Author: Richard L Thompson
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 242
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8120819217
Description
The mysteries of the Fifth Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam have long puzzled students of Vedic cosmography and astronomy. Confronted with a description of the universe that seems much at variance with the information provided by our senses and standard astronomical calculations, foreign observers-and even Indian commentators-from the Middle Ages up to the present have concluded that the Bhagavatam's account, elaborated in other Puranas, must be mythological.
On the other hand, the same persons have been much impressed with Vedic astronomical treatises, the jyotisasastras, which provided remarkably accurate measurements of the solar system.
In Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, Dr Richard Thompson shows that the Fifth Canto's cosmography and the accounts of the solar system found in the jyotisa-sastras are not contradictory, but that they in fact represent distinct yet mutually consistent ways of comprehending a universe with important features beyond the range of ordinary sense perception.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
RICHARD L THOMSON received his Ph. D. in Mathematics from Cornell University, where he specialized in probability theory and statistical mechanics. Dr. Thompson has done research in quantum theory and mathematical biology at the State University of new York at Binghamton and at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. An initiated disciple of His Divine Grace A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Dr. Thompson (Sadaputa dasa) is a founding member of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, the scientific branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
The Astronomical Siddhantas
CHAPTER 2
Vedic Physics: The Nature of Space, Time and Matter
CHAPTER 3
Vedic Cosmography
CHAPTER 4
The Vertical Dimension
CHAPTER 5
The Empirical Case for the Vedic World System
CHAPTER 6
Modern Astrophysics and the Vedic Perspective
CHAPTER 7
Red Shifts and the Expanding Universe
CHAPTER 8
Questions and Answers
APPENDIX 1
Vamsidhara on Bhu-mandala and the Earth Globe
APPENDIX 2
The Role of Greek Influence in Indian Astronomy
Bibliography
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Index