DISHAS project collection

Astral sciences were cultivated, since antiquity, in a great variety of historical contexts wherein different types of transmission and interaction were often established. For centuries across Eurasia, the astral sciences were fostered, manuscripts and early printed materials were compiled and copied to meet a wide range of religious, ritualistic and political needs. Sources and ideas were appropr...iated and transformed by a long and far-ranging transmission history that connects a broad corpus. DISHAS aims at providing tools to edit and analyse the different types of sources usually treated in the history of the astral sciences. As a pilot attempt, DISHAS focuses on astronomical tables and, more precisely, on their numerical and mathematical content.

The numerical data conveyed in these tables provide rich evidence for ancient scientific practices. Tables reveal how astral phenomena were modelled, and how reasoning and prediction were shaped. Created by complex computation with often-interlinked algorithms, circulating tables generally were adapted to new contexts and purposes rather than recomputed from scratch. Thus in addition to their individual contents, astronomical tables, viewed more generally, can provide unmatched sources for studying the transmission of computational know-how, writing technologies and layouts, theoretical models, and numerical parameters. With enhanced digital, editorial and analytical tools, scholars will be able to chart previously unrecognized paths of circulation, learn how large collections of tables were shaped, and track the spread and appropriation of particular computational practices.

DISHAS (dishas.obspm.fr) offers a platform to the scholarly community where this corpus can be assembled, edited and analysed in order to trace transmission on a Eurasian scale, and will restore numerical tables as the computation tools they often were for historical actors. This collection includes all editions of astronomical tables produced with DISHAS platform.
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