* Article on "Cochin" (volume IV, pp 134-138):
[the Jewish community includes] the Castillia, exiles from Spain in 1492,
who arrived at Cochin in 1511, the Ashkenazi and Rothenburg, who came from
Germany in the sixteenth century...
The earliest tract of the Cochin Jews is to be found in...a charter given by
Cheramal Perumal, King of Malabar, to Isupu Irabban (Joseph Rabban),
probably a Jew of Yem who led an expedition of Jews to Cranganore about the
year 1750...They are mentioned by Ibn Wahab in the ninth century; and
Benjamin of Tudela appears to have visited or heard of them about
1167...Marco Polo found them a century later ("Travels of Sir Marco Polo,"
ed. Yule, ii. 263), and when Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1487, the
first person he met was a Jew said to have come from Posen via Turkey and
Palestine (Kayserling, "Christopher Columbus," pp. 113-114). In 1511 they
were joined by Jews from Portugal. In 1565 they were threatened with the
Inquisition by the Portuguese Christians settling at Granganore, and fled
to Cochin, where their number increased so rapidly that the Portuguese
historian De Barros (1496-1570) refers to the King of Cochin as the "king
of the Jews".
Pereyra de Paiva ("Notisias dos Judeos de Cochin", Amsterdam, 1687) states
that during the week of Nov. 21-16, 1686, some Dutch merchants of the
Sephardic congregation of Amsterdam visited Cochin...and had rolls of
the Pentateuch, prayer-books, and various rabbinical works sent from
Amsterdam to Cochin.
[article written by Joseph Ezekiel, J.P. of Bombay and Joseph Jacobs of
England and New York]
* Article on "India" volume VI pp 580-582:
The Cochin Jews claim to have come to have come to Malabar from Jerusalem
after its destruction, and to have settled at Cranganore, a few miles north
of their present location...In 1523 the Portuguese seized Cranganore...the
Mohammedans in the following year attacked the Jews near Cranganore, and
after killing many of them and destroying their synagogues, drove them with
the Portuguese out of the town...the survivors went to Cochin.
[In 1663] Cochin was taken by the Dutch, and the Jews received religious
liberty. In 1685 the Dutch Jews sent a commission from Amsterdam
to investigate the condition of the Jews of Cochin. The report appeared in
1697 under the title "Notisias dos Judeos de Cochim Mandadas por Mosseh
Pereyra de Paiva."
More than one Jew sailed with the flotillas of the Portuguese. Hucefe was
the most intimate friend of Alfonso d'Albuquerque.
The vernacular...of the Cochin Jews [is] Malayalam.
[article by Gustav Oppert of Berlin]
* Article on "Mathematics" volume VIII pp 375-378
Among the writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries mention should be
made of...Jacob ben Nissim of Kairwan [who] wrote, under the title "Hisab
alGhubar", a work on Indian mathematics.
[book in Hebrew, title transliterates as "Elim"] containing, among other
scientific dissertations, treatises on arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and
trigonometry, by Josehp Delmedigo. Amsterdam, 1629.
*Article on "Delmedigo, Joseph Solomon" Volume IV pp 508f
1591 - 1655
[at Padua studied astronomy under Galileo]
For many years he led a wandering life, going first to Cairo, in search of
new books for his rich library.
"Elim" (Amsterdam, 1629) contains answers to twelve scientific questions
propounded by Zerah ben Nathan, and seventy mathematical paradoxes. The
title is an allusion to Exodus xv:27.
"Ma'yan Gannim" (Source of the Gardens) [no publication data given] a
continuation to the answers to Zerah ben Nathan. It consists of the
following short treatises: on trigonometry; on the first two books of the
"Almagest", on astronomy (these three printed with the "Elim"), on
astronomical instruments, on Cabala and the supernatural; on astrology, on
algebra, on chemistry; on the aphorisms of Hippocrates; on the opinion of
the ancients concerning the substance of the heavens, on the astronomy of
the ancients, who considered the motion of the higher spheres due to spirits
(Delmedigo shows that their motion is similar to that of the Earth); on
the principles of religion; mathematical paradoxes (printed together with
the "Elim".
[as to the relevance of Delmedigo to this topic, certainly anyone who wrote
at length ca. 1600 on "mathematical paradoxes" must have discussed calculus
questions.]
- James A. Landau
> From: Dennis Francis Almeida <D.F.Almeida@exeter.ac.uk>
> To: dfh@maths.warwick.ac.uk
> Subject: James Gregory and Brook Taylor
>
> I write to you in regard to a research enquiry. This relates to the
> epistemological similarities between medieval Indian mathematics and
> the precalculus works in Europe.
>
> ...
>
> Dennis Almeida, Lecturer in Mathematics Education,
> University of Exeter