AN OFF-HAND ESTIMATE OF INDIAN CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD SCIENCE ALONE, LEAVE ASIDE OTHER FIELDS

AN OFF-HAND ESTIMATE OF INDIAN CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD SCIENCE ALONE, LEAVE ASIDE OTHER FIELDS

The numerals the world uses were invented by Indian mathematicians which is why they are called Hindu-Arabic numerals, the Arabs merely being accredited thus because they carried the news of the numbers to the West, having earlier accepted it from the Hindus 🕉 and adapted it to their language to convenience. Trigonometry, geometry, theories of gravitation, medicine, surgery and a host of other disciplines were born independently in India or developed in conjunction with other ancient civilisations like the Chinese, the Sumerians, the Persians, the Babylonians and the Egyptians. India discovered the time cycles and conjectured to an astonishing degree of speculative accuracy the age of the universe, missing the mark only by two billion years as per modern estimates. Indian Rishis stated that the universe was 15.5 billion years old whereas modern estimates held it at 15.6 billion years old, now modified to 13.5 billion years. The Bible holds the age of the universe at 6000 years only. Susruta and Charak were ancient surgeons, performing eye operations and others too among which even plastic surgery figured. Ayurveda is the famous instance of Vedic medicine. Pingala, Aryabhatta, Bhaskaracharya, Shreedharacharya, Brahmagupta, Varahamihira, Kshana, Leelavati, Ubhaybharati, Hemchandra and a host of others have contributed seminally to the fields of mathematics and astronomy. Our entire early civilisation was built on indigenously developed science whose earliest and finest fruition was the urban civilisation of the Indus Valley. Agriculture and industry both required science and India was independently proficient in both.

However, you are right that there came a time when, realising the futility of this objective search for ultimate truth, India reversed direction unto the sole search of the laws of the internal world and, so, abandoned further progression into comprehending the external universe. However, even here India developed the science of psychology, philology and logic to an astonishing degree. The Sanskrit language stands testimony to this scientific development. In modern computer systems it is today accepted as the ideal language for data programming. 

One can write reams on Indian objective and subjective science alone, leave aside her many marvellous achievements in so many other disciplines of academic excellence.

And I just remembered. What about music and dance? The intricate systems of musical scales (ragas) and of beats (talas), of tempo (layakari), the dance forms, all of which were at once artistic as scientific. Bharata's Natyashastra for instance. The Sun dials that marked the movement of time by the casting of shadows. Metallurgy is another one. The famous iron pillar at Qut'b Minar which for millenia has been resistive to rusting remains a wonder even today. Rocket science was developed in India first in Mysore during Tipu Sultan's reign. Indian swords were made of an alloy of iron which was so far ahead of the iron made in the West that British soldiers after killing Indian soldiers in combat rushed for the swords of the slain. Like this and so much more that I cannot instantly recall forms the body of India's contribution to world science alone, leave aside other fields.

In conclusion just reflect where the world would have been had it not been for the Indians inventing ingeniously the number system to the base ten and the decimal system thereof.

In physics the theory of the oscillating universe with its endless series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches are easily traceable in the discussions of macrocosm and microcosm in our scriptures. You can refer to Swami Vivekananda's lecture on the subject in his Complete Works. Endless, simply endless are the wonders of Indian objective science itself where philosophy, art, mathematics and physics have blended to produce an astonishing array of cultural marvels.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : Aryabhatta, the great Indian mathematician.