A Case for Comparative Sciences
Discover the groundbreaking launch of IKS Wiki by the Indian government, a pioneering state-sponsored open encyclopedia dedicated to Indian Knowledge Systems. Explore how this initiative sets the stage for a new academic discipline—Comparative Ancient Sciences.
The Indian government on December 17 last year announced the first state sponsored open encyclopedia termed IKS Wiki. It is aimed to gather on a public forum on Indian Knowledge Systems, to which students too can contribute, but this precisely builds up the case for a much broader and perhaps a universal new discipline: Comparative Ancient Sciences.
Because it is a fact that peoples before Indians too had made remarkable developments in sciences and were just as accurate, such as the Mayans and the Babylonians, just two case studies to establish our case.
Maya Astronomy
The Maya, as said in the previous edition, is a culture that existed about 8,000 years ago in the area of southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador.
Maya astronomy is the study of the Moon, planets, Milky Way, Sun, and astronomical phenomena by the Precolumbian Maya Civilization of Mesoamerica.
The Classic Maya in particular developed some of the most accurate pre-telescope astronomy in the world, aided by their fully developed writing system and their positional numeral system, both of which are fully indigenous to Mesoamerica.
The Classic Maya understood many astronomical phenomena: for example, their estimate of the length of the synodic month was more accurate than Ptolemy’s, (Ref: “Mayan Astronomy”. University of Arizona. Retrieved 11 December 2014).
Mayan calculation of the length of the tropical solar year was more accurate than that of the Spanish when the latter first arrived (Ref: Leon-Portilla, Miguel (1 September 1990). Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya. University of Oklahoma Press. x
And just as India’s Konark Sun Temple, many temples from the Maya architecture have features oriented to celestial events.
There are three main Maya calendars, and perhaps the Maya had created the 365-day annual calendar thousands of years ago
The Long Count is a count of days. There are examples of Long Counts with many places but most of them give five places since the mythical creation date – 13.0.0.0.0.
The Tzolk’in is a 260-day calendar made up of a day from one to 13 and 20 day names. By pairing the numbers with the 20 names, that leaves 260 unique days with every combination of numbers/names happening once.
This calendar was of the most sacred to the Maya, and was used as an almanac to determine farming cycles, and for religious practices to specify dates for ceremonies.
These 260 days were each considered individual gods and goddesses that were not persuaded by a higher power. Unlike the 365-day year, this 260 day year was used less for counting/calculations, and more to arrange tasks, celebrations, ceremonies, etc. In some present day Maya communities, this 260 day almanac is still used, mostly for religious practices.[5]
The Haab’ is a 365-day year made up of a day of zero to 19 and 18 months with five unlucky days at the end of the year.
When the Tzolk’in and Haab’ are both given, the date is called a calendar round. The same calendar round repeats every 18,980 days – approximately 52 years. The calendar round on the mythical starting date of this creation was 4 Ahau 8 Kumk’u. When this date occurs again it is called a calendar round completion.
First Science Revolution?
Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of celestial objects during the early history of Mesopotamia.
Babylonian astronomy seemed to have focused on a select group of stars and constellations known as Ziqpu stars. (Ref: Hunger, Herman (1999). Ziqpu Star Texts”.Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia. Brill) .
These constellations may have been collected from various earlier sources. The earliest catalogue, Three Stars Each, mentions stars of the Akkadian Empire, of Amurru, of Elam and others.
A numbering system based on sixty was used, a sexagesimal system. This system simplified the calculating and recording of unusually great and small numbers. The modern practices of dividing a circle into 360 degrees, of 60 minutes each, began with the Sumerians. (Ref: “Time Division”. Scientific American).
During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new empirical approach to astronomy. They began studying and recording their belief system and philosophies dealing with an ideal nature of the universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems.
This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science, and some modern scholars have thus referred to this novel approach as the first scientific revolution.
Indian Horology
To be even handed, India also had a highly precise system of time calculation and calendarisation. Indian horology went into such nano calculations of time that it is based on Indian cosmogony, the discipline of the origin of the universe. Here are some examples.
Various fragments of time are described in the Vedas, Manusmriti, Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, Mahabharata, Surya Siddhanta etc. And the basic and smallest unit of time as per the Surya Siddhanta treatise.
This is a Sanskrit treatise in Indian astronomy dated to 4th to 5th century. As per al-Biruni, the 11th-century Persian scholar and polymath, a text named the Surya Siddhanta was written by Lātadeva, a student of Aryabhatta I. (Ref: Thompson, Richard L. (2007). The Cosmology of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa: Mysteries of the Sacred Universe)
The time starts with micro-seconds (denoted as µs) and goes like this
truti base unit ≈ 29.6296 µs
tatpara 100 truti ≈ 2.96 µs
nimesha 30 tatpara ≈ 88.9 µs
kāṣṭhā 18 nimesha ≈ 1.6 s
kalā 30 kāṣṭhā ≈ 48 s
ghatika 30 kalā ≈ 1.44 ks (24 min)
muhūrta (kṣaṇa) 2 ghatika ≈ 2.88 ks (48 min)
ahorātram (sidereal day) 30 muhūrta ≈ 86.4 ks (24 h)
The text measures a savana day from sunrise to sunrise. Thirty of these savana days make a savana month. A solar (saura) month starts with the entrance of the sun into a zodiac sign; thus, twelve months make a year.
Surya Siddhanta may have been written in the 4th or 5th CE, but it was based on a much earlier Vedic conception of inception of Creation and in the next edition, we shall see how this had evolved, as described in the Gyatri Mantra.
That mantra has been dumbed down to mean a prayer to Savita, or Sun God. This is utterly wrong and a devalued conception of the mantra. Much of Sanskrit Vedic knowledge prescriptions have layers of meanings, and I have it on good authority that the words tatsavitur, the very first term of Gayatri mantra actually means not Savita, but Prasavita, the “birth giver”… of trillions of suns spread across billions of galaxies that are constantly emerging and submerging.
This, dear reader, modern, western science has realised only less than a hundred years ago! The submerging of stars and galaxies are today called Black Holes….
(Up Next: Indian Cosmogony)
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