Jantar Mantar

This guide to Jantar Mantar in Delhi opens in seventeen nineteen, when Mughal court astrologers couldn't agree on an auspicious day for the emperor's army to move, and the Rajput king Jai Singh II's theory about why. It follows his fix: not better texts, but far larger instruments, built into the towering Samrat Yantra beside you. He named the whole complex from two Sanskrit words for instrument and formula. Trace the marble arcs on either side of the great triangular spine as you listen.