MUñJāLA

(fl. India, 932)

astronomy.

A Brahmana of the Bharadvajagotra, in 932 Muñjala composed a Ḅhanmānasa which was known to al-Biruni (India, translated by E. C. Sachau, 2 vols. [London, 1910], I, 157), who claims that a commentary on it was written by Utpala(fl. 966–968). We now have only fragments of the Ḅhanmānasa; but the second treatise of Muñjala mentioned by al-Biruni, the Laghumanasa, is extant. It was composed after the lost work at a place called Prakasa; the earliest commen- tary on it, by Prasastidhara of Kashmir, was written in 958.

The Laghumanasa is a rather eclectic work (see essay in Supplement), although it possesses elements derived from the two schools of Āryabhạa I (b. 476) and some original insights into lunar theory. Besides the commentary of Prasastidhara mentioned above there are others by Suryadeva Yajvan of Kerala (b. 1191), Paramesvara (ca. 1380–1460), and Yallaya (fl. 1482). All three of these later commentators lived in southern India, where Muñjala’s work maintained some influence although it had been forgotten in the northwest since the eleventh century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Laghumanasa was edited with Paramesvara’s vyakhya by Dattatreya Apte as Anandasrama Sanskrit Series 123 (Poona, 1952), and with an English trans. and commentary by N. K. Majumdar (Calcutta, 1951). Majumdar had previously published a short note on it, “Laghumanasam of Muñjala,”in Journal of the Depart- ment of Letters, University of Calcutta, 14 (1927), art. 8.

David Pingree