Dinakara (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

1550) was an astronomer from India who produced a treatise named the Candrārkī (consisting of 33 verses) dealing with the preparation of Indian calendars ( pancanga) based on the movement of the sun and moon. The treatise exists in as many as 150 manuscript versions as well as with commentaries, some of which have been interpreted, translated and compared with modern approaches. Dinakara is noted as the son of Rāmeśvara and greatgrandson of Dunda from the Moḍhajñāti family and at the time of writing his treatise was residing at Bārejya (which has been assumed to be Bariya in Rewa Kantha,

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

). His major works were

astronomical tables In astronomy and celestial navigation, an ephemeris (; ; , ) is a book with tables that gives the trajectory of naturally occurring astronomical objects and artificial satellites in the sky, i.e., the apparent place, position (and possibly velo ...

made for

Śaka The Saka, old , mod. , ), Shaka (Sanskrit ( Brāhmī): , , ; Sanskrit (Devanāgarī): , ), or Sacae (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: were a group of nomadic Eastern Iranian peoples who lived in the Eurasian Steppe and the Tarim Basin from the ...

1500 (Sunday, April 9, 1578 CE) and Śaka 1505 (AD 1583). His treatise Kheṭakasiddhi (1578) contains rules for determining the positions of the five planets based on the Brahmatulya of

Bhāskara II Bhāskara II ('; 1114–1185), also known as Bhāskarāchārya (), was an Indian people, Indian polymath, Indian mathematicians, mathematician, astronomer and engineer. From verses in his main work, Siddhānta Śiromaṇi, it can be inferre ...

. The Candrārkī has tables on solar and lunar movement. His third work ''Tithisāraṇī'' (or ''Dinakarasāraṇī'') (1583) covers the making of pancangas, the calculation of days, tithis, nakṣatras, and yogas, and was based partly on the earlier work Mahādevī of Mahādeva. Dinakara's work was an influence for Haridatta II's ''Jagadbhūṣaṇa'' (1638). Achalajit of Muraripupura in

Gurjaradesa Gurjaradesa, (, or Gurjaratra)* * is a historical region in India comprising the southern Rajasthan and northern Gujarat during the period of 6th–12th century CE. The predominant power of the region, the Gurjara-Pratiharas eventually cont ...

wrote another ''Chandrarki'' (

IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...

: Candrārkī) in 1655, by converting Dinakara's work from the system followed by the ''brahma-paksha'' school to that of the ''saura-paksha'' school.

References

External links

* Candrarki Manuscript {{DEFAULTSORT:Dinakara Indian astronomers