Abstract Summary
This paper attempts to reconstruct the political economy of data in eighteenth century mathematics and astronomy. I argue the construction of Hindu cosmology in late eighteenth century Orientalist discourse was a product of practical efforts, like surveying and astronomical observation. In, 1784, The Yorkshire-born London mathematician Reuben Burrow submitted a lengthy proposal to Warren Hastings, in which he outlined a project of astronomical and antiquarian surveys. I will focus in particular on a section in which Burrow suggests an examination of the astronomical observatory at Benares could be used to infer ancient astronomical parameters in use in India. Who were his interlocutors, and scientific and antiquarian contemporaries, both amongst his peers in London, and once he arrived in Calcutta? Burrow's contemporary in Madras, the surveyor Michael Topping, was dismissive of "native" astronomy. At the observatory Topping established at Madras in 1792, the granite pillar used to support astronomical instruments bore inscriptions, in Latin, Tamil, Telugu, and Hindustani, lauding "British liberality," which had "brought the mathematical sciences to Asia." Indeed, much historical work on the period emphasises the disjuncture between pre-colonial and colonial knowledges. However, earlier in the eighteenth century, there was interest in ancient astronomical observations that could be used to reconstruct historical data series of parameters of present-day interest, such as the moon's secular acceleration. I use Burrow's project to construct a history of data, and its complex significations, during the late eighteenth century.
