Daśabala ( 1055 – 1058 ) was an astronomer who lived in
Saurashtra
Saurashtra, Sourashtra, or variants may refer to:
** Kathiawar, also called Saurashtra Peninsula, a peninsula in western India
** Saurashtra (state), alias United State of Kathiawar, a former Indian state, merged into Bombay State and since its d ...
in what is now
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
and wrote several works on calendars,
eclipses
An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...
, and
planetary conjunctions.
Daśabala lived in what is now Rajasthan and belonged to a
Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
sect and called himself
Bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who has attained, or is striving towards, '' bodhi'' ('awakening', 'enlightenment') or Buddhahood. Often, the term specifically refers to a person who forgoes or delays personal nirvana or ''bodhi'' in ...
. His father's name was Virocana and belonged to a clan called Valabha. He worked under the patronship of
King Bhoja of the
Paramara dynasty
The Paramara Dynasty (IAST: Paramāra) was an Indian dynasty that ruled Malwa and surrounding areas in west-central India between 9th and 14th centuries. They belonged to the Parmar (clan), Paramara clan of the Rajputs.
The dynasty was establi ...
of Rajasthan. All that is known of Daśabala is from his two works, the ''Cintāmanṇisāraṇikā'' (1055) and the ''Karaṇakamalamārtaṇḍa'' (1058) which indicate his membership to the Brahma School of astronomy (or Brāhmapakṣa, 5th to 12th century). These texts include astronomical calculations in verse form. They provide means for calendar calculations, determining the positions of the planets, lunar and solar eclipses as well as a 60 year cycle of
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...
.
References
{{Authority control
11th-century astronomers