Heritage of Science & Technology in Ancient India
Dangers of the obscurantist narrative
To take this narrative more seriously, one should recognize that there are five main elements to it, each of which has its own significance. First, there is insistence that the Vedic-Sanskritic Hindu traditions have the maximum antiquity. Dates usually cited for such ancient knowledge are often 7,000 to 8,000 years ago with some outlandish claims for 20,000 years ago taking us virtually to the stone-age! Basic idea being asserted is that ancient Hindu civilization and the knowledge it threw up are the oldest in the world, its contributions to science and technology came before similar contributions by any other civilization, hence ancient Hindu civilization is the greatest in the world. The exclusive attention paid to Sanskrit texts completely ignores writings in Pali and Prakrit in ancient India, thus excluding epistemological and methodological streams from Jaina and Buddhist traditions. The Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, under the Ministry of Human Resources Development, says in its home page that “Sanskrit… provides the theoretical foundation of ancient sciences.” No need to study science, just study Sanskrit! Overlapping time periods involved would also challenge the “oldest” tag being applied to the Vedic-Hindu traditions. Reputed mathematics scholars and historians (for instance S.G.Dani, “Ancient Indian mathematics: a conspectus,” and “Mathematics in India: 500 BCE-1800 CE” by Kim Plokfer, Princeton University Press, 2009) have argued that this would mean leaving out of consideration important knowledge and mathematical traditions since Jaina and Buddhist scholarship had several concerns that were significantly different from those of the Vedic Brahmins, such as a lack of interest in, if not antipathy towards, ritual performances which were major promptings for so much of Vedic mathematics.
Secondly, no concrete verifiable evidence is cited for these claims, such as archeological evidence, carbon-dating, linguistic analysis etc. Instead, support is usually taken of vague suppositions and mythologies.
In the final analysis, it is asserted that the mythologies themselves are in fact history and need no further proof, faith being the ultimate proof. In effect, they are arguing: You don’t need evidence because we say it was like this. Remember the debate on the history of the Ram Temple in
Ayodhya? It is our faith that Rama was born at this very spot, therefore it MUST be so. Are the Hindutva forces heading in the same direction regarding science in ancient India? Is scientific or historical evidence considered irrelevant in the face of belief ?
Third, the Hindutva narrative totally ignores the extensive interactions and exchanges of knowledge between cultures and civilizations over many centuries, and pretends that the Indian subcontinent was some kind of isolated entity where ancient Vedic-Sanskritic scholars by themselves created this knowledge and, if at all, generously shared this knowledge with the outside world. There is no acknowledgement of the borrowing of ideas between cultures through interactions of traders, merchants, scholars and other travellers while, actually, the same are openly and explicitly acknowledged in scholarly and travel writings in the different cultures involved. This narrative therefore denies a fundamental aspect of science and knowledge creation, namely its universal character and the contribution by all cultures and civilizations to this accumulated body of knowledge which we today call science.
Fourth, there is the familiar project to galvanize “Hindu pride,” overcome past “humiliations” in the form of conquests or subjugation by outsiders of different faiths, and re-build confidence for the future, by projecting Vedic Hinduism as the most ancient, advanced and knowledgeable of all civilizations. But it should be realized that this endeavour itself is not a new one, in fact it harks back more than a century and a half to the early stages of the national movement in India against colonialism. These early efforts by intellectuals in India, and by several abroad, aimed to uncover and translate into European languages ancient Indian, mostly Sanskrit, texts in philosophy, metaphysics and the sciences so as to showcase the greatness of Indian civilization so as to counter the colonial effort to belittle the Indian civilization and justify rule by the “superior” British. Rediscovering
ancient Indian knowledge and capabilities had an important role in the struggle against colonialism.
Fifth, the Hindutva narrative claims that only they have
“discovered” these valuable, great and ancient contributions by the Vedic- Sanskritic culture, identified as synonymous with the Indian civilization. They also claim that those who have a different or opposing view, especially those who acknowledge contributions by other cultures and who do not automatically give ancient Hindu knowledge “first place” in all discoveries or inventions, are guilty of downgrading Hindu i.e. ancient Indian contributions, and are therefore all westernized “Macaulay
putra,” i.e. westernized intellectuals who have swallowed the Western outlook, or are Nehruvian or Marxist. This strand of the narrative that contributions of ancient India to science were totally suppressed or unknown until Hindutva proponents “discovered” them is bizarre. In fact, extensive work has been done by scholars both in India and abroad on science in ancient India. This work, especially from the second half of the 20th century onwards, has been based on carefully evaluated evidence from multiple sources, including texts in Sanskrit and other classical Indian languages, both in original and in translations in Arabic, Latin or other languages. The assiduous research reflected in the exhaustive work of D.D.Kosambi, D.P.Chattopadhyaya, J.D.Bernal, Joseph Needham (incidentally all Marxist scholars) and well known and need no repetition here.
If the Hindutva goal were simply to highlight achievements in ancient India, there is no shortage of real, pioneering knowledge creation, such as the orbital motion of the planets relative to the sun, the inclination of the earth’s axis, the place value system, early estimations of the value of pi (À), the decimal system including the zero, algebra and different aspects of trigonometry and early forms of calculus, advances in medicine, metallurgy and so on. When all these exist and can be proudly
proclaimed, regardless of childish “me-first” games which do not further the understanding of either history or science, what is the need to assert fictitious or imaginary claims? Such fantastic claims only serve to devalue real achievements. Far from adding to the glory of Indian civilization, Hindutva advocates are embarrassing the nation and doing a huge disservice to its great contributions to science in ancient times and to the work Indian scientists are doing today.
Finally, it must be said that the battle underway is not just science versus mythology, false claims against historical fact, but a battle for academic and intellectual rigour, for the method of science and of historiography, and ultimately for a scientific attitude and critical questioning, as against blind acceptance of authority whoever that may be. That last is the authoritarian road, which leads to a very bleak future, however glorious our past has been.
In different Sections below, we take up specific Case Studies of ancient Indian contributions to science and technology. These examples not only showcase the real advances made in ancient India, but will also bring out the give-and-take between different civilizations that resulted in these contributions. The Case Studies would also examine the limitations of these discoveries or other ancient knowledge contributions, and reasons for the same. Science is, after all, a continuous endeavour of updating, correction and renewal, and could neither have reached its peak in some mythical golden age, nor has an “ultimate Truth” in some determinate future time.
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