Between 1724 and 1727, Jai Singh II, a regional king under the Mogul empire, constructed five astronomical observatories in his native territory of west central India. Passionately interested in mathematics and astronomy, Jai Singh adapted and added to the designs of earlier sight-based observatories to create an architecture for astronomical measurement that is unsurpassed. Jai Singh was influenced primarily by the Islamic school of astronomy, and had studied the work of the great astronomers of this tradition. Early Greek and Persian observatories contained elements that Jai Singh incorporated into his designs, but the instruments of the Jantar Mantar, as Jai Singh’s observatories have come to be known, are more complex, or at a much greater scale than any that had come before, and in certain instances, are completely unique in design and function. Of the observatories originally built at Delhi, Jaipur, Mathura, Ujjain, and Varanasi, all but the Mathura observatory still exist. The condition of the instruments varies, due to the ravages of weather and lack of maintenance over time, but the observatories at Jaipur and Ujjain have have had considerable restoration, and repairs have been made from time to time at each of the sites. Few more photographs of Jantar-Mantar can be seen at the following link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/invertedimages/sets/72157631654300996/
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