The Observatory at Jaipur

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Observatory in Jaipur with its vast and beautiful instruments built to make astronomical measurements of the stars. Commissioned in the early 18th century by the Rajput prince and child prodigy, Jai Singh, it was at the centre of attempts to marry hundreds of years of Indian and Persian astronomical tradition. The Observatory was also at the very centre of the city which was laid out according to astrological principles. Jai Singh’s observatory was the cutting edge of Indian astronomy but also a repository for aeons of Hindu and Islamic intellectual life. The instruments were extraordinarily accurate for the time but used no lenses and were built of masonry, not metal. They helped to develop astrological tables, immensely important in Hindu Society, and come down to us as a record of Indian astronomy on the cusp of colonialism.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Chandrika Kaul 5 episodes
  Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews
• David Arnold No other episodes
  Professor of Asian and Global History at the University of Warwick
• Chris Minkowski No other episodes
  Professor in Sanskrit at the University of Oxford

Related episodes

• Tycho Brahe
  
  2 Feb, 2023 520 Astronomy
• Astronomy and Empire
  
  4 May, 2006 520 Astronomy
• The Mughal Empire
  
  26 Feb, 2004 950 History of Asia
• Optics
  
  1 Mar, 2007 530 Physics
• The Sikh Empire
  
  7 Apr, 2016 900 History
• al-Biruni
  
  10 Jun, 2010 900 History
• The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 2
  
  5 Jan, 2010 500 Science
• Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy
  
  17 Nov, 2011 520 Astronomy
• Saturn
  
  14 Jan, 2016 520 Astronomy
• The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 1
  
  4 Jan, 2010 500 Science
• Persepolis
  
  7 Jun, 2018 930 History of the Ancient World
• Indian Mathematics
  
  14 Dec, 2006 510 Mathematics
• Ashoka the Great
  
  5 Feb, 2015 950 History of Asia
• The Arthashastra
  
  3 Mar, 2022 320 Political science
• Angkor Wat
  
  23 Jun, 2022 950 History of Asia
• William and Caroline Herschel
  
  11 Nov, 2021 520 Astronomy
• The Eye
  
  27 Feb, 2014 610 Medicine and health
• Johannes Kepler
  
  29 Dec, 2016 520 Astronomy
• Renaissance Astrology
  
  14 Jun, 2007 130 Parapsychology and occultism
• The Lunar Society
  
  5 Jun, 2003 500 Science

---

Programme ID: b00hmpdd

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hmpdd

Auto-category: 520 (Astronomy and allied sciences)