Jantar Mantar

This guide to Jantar Mantar in Jaipur follows Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II's problem in the early 1700s: the astronomical tables of his day kept producing small but real errors, which he traced to worn brass instruments. You'll hear why he chose to rebuild in stone at massive scale rather than adopt the telescope already in use across Europe, and what the guide argues these nineteen giant instruments were really built to declare about power over the calendar. A succession war breaks out within months of the king's death in 1743, unsettling the site's fate.