Product Details:
Softbound Edition
- Softbound; 242 pages; 15.2 x 22.9 (centimeters); 6 x 9 (inches)
- illustrations throughout; index
- Publisher: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust; First issue: 1990; Reissue: 1996
- ISBN: 0-89213-269-8
- Suggested Audience: Intermediate
Anyone interested in cosmology will find this book an indispensable addition to their library and learning. From the ancient Vedas comes surprisingly accurate cosmological information.
The universe as described in such Indian texts as the Bhagavatam seems strikingly different from the universe of modern astronomy. This book addresses this apparent conflict in detail, and outlines a systematic approach to understanding the ancient viewpoint.
Topics include the celestial geometry of Bhu-mandala, mystic powers, higher-dimensional realms, Vedic mathematical astronomy, space travel, the moon flight, astrophysical anomalies, the dating of Kali-yuga, and more.
From the back cover:
The mysteries of the Fifth Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam have long puzzled student of Vedic cosmography and astronomy. Confronted with a description of the universe that seems much at variance with the information provided by our sense and standard astronomical calculations, foreign observers—and even Indian commentators—from the Middles Ages up to the present have concluded that the Bhagavatam’s account, elaborated in other Puranas, must be mythological. On the other hand, the same persons have been much impressed with Vedic astronomical treatises, the jyotisha-shastras, which provide remarkably accurate measurements of the solar system. In Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, Dr. Richard Thompson shows that the Fifth Canto’s cosmography and the accounts of the solar system found in the jyotisha-shastras are not contradictory, but that they in fact represent distinct yet mutually consistent ways of comprehending a universe with important features beyond the range of ordinary sense perception.
