin, translation [probable]
        Adelard of Bath (translator)
        Manuscript-dated to 1126, one family precisely to 26 January. The attribution reads 'presumably Adelard': two manuscripts intersperse chapters by Petrus Alfonsi, and a version of the tables is keyed to 1116, suggesting an earlier attempt he revised.
        Evidence: Mercier 1987 (the 1126 dating and the Petrus Alfonsi precursor question)

## Worth knowing

The Baghdad adaptation is lost, and survives only as the Latin translation of an Andalusi revision: a book born in 7th-century Rajasthan reaches us as a 1126 Latin text of a Cordoba reworking of a vanished Arabic original. Even the name fossilized the route. Sindhind is Sanskrit siddhanta worn smooth by Arabic mouths, and later bibliographers, no longer recognizing the word, solemnly glossed it as 'the perpetual eternity'.

## Sources

- Pingree, David (1970). The Fragments of the Works of al-Fazari. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29.
- Hockey, Thomas et al. (eds.) (2007). Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (entries: Fazari, Khwarizmi, Majriti, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf ibn Matar). Springer.
- Mercier, Raymond (1987). Astronomical Tables in the Twelfth Century. In Burnett (ed.), Adelard of Bath: An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).