Male: This is our astronomical observatory. The local name of the place is Janter Mantar. Jantar means instrument and Mantar means calculations. It was founded by the same Maharajah who founded the city of Jaipur in 1728. But before this, he had already founded four of the regions in different parts of India. First one in Delhi, 1724 and then at Benares in total of five and this was the 5th one.
You can see earlier before, they were all on experimental basis. This is sun dial, a small sun dial. With the help of this, you can calculate the local time of the place. You can call it solar time. With the help of this, you can know the local time of Jaipur. You will see that there is a triangle in the center. This triangle is pointing towards north.
And then it makes an angle of 27 degree. 27 is the latitude of Jaipur. That means 27 degree north of the equator is a portion of Jaipur. On either side, there are two quadrants, on which hours have been graded. Six sides on this side, six side on that side. This is a triangle. The sun rises from that side. The shadow of this falls over here. So the timing start from the six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve. 12 o’clock, there’s no shadow. After twelve, the sun moves on this side and the shadow falls over there.
This one is one hour, from here to hear, it is one hour. If you divide it into four parts, one two three, four, 15 minutes each. 15 minutes will be divided into three parts, one, two, three, five minutes each. And the five minutes will be divided into five parts, one, two, three, four, five and one minute will be divided into three parts, one, two, three, 20 seconds each. So this gives time correct up to 20 seconds. To see the time, we have to go on that side. Yes.
Male: And when did he build it?
Male; 1738.
Male: This is one o’clock, 15, 30, 45, 50, 51, 52—52 minutes time for India, it is calculated from 82 degree and here, we are going from 27 degree. So their difference which in the two days is 22. There, is marked. This is called as pole star instrument. With the help of this, you can see pole start in the evening and in the night. You have to just put your eye over here and you will be seeing the pole star, the North Star.
This is called a Yantra Raj. It is made up of eight metals. If you look very careful in it, you can see the map of the sky. The name of the starts, planets, everything is seen on it. With the help of this, you’ll find out the altitude. If you come to know the altitude, you can easily found out that it’s positioned in the time. It’s an instrument that the hole is there that is just like a telescope and then you rotate it to make this instrument follow the equator and then you can see it and you can measure the altitude.
That was the mathematics was in those times and in those times they don’t have enough paper for doing calculation. So they did calculation on this sheet. This instrument has three parts, one we are facing and the second is at the back of this and third is on the top. The main function of this is to tell us in which hemisphere the sun is because the sun position affects the weather. How it works, we have to see the nail. If the nail makes a shadow, that means this is working. If this is working, it means that the sun is in the northern hemisphere. Right now you can see that there’s no shadow. It means that the sun is not in northern hemisphere so we have to go back and see, just come.
Here, you can see a shadow of the nail. That means that the sun is in southern hemisphere. So we are having winters. This is a group of twelve instruments which means zodiac signs. There are twelve. After knowing the previous instrument, you come over here to study the impact of the zodiacs because each zodiac create an impact at that particular point at the particular time. So those effects are calculated mathematically and the horoscope is predicted. And the horoscope place a significant role in Indian life. Everything is decided regarding to that like whom to marry, what time to marry, when to have a new business and then to enter a new house, everything is all by that. So these are twelve but they appear similar with the small sun dial. The triangle is there and the quadrant is there but you will find that they are very much different. Their directions are different, the angle is different, the sky is completely different and that’s the different—
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