Hi Nicholas

>Its an annular eclipse but not visible in India. An Annular eclipse means that as the moon is further away from the earth it doesn't completely obscure the suns disk so you get a ring. I wouldn't think that partial eclipses are that rare in India so the 15xx date sounds a bit unlikely.

I guess someone here has mix-matched a lot of stuff from this http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEsaros/SEsaros144.html