Introduction

Since the time of Nehruvian histories, there has been recognition of the significance of Orientalist scholarship with respect to tracing the development of science in India. Or, to put it another way, the Orientalists have been seen as setting the template for the historiography of science in India. In the period between 1784 and c. 1830, Europeans in India demonstrated a sustained engagement with Indian astronomy. There was a concern with researching the past in order to understand how it related to the present, and astronomy was central to this endeavour. In order to trace these scholarly trajectories, the journals of the learned societies, especially that of the Asiatick Society in Calcutta, are the most valuable source. Indeed, the Asiatick Researches contained numerous articles on astronomy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and so must be taken as a point of entry for elucidating the Orientalist engagement with Indian astronomy in that period. Though some of these perspectives on astronomy are relatively well known, the existing historical literature has understated the expanse of the imagination involved in the Orientalist researching of the past. Moreover, there is a need to recognize the different types of engagement with astronomy that were considered possible. Orientalists not only demonstrated a historically-situated philosophical engagement with Indian astronomy, using astronomy to understand India's scientific heritage and how it related to that of Europe, but also considered the possibility of a practical engagement, exploring the scope for learning from Indian astronomers and their paradigms.