Cosmology, Eclipses, Equinoxes… India Spoke Long Back
Explore the ancient world’s intellectual freedom and the legacy of polymaths across cultures, from Aryabhatta’s astronomical contributions to the Rig Veda’s profound cosmology.
From the free, PhD-less, patent-less intellectual world of the ancient times in all such cultures, from Orient to Oxidant, there arose the polymaths who strode between all spheres of knowledge. Just such was the case of Aryabhatta, Varahamihir or Brahmagupta. But they were preceded in astronomy by Rig Vedic seers. Interestingly, the west says that Indians are superstitious dealing with cosmology, eclipses as demons eating the sun or the moon. Not true. Besides, the mark of Indian science’s excellence is in the Brahmagupta-Fibonacci Identity, that is, Brahmagupta’s Theorem of Orthogonal Cyclic Quadrilateral.
The ancient world was wondrous, and ‘wanderous’ whether in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China or in the Mayan culture that existed about 8000 years ago in the area of southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. For one could wander about in any sphere of thought without some don demanding a ‘gate-pass’.
In those days one did not have to get a PhD to write on any subject. One would not be restricted to a specialisation and then, a “super specialisation” but could fly about freely anywhere in search of answers to the many perplexing issues and puzzles that one was faced with.
That is why there would be what we call polymaths, which is debarred now. The Greek word polymath means “having learned much,” with poly meaning “much,” and manthanein meaning “learn.” In those days, one could write a single treatise that dealt with arithmetic, trigonometry, astronomy or cosmology.
It is also a fact that Aryabhatta had already known the “Precession of Equinoxes” that is, the shifting of the earth’s axis. This knowledge was later used by Varahamihir to recast the system of ancient Indian Almanac that is found to be correct till this date.
Just like all the civilisations mentioned above had many such polymaths, ancient India too had a fair share of them. We are not unique, we are not the only ones, but India too was not left behind. And just such a polymath was Aryabhatta, whose contribution to mathematics we have dealt with in the previous edition.
This same Aryabhatta had said, as early as 500 CE, that the earth rotates around its own axis. And besides, he had said many other things on astronomy.
Let me quote the young engineer and scholar Sattrajit Mukherjee:
Aryabhatta had established that the diameter of the earth was 13,313 km, which is almost 96.53 per cent correct. It is a fact, however, that the more correct measurement of the earth’s circumference ‑ and hence also its diameter ‑ had been established much earlier by Greek mathematician Eratosthenes.
But it is also a fact that Aryabhatta had already known the “Precession of Equinoxes” that is, the shifting of the earth’s axis. This knowledge was later used by Varahamihir to recast the system of ancient Indian Almanac that is found to be correct till this date.
Aryabhatta had also established that the orbits of the planets are not circular but elliptical (Ref: Sloka 17 in Section titled “Kaalakriya” in his treatise Aryabhattiya).
In his astronomical work “Goladhyay”, (Study of the Spheres) he had written (Sloka 13) in those ancient times that “Sunrise at Lanka (Sri Lanka) is sunset at Siddhapura; and midday in Yavakoti (Java) is midnight at Romaka (Rome).
(Using the time-converters available on the Internet, we verified that the time lag between Java (Jakarta) and Rome is exactly 12 hours!)
As I said, the world of the ancients did not brook any challenge from the orthodoxy and scholars were free to differ without fear or recrimination from any ‘highest authority” such as the Church.
Thus it is, that another polymath who came a century after Aryabhatta crossed swords with him. He was Brahmagupta. Mukherjee writes:
We can only lament that for reasons best known to him, the other giant, Brahmagupta did not agree with Aryabhatta.
After all, Brahmagupta is fabled for what is termed Brahmagupta-Fibonacci Identity, that is, Brahmagupta’s Theorem of Orthogonal Cyclic Quadrilateral.
There was no question of mythology of Rahu and Ketu regarding the eclipses. It was all science so far as the Vedas are concerned, and in that, there is no resorting to Rahu-Ketu to explain eclipses. So, the fault does not lie with the Vedas but with its later interpreters, which, unfortunately, included Max Mueller and Ralph TH Griffith
Thus, had Brahmagupta and Aryabhatta been brought together to share the same meal, ancient Indian sciences could have taken a leap of a thousand years. That it did not happen, truly, is a tragedy.
Mukherjee continues:
Eclipses: Mythology Debunked!
Now let us travel back many more centuries into our antiquity: The Rig Vedic Age.
Now, in India, mention of any eclipse – even in our modern times ‑ lends itself to the myth of the demons Rahu and Ketu who supposedly gobble the sun or the moon, as the case may be during solar and lunar eclipses.
But what precisely does the Rig Veda say?
A clear translation of the relevant sloka shows that ancient Indians knew that the moon is not a self-luminous body but receives its luminosity from the sun. (Rig Veda, 1/84/15).
Another sloka of the Rig Veda (5/40/5) reads: “Oh Sun, we on the earth tremble when suddenly darkness descends on it because the shadow of the body which you have yourself gifted luminosity, envelops you.” (Ref: “Rigveda” – Maharshi Dayananda Saraswati, Vol IV, Pg 741).
There was no question of mythology. It was all science so far as the Vedas are concerned, and in that, there is no resorting to Rahu-Ketu to explain eclipses. So the fault does not lie with the Vedas but with its later interpreters, which, unfortunately, included Max Mueller and Ralph TH Griffith, both Indologists, German and British respectively. (It was actually Griffith who did the translation of Rig Veda Samhita, under the oversight of Max Mueller.)
And this point needs a slight elaboration: according to the Purana fables, the head of the Asura named Swarvanu is named Rahu, and Ketu is his body. Hence, Max Mueller erroneously – most possibly unintentionally ‑ brought into play this mis-translation. And thus, he has taken the word “Swarvanu” in this sloka as the Puranic asura Swarvanu.
But as Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati shows through grammatical dissection, that in this sloka, the term Swarvanu is not a noun but an adjective: Swa (self) + Vanu (luminous) = the self-luminous = Sun.
Practical science shows that the Earth-Sun Orbital Plane and the Earth-Moon Orbital Plane are not on an even surface. There is an angular difference of five degrees between them. Their orbits cross each other at two points, known as the Ascending Node and the Descending Note.
If the moon comes anywhere close to the two points during either a full moon or a new moon, then we have eclipses.
It has been observed that when the moon comes close to the Ascending Node, we witness a Solar Eclipse, and when it crosses the Descending Node, we witness a Lunar Eclipse.
Though the frequency of occurrences of both is more or less the same, there is a marginally higher probability of the moon approaching the Ascending Node, which causes a solar eclipse.
Some scholars argue that the Ascending part, or the head, is a symbolism for Rahu, and when the Descending part comes into play, when the moon is covered by the entire body, which is symbolised as Ketu, lunar eclipse takes place, which is why any lunar eclipse lasts longer than any solar eclipse (presumably because the size of the full body of the ‘demon’ is bigger – and hence its shadow larger – than the shadow of the head.)
Today, so many thousand years after the Purana’s were written, it is impossible to arrive at a suitable connotation of what those mythological symbolisms were meant to be by our ancients.
Cosmology: Predating Big Bang!
The Rig Veda (10/129/1 and 10/129/2 says that at a point there was no existence. And there was also no non-existence. There was no empty space (indicating towards superdense singularity?) nor any material nor even any particle. What explains this Absolute Void? And why did the fluid emerge (indicating towards superfluid vacuum theory of space time? For what purpose?
The Nisadiya Sukta of Rig Veda Samhita says that before Creation, there was no life and no death, no light and no darkness. There was no cognition. It was all just a constant Consciousness. In one sense Param Brahma is the dialectic of non-existence and existence, a philosophy of formlessness that assumes form, both at once.
No other cosmology, or a description of Creation has till date been so accurate. At best, the Big Bang theory of the western cosmology – which was propounded many thousands of years later ‑ resonates with this.
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