Q1.
Let’s join Bhavisha and Dhruv with their time machine in the time of the Guptas. You are getting an opportunity to meet Āryabhaṭa and Varāhamihira—what would you ask them? Divide the class into two groups and create a series of questions for an interview with them.
Answer
How to build good interview questions. A weak question can be answered with ‘yes’ or a date. A strong one asks how they found out, what they got wrong, or what they would say to us. Aim for six to eight questions per group, moving from easy to hard, and base every one on something the chapter actually says about that scholar.
Group 1 — Sample questions for Āryabhaṭa (Kusumapura, c. 500 CE):
- You wrote in the Āryabhaṭīya that the Earth spins on its axis, and that this is why day and night alternate. Everyone around you could see that the Sun moves across the sky. What made you decide it was the Earth that turns?
- How did you measure the length of the year as 365 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes and 30 seconds without any clock? What instruments did you use?
- You explained solar and lunar eclipses correctly at a time when many people feared them. How did people react to your explanation?
- You also gave a fair estimate of the size of the Earth. What did you measure to get it?
- Which of your mathematical techniques do you think was the hardest to work out — and which are you proudest of?
- Why did you write such a short treatise? Was it meant to be memorised?
- Who taught you, and who did you argue with, at Kusumapura?
Group 2 — Sample questions for Varāhamihira (Ujjayinī):
- Your Bṛihat Samhitā moves from astronomy to weather forecasting, architecture, town planning and farming. Why put all of these in one book — do you see them as one subject?
- How did you forecast the weather? Which signs in the sky, the plants or the animals did you trust most?
- What advice did you give for choosing the site of a new town, and would you give the same advice to a town planner today?
- You were an astronomer and an astrologer. Where do you draw the line between what can be calculated and what cannot?
- How did you decide when to keep a piece of traditional knowledge and when to reject it?
- What did Ujjayinī give you that another city could not?
- If you could ask Āryabhaṭa one question, what would it be?
Tip for the class activity: let each group first write the questions, then swap — Group 1 answers as Āryabhaṭa using only what the chapter and the library give them, and Group 2 answers as Varāhamihira. Answering in character forces you to notice how little we actually know about these men, and how much we know about their work. End by listing which questions cannot be answered from the evidence we have — that list is a real history lesson.
Why these two are paired in the chapter: both lived in the same period, both worked at famous centres of learning (Kusumapura near Patna; Ujjayinī), and both show the same method — observe the world, reason logically, and combine that with traditional knowledge. That method, not any single result, is why the chapter calls Varāhamihira a pioneer in science.