Ancient Indian Sciences: An Unexplored Ecosystem
Explore the intriguing history of ancient Indian sciences, its achievements, the early recognition of heliocentricity and gravitation, and the clash between science and religion in Europe versus India.
One evening last winter, I reached New Delhi’s iconic performance arts Mecca, the Kamani Auditorium. On my way back I noticed that a high temple of arts was located on a street going by the name of a Prussian polymath – primarily an astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 to 1543).
He was a science giant credited with suggesting the heliocentric model of the solar system, that is, the sun is at the centre of the solar system and the earth is orbital. This was against the Roman Catholic church’s policy of dominating over science. If Man is God’s best creation, and the earth is Man’s abode, how can the sun be at the centre of the universe. The Bible would not allow that, so instead of leaving it in God’s hands to punish the evil, the scientists, and the Church went ahead and crucified science/
Contrary to this rabid bigotry in Europe, in India there was no clash ever between science and state power. There is no information to date of any Indian scientist being jailed, or worse, killed. That is because in India there had never been a fixed religion, and in the Vedas, we can clearly see that the priestly community was divided between scientists and philosophers. And also that science and philosophy very often feed into each other through healthy communication.
As I pondered over such things, waiting for a taxi on Copernicus Marg, I felt sad that we do not have streets named after our own ancient scientists. I am not suggesting that there cannot be a street named after a great Polish scientist. My question is, why not also have streets named after ancient Indian scientists?
The reason is a politically complex one, to which I shall come a little later. But the fact remains that the idea of heliocentricity of the solar system had been mooted 1,400 years before Copernicus by an Indian scientist. That was around 600 AD.
Heliocentricity and Gravitation
That the sun is the centre of the solar system was very clearly laid down in Indian scriptures thousands of years ago, The Rig Veda, Sloka 1.35.2, as translated by Dr Tulsi Ram, reads: “Savita (Sun), Lord of life and light, existing and abiding by the regions of the universe, sustaining them with his centripetal force of gravitation, engrossing the mortals and Immortals, goes on and on, in self-refulgent glory of his golden chariot, watching an illuminating the worlds of existence.”
That shows a few interesting things; that Vedas had not only postulated the heliocentricity of the solar system, it was also postulated that gravitation was at play in this and one aspect of gravitation, it was the centripetal force of gravitation of the sun, the force that thrusts outwards, as against the centrifugal gravitational force that pulls towards the centre, was keeping the entire planetary system in permanent balance and stopping it from centrifuging and getting scattered.
Interestingly, almost the exact sloka is found in the Satapatha Brahmana, an ancient Indian treatise dating back between circa 9th to 7th BCE. The author, Rishi Yajnavalka suggested that the sun moves on its own axis. “The sun moves in its own axis in space taking along with itself the mortal bodies like earth through force of attraction.” Satapatha Brahmana is the annotation on Yajurveda, and in Sloka 33.43, the exact sloka is also found. But Yajurveda being of later vintage than Rig Veda, it must be said that the concept had first been textualized on the first Veda, the Rig. So that how old the science is in India.
During the 1st millennium BCE, the Vaisheshika school of atomism was founded. The most important proponent of this school was Kanada, an Indian philosopher. The school proposed that atoms are indivisible and eternal, and can neither be created nor destroyed. Quantum physics says the same thing in the 20th century.
So, is there much that we have ignored in the readings of Surya Siddhanta, or the treatises of Brahmagupta, Aryabhatta, Sushrut, and other ancient Indian scientists? After all, why is there a statue of Sushruta at The Royal Australia College of Surgeons? My point is not to insist, like the Far Right in India harangues, that India knew everything in science and all that was stolen from here. My point is that Indian science had made great progress till a point in time and it is time we searched for answers to two questions: Why did Indian science die? And is there something in Indian sciences that remains to be rediscovered so that these can be built into the huge corpus of global scientific knowledge?
Bigotry Vs Science
There is this recent screeching Facebook Reel of some crank ‘swami’ saying that cow urine is the panacea for all worldly evils and that if millions of litres of cow urine are sprinkled from helicopters, India shall again reclaim its position of Vishwaguru (world leader).
A few years ago, a man in the Howrah district of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal started selling gaumutra at Rs 150 a litre and got it declared by some ‘Baba’ (fake godman) that this is a great health booster and medicine, etc. This led to his arrest and a severe mass ridicule for his party, the BJP.
On September 1, Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of the Allahabad High Court observed that “scientists believe that the cow is the only animal that exhales oxygen”. He also called upon the Indian Parliament to declare the cow as the national animal and make cow protection a “Fundamental Right of Hindus“. (Hindustan Times, 01/ 09 / 2024.
Needless to say, he did not, indeed could not, cite any peer-reviewed research paper to substantiate his statement of the belief systems of some unnamed scientists.
Left, Right, and Centre
Over the past 10 years, this widespread rightwing bigotry has done massive damage to the glorious cause of ancient Indian sciences, such as that of panchgavya, of which cow urine is just one of the components. And this has led to a barrage of spoofs and memes by Left-liberals, directed at demolishing every ancient Indian scientific achievement as ‘jingoism’.
So, is there a science behind gaumutra, and is panchgavya truly an agricultural science? Or is it just a blind faith or superstition sans any semblance of science, as the bigots from the Left insist? Did India discover Zero, as is widely held?
The Interesting thing is that today, modern Western science is validating many of these discoveries and yet, we are not able to do so. This is because we are caught in the middle of this Left and Right battle for ideological supremacy.
That is why we need a balanced, strictly Centrist approach to reclaim ancient Indian sciences and take our own findings forward, for there is much on quarks and cosmogony that we already have in India, but we do not have the labs to prove those theorems.
From Surya Siddhanta to Gayatri Mantra, most of our ancient scientific achievements have been put under wraps. Mainly because the West has promoted itself as the centre of civilisation, and because of a lack of policy for reviving Indian sciences, we have failed to counter that.
India has already much to give to the world, but we are losing out on creating intellectual property and the West is beating us in this race. For India, it is a relay race, but our runners are not catching the baton from the past and taking things forward.
Ultimately it is a question of India’s intellectual properties and national wealth, and for creating that, we do need a policy framework. So let us see what we have and what we need.
(Coming up: Gaumutra, Panchgavya and Science)
What's Your Reaction?
