Glossary

Nakṣatra: the constellation in which the moon sits in the heaven at a particular time, commonly called as ‘birth Star’ Vedic sciences: refer to a number of disciplines found in the Vedas, a large body of texts originating in ancient India. The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts Ṛg Veda: an ancient Indian sacred collection of hymns, one among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas Āryabhaṭa: one of the first astronomer and great mathematician of India, born in 476 Copernicus: (1473-1543) the first astronomer to formulate a heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe Galileo: (1564-1642) Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. His