Stars Across Borders: The Art of Astronomical Translation in Mughal India

Talk with historian and philosopher of mathematics Anuj Misra.

In  the 17th-century courts of the Mughal Empire, the heavens were a shared language. While traditional histories often treat Sanskrit and Persianate sciences as parallel but separate, the  reality was a vibrant, messy, and deeply human 'concrescence' of ideas.  This talk explores the collaborative world of astronomers like Mullā  Farīd and Nityānanda, who worked under the patronage of Emperor Shāh Jahān to bridge two distinct cosmological worlds.
Drawing on research from the project Changing Episteme in Early Modern Sanskrit Astronomy,  I examine how these scholars didn’t just translate numbers, but  cultures. From adapting Islamic prayers into Sanskrit verse to integrating Indian astrological concepts into  Persian tables, their work reveals a dynamic process of 'scientific  enculturation'. By recovering these forgotten dialogues, we gain a more  nuanced understanding of how knowledge evolves—not through isolated discovery, but through the friction and fusion of  cultures meeting at the edge of the known world.

Speaker bio

Anuj Misra is a historian and philosopher of mathematics specializing in the study of pre-modern Islamicate and Sanskrit astronomy. From April 2024, he leads the Max Planck Research Group “Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia” (ASTRA), in conjunction with being a Professor of the History of Science and the History of Knowledge at the Freie Universität Berlin.

This lecture is supported by HUM:Global Seed Money and is part of the open lecture series New Histories of Ideas.