August 11 AD519, a lone Dhoti clad, sunbrowned man is the only one on the beach overlooking the latticed well traveled shores of the Indian Ocean. Everyone else in the ancient port of Ponnani on the coast of Kerala were cowering in fear with palm shutters rolled down. The solar eclipse had just started and Aryabhata cast out into the ocean on a vallam, the Keralite boat. Legend has it that Aryabhata and his son Devarajan were both excommunicated from their caste for the double sin of going to sea and observing the eclipse. The prejudices of Europe echoed from Copernicus' Poland to the Malabar coast.
A millennium before Mercator drew his prime meridian through Fuerteventura, India had a prime meridian that formed the basis of trade in the Indian Ocean through to China. With the possible exception of Ptolemy's meridian through the Canary Islands this would likely be the first multi-state sanctioned meridian.
Ponnani as its southernmost point on the Indian subcontinent was a thriving port on the Malabar coast and is the oldest port continually in use in India. It is of supranational astronomical significance because in the words of CS Hari "Aryabhata's theory of Earth's rotation had its genesis in the experience of apparent motion of the shore during his sea voyage".
I have set out to trace the original prime meridian from Ponnani in Kerala up to the snow gnarled mountains of Kashmir.
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