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(Excerpt from "Advancements of Ancient India's
Vedic Culture")
By Stephen Knapp
1. When we talk about the planet’s earliest civilization,
we are talking about the world's earliest sophisticated society after the last
ice age. This means that according to the Vedic time tables, various forms of
civilization have been existing for millions of years. But the first record of
an organized and developed society was the Vedic culture that arose inwith the Indus Sarasvati civilization, and then spread out from there in
all directions around the ancient India world.
2. Often times we see that students, even in India’s
academic system, have not studied or encountered the contributions that were
made by early civilization in the area of ancient India. Not only are they not
aware of such developments that had been given from India, but there is often a
lack of such knowledge to be studied. Therefore, this book is to help fill that
gap of information and to show how this area of the world, indeed, had a most
advanced civilization, but was also where many of society's advancements
originated. 3. It can be found that what became the area of India and its Vedic culture was way ahead of its time. This can be noticed in such things as industry, metallurgy, science, textiles, medicine, surgery, mathematics, and, of course, philosophy and spirituality. In fact, we can see the roots of these sciences and metaphysics in many areas of the world that can be traced back to its Indian or Vedic origins.
4. Furthermore, we often do not know of all the progress that had been made during the ancient times of India, which used to be called Bharatvarsha or Aryavrata. Nor do most people know all that ancient India gave to the world. So let us take a serious look at this.
5. From the Preface of Indian Tradition of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, the authors relate most accurately: "Hindus are a race who have dwelled on the most fundamental questions about life (& death), about nature and its origins. The bold questioning by Hindus gave birth to theories, axioms, principles and a unique approach to and a way of life. The approach to life and the way of life led to the evolution of one of the most ancient and grand cultures on the face of the earth. The spiritual aspects of Hindu culture are more commonly known, the fact that science, technology and industry were a part of their culture is little known.
6. "For historical reasons, the achievements of ancient Hindus in various fields of science and technology are not popularly known to Indians. The recent research by Sri Dharmpal and others has shown that the colonial invaders and the rulers had a vested interest in distorting and destroying the information regarding all positive aspects of Hindu culture. The conventional understanding today is that Hindus were more concerned about rituals, about spirituality, and the world above or the world after death. That Hindus were an equally materialistic people, that India was the industrial workshop of the world till the end of 18th century, that Hindus had taken up basic questions of the principles of astronomy, fundamental particles, origins of the universe, applied psychiatry and so on, are not well documented and not popularly known. That ancient Hindus had highly evolved technologies in textile engineering, ceramics, printing, weaponry, climatology and meteorology, architecture, medicine and surgery, metallurgy, agriculture and agricultural engineering, civil engineering, town planning, and similar other fields is known only to a few scholars even today. There are about 44 known ancient and medieval Sanskrit texts on a technical subject such as chemistry alone. The information about the science and technological heritage of India is embedded in the scriptures, the epics and in several of the technical texts. The information needs to be taken out of these and presented.
7. "Facts like Hindus had the knowledge that the sun is the center of the solar system, about the geography of the earth, the way the plants produce food, the way blood circulates in the body, the science of abstract mathematics and numbers, the principles of health, medicine and surgery and so on at a time in history when the rest of the world did not know how to think, talk and write has to be exposed to people. This can draw the attention of these communities, especially the future generation towards ‘ideas’ that are essentially Indian.
8. "There are several published works on the history of India. Such works are written by Indian scholars as well as western researchers in oriental and Indological studies. Many of these works are highly scholastic and are not amenable to the common man. There is a need to make the knowledge of science heritage of India known to one and all. Further, there is need for studying scriptures, epics, and other ancient literature (in Sanskrit as well as other regional languages) to unearth the wealth of knowledge of our ancestors. Reports of such studies also need to be published continuously."
9. This is the goal of the present volume, to easily and simply convey this knowledge for the benefit of everyone, for the correct view of history, and to give credit where credit is due.
THE ADVANCED NATURE OF ANCIENT INDIAN SCIENCES
10. Achievements in the sciences of ancient India were known
all over the world, even in Arabia, China, Spain, and Greece, countries in
which medieval scholars acknowledged their indebtedness to India. For example,
the Arab scholar Sa'id ibn Ahmad al-Andalusi (1029–1070) wrote in his history
on science, called Tabaqat-al'umam:
12. "The Indians, known to all nations for many
centuries, are the metal [essence] of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity.
They are people of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and
rare inventions. ...To their credit the Indians have made great strides in the
study of numbers and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and
reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars
[astronomy]. ...After all that they have surpassed all other people in their
knowledge of medical sciences..."
13. Furthermore, "Whether it was astronomy, mathematics
(specially geometry), medicine or metallurgy, each was a pragmatic contribution
to the general Hindu ethos, viz., Man in Nature, Man in harmony with Nature,
and not Man and Nature or Man Against Nature, that characterizes modern
science. The Hindu approach to nature was holistic, often alluding to the
terrestrial-celestial correspondence and human-divine relationship. Hindu and
scientific and technological developments were an integral part of this
attitude that was assiduously fostered in the ancient period." 14. In his article, Indic Mathematics: India and the Scientific Revolution, Dr. David Grey lists some of the most important developments in the history of mathematics that took place in India, summarizing the contributions of luminaries such as Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Mahavira, Bhaskara, and Madhava. He concludes by asserting, "the role played by India in the development (of the scientific revolution in Europe) is no mere footnote, easily and inconsequentially swept under the rug of Eurocentric bias. To do so is to distort history, and to deny India one of its greatest contributions to world civilizations."
15. Lin Yutang, Chinese scholar and author, also wrote that: "India was China's teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics..." and so forth. Francois Voltaire also stated: "... everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges."
16. Referring to the above quotes, David Osborn concludes thus: "From these statements we see that many renowned intellectuals believed that the Vedas provided the origin of scientific thought."
17. The Syrian astronomer / monk Severus Sebokhy (writing CE 662), as expressed by A. L. Basham in his book The Wonder That Was India (p. 6), explained, "I shall now speak of the knowledge of the Hindus... Of their subtle discoveries in the science of astronomy – discoveries even more ingenious than those of the Greeks and Babylonians – of their rational system of mathematics, or of their method of calculation which no words can praise strongly enough – I mean the system using nine symbols. If these things were known by the people who think that they alone have mastered the sciences because they speak Greek, they would perhaps be convinced, though a little late in the day, that other folk, not only Greeks, but men of a different tongue, know something as well as they."
18. There have been many scholars, both old and new, who readily agree and point out the progressive nature of the early advancements found in ancient India's Vedic tradition. So let us take a quick overview of some of what was known and developed in earlier times in the Vedic culture of the East.
21. In India in Bondage, Sunderland also quotes Lord Curzon, the British statesman who was viceroy in India from 1899 to 1905, as saying in his address delivered at the great Delhi Durbar in 1901: "Powerful empires existed and flourished here [in India] while Englishmen were still wandering, painted in the woods, while the English colonies were a wilderness and a jungle. India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the universe."
22. Lord Curzon had also stated: "While we [the British] hold onto India, we are a first rate power. If we lose India, we will decline to a third rate power. This is the value of India."
26 French scholar Buffon presented a coherent theory that
scholars of ancient India had preserved the old learning from the creators of
its sciences, arts, and all useful institutions. Voltaire had also suggested
that sciences were more ancient in India than in Egypt. Russian born
philosopher Immanuel Kant placed the origin of mankind in the Himalayas and
stated that our arts like agriculture, numbers, even the game of chess, came
from India.
27. German scholar Friedrich Schlegel also had a high regard
for India, stating that everything of high philosophy or science is of Indian
origin. French scholar and judge Louis Jacolliot, in his Bible in India,
writes: "Astonishing fact! The Hindu Revelation (Vedas) is of all
revelations the only one whose ideas are in perfect harmony with modern
science, as it proclaims the slow and gradual formation of the world." Of
course, we can see the videos in which the astrophysicist Carl Sagan says,
"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths, dedicated
to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed, an infinite
number of deaths and births. It is the only religion in which the time scales
correspond to those of modern cosmology."35. For example, archeologists have found 7000-year-old rock paintings in the Aravalli mountain range near Benari dam in the Kotputli area of Jaipur district in Rajasthan in 1991. These paintings are adjacent to the site of the famous Indus Valley Civilization. Such 7000-year-old (5000 BCE) paintings were also found in Braham Kund Ki Dungari and Budhi Jeengore in Rajasthan. This discovery makes the Vedic civilization more ancient than the Egyptian and Greek and Mesopotamian civilizations. This also negates the Aryan Invasion Theory, the hypothesis that the Vedic Aryans were not indigenous, but established themselves after invading the area, which is completely wrong as we will show later in the book.
CONCLUSION
THE GREATNESS OF INDIA AND VEDIC CULTURE
44. History certainly proves that India was also one of the
wealthiest countries on the planet in its earlier days. Not only did she have
vast treasures of knowledge and developments, but ancient India also had great
wealth, such as sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and other gems, along with
sunny climate, great fertility, and much more that was exported to various
parts of the world, but the deep levels of knowledge and development was
another of her greatest assets. For this reason, the ambition of all conquerors
was to possess the area of India. 50 "Bishop Heber said: 'The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.'
51 "Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. He writes: 'If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people–then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe, and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo.'"
52 Besides all these considerations, Max Muller also once related: "I wished to point out that there was another sphere of intellectual activity in which the Hindu excelled–the meditative and transcendent–and that here we might learn from them some lessons of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ignore or to despise." 11
53 Finally, in what could be a conclusive statement made by a European who had spent many years living and studying the Vedic culture and Sanskrit literature of early India, Max Muller said, "If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow–in some parts a very paradise on earth–I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant–I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life–again I should point to India."
CHAPTER NOTES
1. Prof. A. R. Vasudeva Murthy and Prasun Kumar Mishra,
Indian Tradition of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Samskrita Bharati,
Bangalore, India, August, 1999, pp. i-v.2. Science and Technology in Ancient India, by Editorial Board of Vijnan Bharati, Mumbai, August, 2002, Foreword by B. V. Subbarayappa.
3. Niranjan Shah, Indian Tribune Newspaper, December 8, 2007.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Niranjan Shah, Indian Tribune Newspaper, December 1, 2007.
7. Niranjan Shah, Indian Tribune Newspaper, December 9, 2005.
8. India Tribune, June 1, 1991, Atlanta edition.
9. http://www.ox.ac.uk/images/maincolumn/9440
10. Max Muller, India: What can it teach us?, first published in 1883, published by Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2002, pp. 46-47)
11. Max Muller, India: What can it teach us?, Longmans, Funk & Wagnalls, London, 1999, p. 22)
12. Max Muller, India: What can it teach us?, first published in 1883, published by Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2002, p. 5)
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