Astronomical Unit in Hanuman Chalisa

I had come across this forward message that made tall claims for hanuman chalisa. The forward read as follows:

Any one knows the Hanuman chalisa? In Hanuman Chalisa, it is said :
"Yug sahastra yojan per Bhanu!
Leelyo taahi madhur phal janu!!" 

1 Yug = 12000 years
1 Sahastra = 1000
1 Yojan = 8 Miles
Yug x Sahastra x Yojan = par Bhanu
12000 x 1000 x 8 miles = 96000000 miles
1 mile = 1.6km
96000000 miles = 96000000 x 1.6km = 1536000000 km to Sun
NASA has said that, it is the exact distance between Earth and Sun (Bhanu).
Which proves Hanuman ji did jump to Planet Sun, thinking it as a sweet fruit (Madhu phal). It is really interesting how accurate and meaningful our ancient scriptures are..Unfortunately it is barely recognized.

The estimate of 1 astronomical unit (au) - the distance between earth and sun has a long history. The first estimate only came during the transit of Venus in the 18th century. Before this event, we did not have any estimate for the actual value of au. Then did hanuman chalisa indeed present the value of au?

We had raised this point with Dr. Balachandra Rao. He is a mathematician and a Sanskrit scholar who studies contributions of ancient Indians to astronomy and mathematics. He says the flaw in this analysis is that the distance of one yoja is altered in hindsight such that it fits the current estimate of 1 a.u. To begin with, yoja was not a standardized unit of measurement and hence there was no fixed value for yoja. Different people used different values. So the Hindu proponents are using a value for yoja (in retrospect) to showcase that ancient Indian scriptures were ahead of modern science. This is not the case and is very much incorrect.

But then what does that part of hanuman chalisa tell? What does it really calculate?  He says that it is a figure of speech to convey the strength of hanuman.. We are reading to much into it. Use of verses and shlokas to remember formula is known. It is called katapayadi sutra. But using that we can say that hanuman chalisa didn't encode any formula. It is a hymn of praise for hanuman and nothing more.

For more information on Dr. Rao, researcher in Indian Astronomy, please read this article. It has the entire list of his books that are very low cost. He publishes his work as books with a publisher who foes not make profit so that the books become affordable for interested people.

To summarize, it is true ancient Indian astronomers (not astrologers) made significant contributions to mathematicians. In this regard, one could say that they were ahead of their time but not our time. Put differently they were not ahead of modern science. This distinction is very important to understand which people tend to (intentionally?) mix the two maybe fuelled by a sense of pride. They are doing a disservice in this cause since even the legitimate claims might be disregarded.