Sri Vadiraja Tirtha, one of the stalwarts of Dvaita School of Vedanta and author of hundreds of works, has written a treatise titled “Bhugola Varnanam” that deals with the brahmAnDa that we live in.
[Sources: Kannada & English Translations by Sri V. Badarayana Murthy]
Bhugola Varnanam has 35 topics related to the earth, planets, stars, cosmos and other worlds. Sri Vadiraja explain these topics in 391 shlOkA-s. Topics include time wheel, star world, planets etc.
Sri Vadiraja gives the premise for writing this treatise.
In Shloka 390 he says “वाक्यार्थ कथन व्याज्यॊद्भूगॊळ मिति वर्णितं” – ‘the writing of this treatise was occasioned by the debate regarding certain details about the universe.’ This is an evidence that Vedantins such as Vadiraja were conducting scientific debates too. Unfortunately, we do not have much details about the said vAkyArtha as to where it was held, when and with whom. I presume that it must have been written in mid or late 16th century.
In 16th c. Europe was witnessing Renaissance which started questioning the religious texts & their descriptions of cosmos or creationism theories. It is in this period, Sri Vadiraja wrote Bhugola Varnanam as a response to a debate on creation of universe. This historical fact supplied by Bhugola Varnanam tells us that the Vedanta & Vijnana were friends & not enemies in Dharmik context. They were not competitors trying to prove the other as wrong but were complimenting each other!
Bhugola Varnanam explains complex calculations of various parts of the universe to their minutest details. For e.g. the measurement of 3 major regions have been measured in biggest UoM [yOjana] to smallest [sarSapa=mustard seed].
Similar calculations of areas, dimensions, distances etc. have been explained by Sri Vadiraja throughout the treatise with units of measurements used in Vedas & Puranas. I hope this may attract the students of sciences to explore the concept of universe from a new perspective!
As I’m incompetent to write elaborately on this topic, concluding this thread by sharing the links to the translations made by Sri V. Badarayana Murthy.
I offer my obeisance to Sri Vadiraja Guru, refugee at the feet of Hayagriva, who is full of virtuous qualities such as penance, wisdom and detachment.
तपॊविद्याविरक्त्यादि सद्गुणैघाकरानहम
वादिराजगुरून्वंदॆ हयग्रीवपदाश्रयान
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