Welcome to this web site which is intended to serve as an introduction to Sawai Jai Singh and his influence on Indian astronomy.

Around 1978, I first became interested in Sawai Jai Singh's astronomical instruments. Jai Singh built his masonry instruments in the day and age of the telescope. The question, why someone would build instruments of masonry and stone in the age of the telescope, intrigued me. There were no convincing answers in the existing literature. I also found that literature on Jai Singh's astronomical endeavors was scanty. In fact, the last authentic book on Jai Singh's instruments had been written almost 60 years ago. Trying to seek the answer to the question why Jai Singh built his instruments the way he did, and also to learn more about the instruments, I researched primary sources and investigated the instruments in detail. The effort resulted in a book, Sawai Jai Singh and His Astronomy, Delhi (1995), available from Motilal Banarasidass Publishers .

-Virendra Nath Sharma