New research published in the Journal of Indian Astronomical History has analyzed newly recovered birch-bark fragments of the Vashistha Siddhanta, dating back to the 2nd century BCE. The study reveals that ancient Indian astronomers used sophisticated iterative algorithms to predict the transit of Mercury across the Sun with an error margin of less than 30 minutes.
These findings demonstrate that the mathematical foundations for planetary perturbation and orbital eccentricity were well-developed centuries before similar concepts appeared in European astronomy. The research highlights the use of algebraic approximations that were previously thought to have been pioneered much later by the Kerala School of Mathematics.