By Isla Quinn
Stand beside the largest instrument at the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur and wait. According to Wikipedia, the shadow on the great sundial moves visibly at about 1 mm per second, roughly a hand’s breadth every minute. Slow. Exact. Cut in stone.
The city around it
Wikipedia’s article on Jaipur says the city was founded on 18 November 1727 by Sawai Jai Singh II, the Kachhwaha ruler of Amer, and is named after him. It adds that Vidyadhar Bhattacharya gave the architectural guidance, and that the plan is a regular grid, with streets 34 metres wide dividing the city into six sectors. Ramparts with seven gates enclosed it. In 1876, the article says, the city was painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales, and many avenues are still that colour. It records the walled city’s placing on the World Heritage list on 6 July 2019, separately from the observatory.
The instruments
UNESCO describes the observatory as an astronomical observation site built in the early eighteenth century, with some twenty main fixed instruments in masonry, designed for observing the sky with the naked eye. It calls it the most significant, most comprehensive and best preserved of India’s historic observatories. Rajasthan Tourism counts nineteen instruments, made of local stone and marble with bronze tablets, over about 18,700 square metres, and says the monument was completed in 1734. Wikipedia also counts nineteen. The gap between “some twenty” and nineteen is a matter of how the sources count, and none of them explains it.
The name is simple. Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia agree that “jantar” comes from the Sanskrit yantra, an instrument or machine, and “mantar” from mantrana, to consult or calculate.
The big one
Rajasthan Tourism calls the Vrihat Samrat Yantra a 27-metre sundial, the tallest in the world, accurate to two seconds. Wikipedia gives its height as 88 feet (27 m), says its face is angled at 27 degrees, the latitude of Jaipur, and says it is purported to be accurate to about two seconds. Then it complicates the claim. The sun’s penumbra can be as wide as 30 mm, the article says, so the 1 mm marks have no practical meaning, and subsidence of the foundations has misaligned some instruments. The smaller Laghu Samrat Yantra, according to Rajasthan Tourism, reads local time to about twenty seconds.
Why it was built
Wikipedia says Jai Singh found that the astronomical tables then in use did not match the positions he calculated, and built five observatories to make a more accurate one. The tables he produced, the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi, were used in India for a century, it says. It also says at least 23 astronomers were employed in Jaipur in 1735. A later passage in the same article says there is limited evidence of a dedicated observing programme and that the tables drew mostly on existing ones. We report both and do not choose.
A long afterlife
Wikipedia says the instruments were in continuous use until about 1800 and then fell into disrepair. UNESCO says the site suffered from its outdoor tropical setting and a temporary abandonment in the nineteenth century, followed by restorations over more than a century, and that the authenticity of plasters and graduations is harder to establish than that of the instruments’ function. Wikipedia gives restoration dates of 1876, 1901 and, in another passage, 1902; Rajasthan Tourism says restoration took place several times under British rule and again in 2006.
Dates in order
- 18 November 1727: Jaipur founded, according to Wikipedia.
- By 1728: several instruments built, according to Wikipedia.
- 1734: completion, according to Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia.
- 1735: at least 23 astronomers, according to Wikipedia.
- 1738: instrument-building ends, according to Wikipedia.
- 1743: Jai Singh dies, according to Wikipedia.
- 1876: the city painted pink; restoration completed, according to Wikipedia.
- 1948: national monument, according to Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia.
- 1968: protected as a monument of national importance, according to UNESCO and Rajasthan Tourism.
- 2006: restored, according to Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia.
- 2010: World Heritage inscription, according to UNESCO.
Side by side
Nineteen instruments or some twenty. A completion date of 1734 or building to 1738. National monument in 1948 or “monument of national importance” in 1968. A sundial accurate to two seconds, or marks finer than the sun’s own blurred edge. Our reading: the observatory is best understood as a statement in stone as well as a measuring tool, since the sources cannot settle how much it was used for measuring. That is our inference, and none of them says it.
What kind of sources these are
UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, a heritage body; Rajasthan Tourism, a state tourism board, promotional in tone; and two Wikipedia articles. We read no museum catalogue. We have left out entry rules, opening hours and tickets, which change.
Quick answers
Who built the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur? According to Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia, Sawai Jai Singh II, the founder of Jaipur, completed it in 1734.
How many instruments does it have? Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia say nineteen; UNESCO says some twenty main fixed instruments.
How tall is the largest sundial? Rajasthan Tourism and Wikipedia both give 27 metres, and both say it reads to about two seconds.
What we left out
We left out the temple built on the grounds, the film and album-cover appearances, prices and hours, and the calendar use of the large astrolabe, which we could not weigh.
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Roam first. Shop later.