The Jantar Mantar, in Jaipur, is an astronomical observation site built in the early 18th century. It includes a set of some 20 main fixed instruments. They are monumental examples in masonry of known instruments but which in many cases have specific characteristics of their own. Designed for the observation of astronomical positions with the naked eye, they embody several architectural and instrumental innovations.

The observatory forms part of a tradition of Ptolemaic positional astronomy, which was shared by many civilizations. It contributed by this type of observation to the completion of the astronomical tables of Zij. It is a late and ultimate monumental culmination of this tradition.

This is the most significant, most comprehensive, and the best preserved of India’s historic observatories. It bears witness to very ancient cosmological, astronomical and scientific traditions shared by a major set of Western, Middle Eastern, Asian and African religions, over a period of more than fifteen centuries. The Jantar Mantar in Rajasthan state is an expression of the astronomical skills and cosmological concepts of the court of a scholarly prince towards the end of the Mughal period.