Science and Modern India

CHAPTER 13

Early Modern Observatories in India, 1792–1900

S.M. Razaullah Ansari^*

Upon the fall of the Mughal Empire, after the failure of the first war of independence in 1857 against the British colonizers, the East India Company's rule was transferred to the British Crown in 1858. Thereafter, we were ushered into the British period of Indian history, which lasted up to 1947. To begin with, the East India Company (hereafter EIC) established a number of traditional colleges such as the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781, a Sanskrit College in Benaras in 1791 and Delhi College in 1825,¹ wherein the medium of instruction was, respectively, Arabic and Persian, Sanskrit and Hindi, and Urdu, with English language as one of the subjects. However, 1835 onwards, ...