Indic Nostalgia@DDust08
I have to laught at your reply...
"Any civilisation can draw a line and call it zero. The impossible part was: how do you know where YOU are relative to that line when you’re in the middle of the ocean?"
😂🤭
That is exactly what Britain did....🤡🤭
The ancient Indians selected Ujjain (known historically as Ujjayini or Avanti) as their prime meridian - the zero-degree longitude reference line - not arbitrarily, but based on rigorous astronomical observations and scientific reasoning that predated figures like Aryabhata and Brahmagupta by centuries.
This choice is documented in foundational texts like the Surya Siddhanta(dating back to >1500BCE ), which explicitly positions Ujjain along the prime meridian, often alongside places like Rohitaka (Rohtak) and Lanka (central point) at the equator. Ujjain's significance stemmed from its location near the intersection of the Tropic of Cancer (approximately 23.5°N latitude) and what ancient astronomers calculated as the central meridian. This made it a natural "crossroads" of space and time: the point where the Sun appeared to reverse its northward-to-southward path during solstices, enabling precise tracking of seasons, calendars, and celestial movements. Ancient Indian astronomers viewed this as a more inherently scientific basis than a purely arbitrary or politically chosen line.(ie the Greewich merdian)
Moreover, early observations tied into broader astronomical pursuits, including monitoring stellar phenomena like the precession of the equinoxes (Earth's axial wobble over millennia). The star Agastya (Canopus), visible in southern skies and linked to the sage Agastya's "journey" southward, was tracked across this latitudes in India. Such long-term celestial monitoring helped build foundational astronomy from first principles, far beyond simply drawing a line on a map.
Ujjain's meridian influenced not only Indian timekeeping and almanacs but also later astronomers like Varahamihira, and even Islamic scholars such as Al-Khwarizmi, who adopted it in some works under the name "Arin."
Ancient Indian maritime prowess further underscores the scientific depth of their longitude system. Long before European solutions like John Harrison's marine chronometer (18th century), Indian sailors navigated vast oceans using advanced trigonometry, sine-cosine tables (from works like those of Aryabhata onward), and astronomical methods to determine both latitude and longitude.
They employed the Sun's "declination" (its angular distance north or south of the celestial equator) relative to the observer's zenith. By measuring the Sun's altitude at noon and adjusting with declination values, they could derive longitude differences for long-distance voyages - a technique referenced in texts like the "Laghubhaskariya parika". This allowed reliable open-ocean positioning without mechanical timepieces, contributing to safe, loss-free navigation across the Indian Ocean trade routes.
This is how You CAN KNOW where you are in the middle of Ocean without having to use Harrison's chronometer 🤡
For shorter-range coastal or star-based sightings, they used the kamal (a simple wooden device with knotted strings to measure stellar altitudes, particularly Polaris for latitude), a tool widely employed in the Indian Ocean region.
In contrast, the "Greenwich meridian" (established internationally in 1884) was chosen largely due to British colonial and maritime dominance rather than any unique astronomical merit - it was pragmatic for a seafaring empire but lacked the ancient rationale of Ujjain's solstitial and equatorial alignment.
While European navigation faced repeated ship losses until chronometer-based longitude solving, Indian were successful at Naritime with use of their knowledge.
So sit down,There is no original problem solving what so ever from UK apart from building on looted money and stolen knowledge, thats as far as UK's "Legacy" goes -U proud Britoon 🤣😂🤡🤡