Articles
– Research on Hinduism
Commerce
Though the Indians
have practically no hand now in the commerce of the world, yet there was a time
when they were the masters of the seaborne trade of Europe, Asia and Africa.
They built ships, navigated the sea, and held in their hands all the threads of
international commerce, whether carried on overland or by sea.
As their immense wealth was in part the result of their extensive trade with other countries, so were the matchless fertility of the Indian soil and the numberless products of Hindu arts and industries the cause of the enormous development of the commerce of ancient India.
As poet William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote: “And if a boundless plenty be the robe,
Trade is a golden girdle of the globe.”
India, which, according to the writer in the Chamber’s Encyclopedia, “has been celebrated during many ages for its valuable natural productions, its beautiful manufactures and costly merchandise,” was, says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “once the seat of commerce.”
Mrs. Charlotte S Manning says: “The indirect evidence afforded by the presence of Indian products in other countries coincides with the direct testimony of Sanskrit literature to establish the fact that the ancient Hindus were a commercial people.” She concludes: “Enough has now been said to show that the Hindus have ever been a commercial people.”
(source: Ancient and Medieval India – By Charlotte S Manning volume II p. 354)
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says: “The Hindus in their most ancient works of poetry are represented as a commercial people.”
In Sanskrit books, we constantly read of merchants, traders, and men engrossed in commercial pursuits. Manu Smriti, one of the oldest books in the world, lays down laws to govern all commercial disputes having reference to seaborne traffic as well as the inland and overland commerce. Traders and merchants are frequently introduced in the Hindu drama. In Shakuntala we learn of the importance attached to commerce, where it is stated “that a merchant named Dhanvriddhi, who had extensive commerce had been lost at sea and had left a fortune of many millions.” In Nala and Damyanti, too, we meet with similar incidents. Sir William Jones is of the opinion that the Hindus “must have been navigators in the age of Manu, because bottomry (marine insurance) is mentioned in it.” In the Ramayana, the practice of bottomry is distinctly noticed. Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone says: “The Hindus navigated the ocean as early as the age of Manu’s code because we read in it of men well acquainted with sea voyages.
According to Max Dunker, ship-building was known in ancient India about 2000 B.C. It is thus clear that the Hindus navigated the ocean from the earliest times and that they carried on trade on an extensive scale with all the important nations of the Old World.
(source: History of Antiquity – By Max Dunker volume IV).
With Phoenicia the Indians enjoyed trade from the earliest times. In the tenth century B.C., Soloman of Israel and Hiram of Tyre sent ships to India, whence they carried away ivory, sandalwood, apes, peacocks, gold, silver, precious stones, etc., which they purchased from the tribe of Ophir. Now Ptolemy says there was a country called Abhira at the mouth of the River Indus. This shows that some people called Abhir must have been living there in those days. We find a tribe called the “Abhir” still living in Kathyawar, which must, therefore, be the Ophir tribe mentioned above. Christian Lassen (1800-1876) author of Indische Alterthumskunde vol I p. 354, thinks “Ophir” was a seaport on the south west coast of India. Mrs. Manning says it was situated on the western coast of India.
Among the things sent by the Hindus to Solomon and Hiram were peacocks. Now, these birds were nowhere to be found in those days except in India, where they have existed from the earliest times. “We frequently meet in old Sanskrit poetry with sentences like these: ‘Peacocks unfolding in glittering glory all their green and gold; ‘peacocks dancing in wild glee at the approach of rain;’ peacocks around palaces glittering on the garden walls.’ Ancient sculptures, too show the same delight in peacocks, as may be seen, for instance, in graceful bas-reliefs on the gates of Sanchi or in the panels of an ancient palace in Central India, figured in Colonel Tod’s Rajastathan p. 405. “The word for peacock in Hebrew is universally admitted to be foreign; and Gesenius, Sir Emerson Tennent, and Max Muller appear to agree with Christian Lassen in holding that this word as written in Kings and Chronicles is derived from the Sanskrit language.
With regard to ivory, it was largely used in India, Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Elephants are indigenous in India and Africa, and ivory trade must be either of Indian origin or African. But the elephants were scarcely known to the ancient Egyptians, and C Lassen decides that elephants were neither used nor tamed in ancient Egypt. In ancient India, they were largely used and tamed. All the kings processions and battles have elephants mentioned in them. The elephant is the emblem of royalty and a sign of rank and power. The god Indra, too has his ‘Airawat.’ The Sanskrit name for domestic elephant is ibha, and in the bazaars of India ibha was the name by which the elephant’s tusks were sold. In ancient Egypt, ivory was known by the name of ebu.
It would be interesting to many to learn that “it was in India that the Greeks first became acquainted with sugar.” Sugar bears a name derived from Sanskrit. With the article the name traveled into Arabia and Persia, and thence became established in the languages of Europe.
Samuel Maunder (1785-1849) in his The Treasury of History wrote: “In the reign of Seleucidas, too, there was an active trade between India and Syria.” Indian iron and colored cloths and rich apparels were imported in Babylon and Tyre in ships from India. There were also commercial routes to Phoenicia, through, Persia. Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone says: “The extent of the Indian trade under the first Ptolemies is a well known fact in history.” Vincent Smith observes that in the Book of Genesis, “a caravan of camels loaded with the spices of India and balm and myrrh of Hadramaut.” John Forbes Royle in his book Ancient Hindu Medicine p. 119, observes that myrrh is called bal by the Egyptians, while its Sanskrit name is bola, bearing a resemblance which leaves no doubt as to its Indian manufacture.
Of the products of the loom, silk was more largely imported from India into ancient Rome than either in Egypt or Greece. “It was so alluring the Roman ladies,” says a writer, “that it sold for its weight in gold.” This is confirmed by the elder Pliny, who complained that vast sums of money were annually absorbed by commerce with India. “We are assured on undisputed authority that the Romans remitted annually to India, a sum equivalent to 4,000,000 pounds to pay for their investments, and that in the reign of Ptolemies 125 sails of Indian shipping were at one time lying in the ports whence Egypt, Syria, and Rome itself were supplied with the products of India.”
(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By Colonel James Tod p. 221).
Agarthachides, who lived upwards of 300 years before the time of Periplus, noticed the active commercial intercourse kept up between Yemen and Pattala – a seaport town, in Sindh. Pattala in Sanskrit means a “commercial town.” “which circumstance, if it is true, says Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran “would prove the extreme antiquity of the navigation carried on by the Indus.”
Max Dunker wrote: “Trade existed between the Indians and Sabaens on the coast of south Arabia before the 10th century B.C. – the time according to some when Manu lived. In the days of Alexander, when the Macedonian general, Nearchus, was entering the Persian Gulf, Muscat was pointed out to him as the principal mart for Indian products which were transmitted thence to Assyria.
Egypt was not the only part of Africa with which the Hindus traded in olden days. The eastern coast of Africa called Zanibar and the provinces situated on the Red Sea carried on an extensive trade with ancient India. Myos Hormos, was the chief emporium of Indian commerce on the Red Sea. Of the trade with Zanzibar, Periplus gives us pretty full information. He says: “Moreover, indigenous products such as corn, rice, butter, oil of seasamum, coarse and fine cotton goods, and cane-honey (sugar) are regularly exported from the interior of Ariaka (Konkan), and from Barygaza (Baroucha/Broach) to the opposite coast.”
This trade is also noticed by Arrian, who adds that “this navigation was regularly managed.”
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says, it is a well known fact that the banians or Hindu merchants were in the habit of traversing the oceans and settling in foreign countries. The Eastern countries with which ancient India traded were chiefly China, Trangangetic Peninsula and Australia. Professor Heeran says that “the second direction, which the trade of India took was towards the East, that is, to the Ultra-Gangetic Peninsula, comprising Ava Mallaca, etc. The Hindus themselves were in the habit of constructing the vessels in which they navigated the coast of Coromandel (Cholamandel), and also made voyages to the Ganges and the peninsula beyond it. These ships bore different names according to their sizes.
As their immense wealth was in part the result of their extensive trade with other countries, so were the matchless fertility of the Indian soil and the numberless products of Hindu arts and industries the cause of the enormous development of the commerce of ancient India.
As poet William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote: “And if a boundless plenty be the robe,
Trade is a golden girdle of the globe.”
India, which, according to the writer in the Chamber’s Encyclopedia, “has been celebrated during many ages for its valuable natural productions, its beautiful manufactures and costly merchandise,” was, says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “once the seat of commerce.”
Mrs. Charlotte S Manning says: “The indirect evidence afforded by the presence of Indian products in other countries coincides with the direct testimony of Sanskrit literature to establish the fact that the ancient Hindus were a commercial people.” She concludes: “Enough has now been said to show that the Hindus have ever been a commercial people.”
(source: Ancient and Medieval India – By Charlotte S Manning volume II p. 354)
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says: “The Hindus in their most ancient works of poetry are represented as a commercial people.”
In Sanskrit books, we constantly read of merchants, traders, and men engrossed in commercial pursuits. Manu Smriti, one of the oldest books in the world, lays down laws to govern all commercial disputes having reference to seaborne traffic as well as the inland and overland commerce. Traders and merchants are frequently introduced in the Hindu drama. In Shakuntala we learn of the importance attached to commerce, where it is stated “that a merchant named Dhanvriddhi, who had extensive commerce had been lost at sea and had left a fortune of many millions.” In Nala and Damyanti, too, we meet with similar incidents. Sir William Jones is of the opinion that the Hindus “must have been navigators in the age of Manu, because bottomry (marine insurance) is mentioned in it.” In the Ramayana, the practice of bottomry is distinctly noticed. Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone says: “The Hindus navigated the ocean as early as the age of Manu’s code because we read in it of men well acquainted with sea voyages.
According to Max Dunker, ship-building was known in ancient India about 2000 B.C. It is thus clear that the Hindus navigated the ocean from the earliest times and that they carried on trade on an extensive scale with all the important nations of the Old World.
(source: History of Antiquity – By Max Dunker volume IV).
With Phoenicia the Indians enjoyed trade from the earliest times. In the tenth century B.C., Soloman of Israel and Hiram of Tyre sent ships to India, whence they carried away ivory, sandalwood, apes, peacocks, gold, silver, precious stones, etc., which they purchased from the tribe of Ophir. Now Ptolemy says there was a country called Abhira at the mouth of the River Indus. This shows that some people called Abhir must have been living there in those days. We find a tribe called the “Abhir” still living in Kathyawar, which must, therefore, be the Ophir tribe mentioned above. Christian Lassen (1800-1876) author of Indische Alterthumskunde vol I p. 354, thinks “Ophir” was a seaport on the south west coast of India. Mrs. Manning says it was situated on the western coast of India.
Among the things sent by the Hindus to Solomon and Hiram were peacocks. Now, these birds were nowhere to be found in those days except in India, where they have existed from the earliest times. “We frequently meet in old Sanskrit poetry with sentences like these: ‘Peacocks unfolding in glittering glory all their green and gold; ‘peacocks dancing in wild glee at the approach of rain;’ peacocks around palaces glittering on the garden walls.’ Ancient sculptures, too show the same delight in peacocks, as may be seen, for instance, in graceful bas-reliefs on the gates of Sanchi or in the panels of an ancient palace in Central India, figured in Colonel Tod’s Rajastathan p. 405. “The word for peacock in Hebrew is universally admitted to be foreign; and Gesenius, Sir Emerson Tennent, and Max Muller appear to agree with Christian Lassen in holding that this word as written in Kings and Chronicles is derived from the Sanskrit language.
With regard to ivory, it was largely used in India, Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Elephants are indigenous in India and Africa, and ivory trade must be either of Indian origin or African. But the elephants were scarcely known to the ancient Egyptians, and C Lassen decides that elephants were neither used nor tamed in ancient Egypt. In ancient India, they were largely used and tamed. All the kings processions and battles have elephants mentioned in them. The elephant is the emblem of royalty and a sign of rank and power. The god Indra, too has his ‘Airawat.’ The Sanskrit name for domestic elephant is ibha, and in the bazaars of India ibha was the name by which the elephant’s tusks were sold. In ancient Egypt, ivory was known by the name of ebu.
It would be interesting to many to learn that “it was in India that the Greeks first became acquainted with sugar.” Sugar bears a name derived from Sanskrit. With the article the name traveled into Arabia and Persia, and thence became established in the languages of Europe.
Samuel Maunder (1785-1849) in his The Treasury of History wrote: “In the reign of Seleucidas, too, there was an active trade between India and Syria.” Indian iron and colored cloths and rich apparels were imported in Babylon and Tyre in ships from India. There were also commercial routes to Phoenicia, through, Persia. Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone says: “The extent of the Indian trade under the first Ptolemies is a well known fact in history.” Vincent Smith observes that in the Book of Genesis, “a caravan of camels loaded with the spices of India and balm and myrrh of Hadramaut.” John Forbes Royle in his book Ancient Hindu Medicine p. 119, observes that myrrh is called bal by the Egyptians, while its Sanskrit name is bola, bearing a resemblance which leaves no doubt as to its Indian manufacture.
Of the products of the loom, silk was more largely imported from India into ancient Rome than either in Egypt or Greece. “It was so alluring the Roman ladies,” says a writer, “that it sold for its weight in gold.” This is confirmed by the elder Pliny, who complained that vast sums of money were annually absorbed by commerce with India. “We are assured on undisputed authority that the Romans remitted annually to India, a sum equivalent to 4,000,000 pounds to pay for their investments, and that in the reign of Ptolemies 125 sails of Indian shipping were at one time lying in the ports whence Egypt, Syria, and Rome itself were supplied with the products of India.”
(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By Colonel James Tod p. 221).
Agarthachides, who lived upwards of 300 years before the time of Periplus, noticed the active commercial intercourse kept up between Yemen and Pattala – a seaport town, in Sindh. Pattala in Sanskrit means a “commercial town.” “which circumstance, if it is true, says Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran “would prove the extreme antiquity of the navigation carried on by the Indus.”
Max Dunker wrote: “Trade existed between the Indians and Sabaens on the coast of south Arabia before the 10th century B.C. – the time according to some when Manu lived. In the days of Alexander, when the Macedonian general, Nearchus, was entering the Persian Gulf, Muscat was pointed out to him as the principal mart for Indian products which were transmitted thence to Assyria.
Egypt was not the only part of Africa with which the Hindus traded in olden days. The eastern coast of Africa called Zanibar and the provinces situated on the Red Sea carried on an extensive trade with ancient India. Myos Hormos, was the chief emporium of Indian commerce on the Red Sea. Of the trade with Zanzibar, Periplus gives us pretty full information. He says: “Moreover, indigenous products such as corn, rice, butter, oil of seasamum, coarse and fine cotton goods, and cane-honey (sugar) are regularly exported from the interior of Ariaka (Konkan), and from Barygaza (Baroucha/Broach) to the opposite coast.”
This trade is also noticed by Arrian, who adds that “this navigation was regularly managed.”
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says, it is a well known fact that the banians or Hindu merchants were in the habit of traversing the oceans and settling in foreign countries. The Eastern countries with which ancient India traded were chiefly China, Trangangetic Peninsula and Australia. Professor Heeran says that “the second direction, which the trade of India took was towards the East, that is, to the Ultra-Gangetic Peninsula, comprising Ava Mallaca, etc. The Hindus themselves were in the habit of constructing the vessels in which they navigated the coast of Coromandel (Cholamandel), and also made voyages to the Ganges and the peninsula beyond it. These ships bore different names according to their sizes.
Land Trade
As regards the trade with central and northern Asia, we are told that “the Indians make expeditions for commercial purposes into the golden desert Ideste, desert of Cobi, in armed companies of a thousand or two thousand men. But, according to a report, they do not return home for three or four years.” The Takhti Suleman, or the stone tower mentioned by Ptolemy and Ctesias, was the starting point for Hindu merchants who went to China.
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran says: “By means of this building it is easy to determine the particular route as well as the length of time employed by the Hindu merchants in their journey to China. If we assume Cabul, or rather Bactria, as their place of departure, the expedition would take a north-easterly direction as far as the forty-first degree of the north latitude. It would then have to ascend the mountains, and so arrive at the stone tower through the defile of Hoshan, or Owsh. From thence the route led by Cashgar, beyond the mountains to the borders of the great desert of Cobi, which it traversed probably through Khotan and Aksu (the Casia and Auxazia of Ptolemy). From these ancient towns the road lay through Koshotei to Se-chow, on the frontiers of China, and thence to Pekin, a place of great antiquity. The whole distance amounts to upwards of 2,500 miles.”
Foreign trade of a nation presupposes development of its internal trade. Specially is this true of a large country like India, with its varied products, vast population and high civilization.
Christian Lassen (1800-1876) of Paris considers it remarkable that the Hindus themselves discovered the rich, luxurious character of India’s products; many of them are produced in other countries, but remained unnoticed until sought for by foreigners, where as the most ancient Hindus had a keen enjoyment in articles of taste and luxury. Rajas and other rich people delighted in sagacious elephants, swift horses, splendid peacocks, golden decorations, exquisite perfumes, pungent peppers, ivory, pearls, gems, gold etc. and consequently caravans were in continued requisition to carry down these and innumerable other matters between the north and the south, and the west and the east of their vast and varied country. These caravans, were met at border stations and about ports by western caravans or ships bound to or from Tyre and Egypt or to or from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.”
Strabo, Plutarch, and Apollodoras agree in their statements that India had considerable trade roads in all directions, with mile stones, and was provided with inns for travelers. And these “roads” says Heeran, “were planted with trees and flowers.”
Active internal commerce was carried on in northern India along the course of the Ganges. Here was the royal highway extending from Taxila on the Indus to Patliputra (in Bihar) and which was 10,000 stadia in length, according to Strabo.
Periplus, too, after saying that “the Ganges and its tributary streams were the grand commercial routes of northern India,” adds that the “rivers of the Southern Peninsula also were navigated.”
According to Arrian, the commercial intercourse between the eastern and western coasts were carried on in country built ships. Periplus again says that “in Dachhanabades (Dakshina Patha in Sanskrit, or the Deccan) there are two very distinguished and celebrated marts, named Tagara and Pluthama, whence merchandise was bought down to Barygaza (Barauch). Ozene (Ujjain) was one of the chief marts for internal traffic, and supplied the neighboring country with all kinds of merchandise.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says: “It (India) exported its most valuable produce, its diamonds, its aromatics, its silks, and its costly manufactures. The country, which abounded in those expensive luxuries, was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches, and every romantic tale of its felicity and glory was readily believed. In the Middle Ages, an extensive commerce with India was still maintained through the ports of Egypt and the Red Sea; and its precious produce, imported into Europe by the merchants of Venice, confirmed the popular opinion of its high refinement and its vast wealth.”
(source: Hindu Superiority – By Har Bilas Sarda p 405-426). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
Wealth
If
history proves anything, it proves that in ancient times, India was the richest
country in the world. The fact that she has always been the cynosure of all
eyes, Asiatic or European, that people of less favored climes have always cast
longing looks on her glittering treasures, and that the ambition of all
conquerors has been to possess India, prove that she has been reputed to be the
richest country in the world. Her sunny climate, unrivalled fertility,
matchless mineral resources and world-wide exports in ancient times helped to
accumulate in her bosom the wealth which made her the happy hunting grounds of
adventurers and conquerors.
Strabo (c. 63 BC-3 BC) Greek historian in his book Geography II, 5, 12. Describing the location of India and calls it “the greatest of all nations and the happiest in lot.”
(source: India and World Civilization By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. p. 385).
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says: “India has been celebrated even in the earliest times for her riches.” The wealth, splendor and prosperity of India had made a strong impression on the mind of Alexander the Great, and that when he left Persia for India, he told his army that they were starting for that “Golden India” where there was endless wealth, and that what they had seen in Persia was as nothing compared to the riches of India. Chamber’s Encyclopedia says” “India has been celebrated during many ages for its wealth.” The writer of the article “Hindustan” in the Encyclopedia Britannica remarks that India “was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches.” Milton voiced the popular belief when he sang of the wealth of India:
“High on a throne of royal state which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind (India)
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric, pearl and gold.”
To Shake the Pagoda Tree
William Finch who came to India in 1608-11, first described Hindu temples as "pagods, which are stone images of monstrous men feareful to behold. He mentioned the temples in Ajmer, "three faire Pagodes richly wrought with inlayd works, adorned richly with jewels. Domingo Paes has left a valuable account of the great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar. He saw outside the city very beautiful pagodas, the chief among them was the temple of Vitthalasvamin which was begun by Krsnadeva Raya. Edward Terry, the chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, King James's emissary described the temple of Nagarkot as 'most richly set forth, both scaled and paved with plate of pure gold." The wealth of the temples stirred Jean Thevenot imagination and he wrote about the temples of Benares and Puri that 'nothing can be more magnificent than these Pagodes...by reason of the quantity of gold and many jewels, wherewith they are adorned."
GDP in 1500s.
For India 's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the company lay at the root of the oppression that he had fought against. "The corruption, venality, nepotism, violence and greed of money of these early generations of British rule in India ", Nehru thundered in The Discovery of India, "is something which passes comprehension". Looking back at the company's conquest of India , Nehru noted "it is significant that one of the Hindustani words which has become part of the English language is loot".
Most foreigners came to India in search of her fabulous wealth. No traveler found India poor until the nineteenth century, but foreign merchants and adventurers sought her shores for the almost fabulous wealth, which they could there obtain.
'To shake the pagoda tree' became a phrase, somewhat similar to our modern expression 'to strike oil' or to get rich quick.
(source: Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art - By Partha Mitter p. 1 - 45).
An idea of the immense wealth of India could be gathered from the fact that when Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi destroyed the far famed temple of Somnath he found such immense riches and astonishing diamonds cooped up in the single “Idol of Shiva” that it was found quite impossible to calculate the value of that booty.
Gold, the emblem of wealth, was first found in India. India was the home of diamonds and other precious stones in ancient times. Periplus says that “the Greeks used to purchase pieces of gold from the Indians.” Nelkynda or Neliceram, a port near Calicut on the Malabar Coast, is said to have been the only market for pearls in the world in ancient times. The pearls presented by Julius Ceasar to Servilia, the mother of Brutus, as well as the famous pearl earring of Cleopatra, were obtained from India. The most famous diamonds in the world are natives of India. Though the Pitt (or the Regent as it is now called) weights 136 carats and is larger in size, yet the Kohinoor, weighing only 106 carats, hallowed by ages of romantic history, is the most famous diamond in the world. Both were taken from India by the British. But the mythological and historical value of the Kohinoor is untold.
The Priceless Peacock Throne
What is the costliest single treasure made in the last 1,000 years? Wrought out of 1150 kg of gold and 230 kg of precious stones, conservatively in 1999 the throne would be valued at $804 million or nearly Rs 4.5 billion. In fact when made, it cost twice as much as the Tajmahal. On the top of each pillar there were to be two peacocks, thick-set with gems and between each two peacocks a tree set with rubies and diamonds, emeralds and pearls. The ascent was to consist of three steps set with jewels of fine water". Of the 11 jewelled recesses formed around it for cushions, the middle one was intended for the seat it for Emperor. Among the historical diamonds decorating it were the famous Kohinoor (186 carats). It was one of the most splendiferous thrones ever made. it was encrusted with 26,733 precious stones! Ascended by silver steps, it was sheeted with gold encrusted with emeralds and rubies. Its back was a peacock's tail of sapphires, pearls and turquoises. The throne was completed after seven years of unceasing labour by the best craftsmen of the empire and was valued at 10 million rupees or Rs 500 crore today.
(source: As priceless as the Peacock Throne - By K. R. N. Swamy - tribuneindia.com). For more on the Kohinoor diamond refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII.
It was the wealth of India that impelled the rude Arabs to invade the country, and led the half civilized Tartans to overrun it. It was the wealth of India that attracted Nadir Shah, the Portuguese and then the British.
(source: Hindu Superiority – By Har Bilas Sarda p 427 - 430). For more refer to chapters on Islamic Onslaught and European Imperialism
India Was Once the Richest Country in the World
Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland (1842-1936) American born, former President of the India Information Bureau of America and Editor of Young India (New York). Author of India, America and World Brotherhood, and Causes of Famine in India. He has written glowingly about India's culture:
"Another cause of India 's impoverishment is the destruction of her manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of the world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the British to her shores. "
"The source of her wealth was largely her splendid manufactures. Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls, muslins of Dacca, brocades of Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind, jewelry, metal work, lapidary work, were famed not only all over Asia but in all the leading markets of Northern Africa and of Europe. What has become of those manufactures? For the most part they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and towns of India in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them have been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the already too scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the explanation? Great Britain wanted India 's markets. She could not find entrance for British manufactures so long as India was supplied with manufactures of her own. So those of India must be sacrificed. England had all power in her hands, and so she proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined the manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods. India would have protected herself if she had been able, by enacting tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no power, she was at the mercy of her conqueror."
(source: The New Nationalist Movement in India - By Jabez T Sutherland - theatlantic.com). Refer to European Imperialism
According to Economist Angus Maddison (1926 - ) in The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, the region that today comprises the Indian subcontinent held the largest share of the world's gross domestic product until the beginning of the 16th century, when it was rivaled by China, and then again throughout most of the 18th century.
At the end of the 16th century, India's great wealth sustained a population of more than one hundred million people.
In "India, the Silicon Jewel of the East" (Digital Journal, May 13, 2004), Paul William Roberts states, "There was an abundance of arable land, and the state of Indian agriculture compared favorably with any of the Western European countries. Right down to the subsistence-oriented peasant, everyone saw a good return on land and labor. There was a large and vigorous skilled workforce turning out not just cotton but luxury items for the barons, courts and ruling classes. Consequently, the economy produced a fabulous financial surplus."
From the early 18th century until the beginnings of the 19th century, when India enjoyed a 24.4 % share of the world's gross domestic product (see table) economic historian Paul Bairoch conforms, the region enjoyed a 25 % share of the global trade in textiles. It was the world's leading manufacturer of handicrafts and handloom textiles.
Bairoch writes, "More important, there was a large commercialized sector with a highly sophisticated market and credit structure, manned by a skilful and in many instances very wealthy commercial class."
Paul William Roberts adds, "Methods of production and of industrial and commercial organization could stand comparison with those in vogue in any other parts of the world. India had developed an indigenous banking system. Merchant capital had emerged with an elaborate network of agents, brokers and middlemen. Its bills of exchange were honored in all the major cities of Asia."
Gross Domestic Product in Millions of Dollars
Year
1000 1500 1600 1700
India
33.8 60.5 74.3 90.8
China 26.6 61.8 96.0 82.8
Western Europe 10.2 44.3 66.0 83.4
World Total 116.8 247.1 329.4 371.4
Maddison studied numerous sources and derived historical world gross domestic product (GDP) totals by assembling evidence on changes in population, retaining the 1990 international dollar as the temporal and spatial anchor in the estimation of movements in GDP and per capita GDP, and filling holes in the evidence with proxy estimates.
(source: Hinduism Today - April/May/June 2005 p. 15). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor.
Strabo (c. 63 BC-3 BC) Greek historian in his book Geography II, 5, 12. Describing the location of India and calls it “the greatest of all nations and the happiest in lot.”
(source: India and World Civilization By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. p. 385).
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says: “India has been celebrated even in the earliest times for her riches.” The wealth, splendor and prosperity of India had made a strong impression on the mind of Alexander the Great, and that when he left Persia for India, he told his army that they were starting for that “Golden India” where there was endless wealth, and that what they had seen in Persia was as nothing compared to the riches of India. Chamber’s Encyclopedia says” “India has been celebrated during many ages for its wealth.” The writer of the article “Hindustan” in the Encyclopedia Britannica remarks that India “was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches.” Milton voiced the popular belief when he sang of the wealth of India:
“High on a throne of royal state which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind (India)
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric, pearl and gold.”
To Shake the Pagoda Tree
William Finch who came to India in 1608-11, first described Hindu temples as "pagods, which are stone images of monstrous men feareful to behold. He mentioned the temples in Ajmer, "three faire Pagodes richly wrought with inlayd works, adorned richly with jewels. Domingo Paes has left a valuable account of the great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar. He saw outside the city very beautiful pagodas, the chief among them was the temple of Vitthalasvamin which was begun by Krsnadeva Raya. Edward Terry, the chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, King James's emissary described the temple of Nagarkot as 'most richly set forth, both scaled and paved with plate of pure gold." The wealth of the temples stirred Jean Thevenot imagination and he wrote about the temples of Benares and Puri that 'nothing can be more magnificent than these Pagodes...by reason of the quantity of gold and many jewels, wherewith they are adorned."
GDP in 1500s.
For India 's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the company lay at the root of the oppression that he had fought against. "The corruption, venality, nepotism, violence and greed of money of these early generations of British rule in India ", Nehru thundered in The Discovery of India, "is something which passes comprehension". Looking back at the company's conquest of India , Nehru noted "it is significant that one of the Hindustani words which has become part of the English language is loot".
Most foreigners came to India in search of her fabulous wealth. No traveler found India poor until the nineteenth century, but foreign merchants and adventurers sought her shores for the almost fabulous wealth, which they could there obtain.
'To shake the pagoda tree' became a phrase, somewhat similar to our modern expression 'to strike oil' or to get rich quick.
(source: Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art - By Partha Mitter p. 1 - 45).
An idea of the immense wealth of India could be gathered from the fact that when Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi destroyed the far famed temple of Somnath he found such immense riches and astonishing diamonds cooped up in the single “Idol of Shiva” that it was found quite impossible to calculate the value of that booty.
Gold, the emblem of wealth, was first found in India. India was the home of diamonds and other precious stones in ancient times. Periplus says that “the Greeks used to purchase pieces of gold from the Indians.” Nelkynda or Neliceram, a port near Calicut on the Malabar Coast, is said to have been the only market for pearls in the world in ancient times. The pearls presented by Julius Ceasar to Servilia, the mother of Brutus, as well as the famous pearl earring of Cleopatra, were obtained from India. The most famous diamonds in the world are natives of India. Though the Pitt (or the Regent as it is now called) weights 136 carats and is larger in size, yet the Kohinoor, weighing only 106 carats, hallowed by ages of romantic history, is the most famous diamond in the world. Both were taken from India by the British. But the mythological and historical value of the Kohinoor is untold.
The Priceless Peacock Throne
What is the costliest single treasure made in the last 1,000 years? Wrought out of 1150 kg of gold and 230 kg of precious stones, conservatively in 1999 the throne would be valued at $804 million or nearly Rs 4.5 billion. In fact when made, it cost twice as much as the Tajmahal. On the top of each pillar there were to be two peacocks, thick-set with gems and between each two peacocks a tree set with rubies and diamonds, emeralds and pearls. The ascent was to consist of three steps set with jewels of fine water". Of the 11 jewelled recesses formed around it for cushions, the middle one was intended for the seat it for Emperor. Among the historical diamonds decorating it were the famous Kohinoor (186 carats). It was one of the most splendiferous thrones ever made. it was encrusted with 26,733 precious stones! Ascended by silver steps, it was sheeted with gold encrusted with emeralds and rubies. Its back was a peacock's tail of sapphires, pearls and turquoises. The throne was completed after seven years of unceasing labour by the best craftsmen of the empire and was valued at 10 million rupees or Rs 500 crore today.
(source: As priceless as the Peacock Throne - By K. R. N. Swamy - tribuneindia.com). For more on the Kohinoor diamond refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII.
It was the wealth of India that impelled the rude Arabs to invade the country, and led the half civilized Tartans to overrun it. It was the wealth of India that attracted Nadir Shah, the Portuguese and then the British.
(source: Hindu Superiority – By Har Bilas Sarda p 427 - 430). For more refer to chapters on Islamic Onslaught and European Imperialism
India Was Once the Richest Country in the World
Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland (1842-1936) American born, former President of the India Information Bureau of America and Editor of Young India (New York). Author of India, America and World Brotherhood, and Causes of Famine in India. He has written glowingly about India's culture:
"Another cause of India 's impoverishment is the destruction of her manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of the world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the British to her shores. "
"The source of her wealth was largely her splendid manufactures. Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls, muslins of Dacca, brocades of Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind, jewelry, metal work, lapidary work, were famed not only all over Asia but in all the leading markets of Northern Africa and of Europe. What has become of those manufactures? For the most part they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and towns of India in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them have been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the already too scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the explanation? Great Britain wanted India 's markets. She could not find entrance for British manufactures so long as India was supplied with manufactures of her own. So those of India must be sacrificed. England had all power in her hands, and so she proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined the manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods. India would have protected herself if she had been able, by enacting tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no power, she was at the mercy of her conqueror."
(source: The New Nationalist Movement in India - By Jabez T Sutherland - theatlantic.com). Refer to European Imperialism
According to Economist Angus Maddison (1926 - ) in The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, the region that today comprises the Indian subcontinent held the largest share of the world's gross domestic product until the beginning of the 16th century, when it was rivaled by China, and then again throughout most of the 18th century.
At the end of the 16th century, India's great wealth sustained a population of more than one hundred million people.
In "India, the Silicon Jewel of the East" (Digital Journal, May 13, 2004), Paul William Roberts states, "There was an abundance of arable land, and the state of Indian agriculture compared favorably with any of the Western European countries. Right down to the subsistence-oriented peasant, everyone saw a good return on land and labor. There was a large and vigorous skilled workforce turning out not just cotton but luxury items for the barons, courts and ruling classes. Consequently, the economy produced a fabulous financial surplus."
From the early 18th century until the beginnings of the 19th century, when India enjoyed a 24.4 % share of the world's gross domestic product (see table) economic historian Paul Bairoch conforms, the region enjoyed a 25 % share of the global trade in textiles. It was the world's leading manufacturer of handicrafts and handloom textiles.
Bairoch writes, "More important, there was a large commercialized sector with a highly sophisticated market and credit structure, manned by a skilful and in many instances very wealthy commercial class."
Paul William Roberts adds, "Methods of production and of industrial and commercial organization could stand comparison with those in vogue in any other parts of the world. India had developed an indigenous banking system. Merchant capital had emerged with an elaborate network of agents, brokers and middlemen. Its bills of exchange were honored in all the major cities of Asia."
Gross Domestic Product in Millions of Dollars
Year
1000 1500 1600 1700
India
33.8 60.5 74.3 90.8
China 26.6 61.8 96.0 82.8
Western Europe 10.2 44.3 66.0 83.4
World Total 116.8 247.1 329.4 371.4
Maddison studied numerous sources and derived historical world gross domestic product (GDP) totals by assembling evidence on changes in population, retaining the 1990 international dollar as the temporal and spatial anchor in the estimation of movements in GDP and per capita GDP, and filling holes in the evidence with proxy estimates.
(source: Hinduism Today - April/May/June 2005 p. 15). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor.
Medical
Science
The science of
medicine, like other sciences, was carried to a very high degree of perfection
by the ancient Hindus. Their great power of observation, generalization and
analysis, combined with patient labor in a country of boundless resources,
whose fertility for herbs and plants is most remarkable, place them in an
exceptionally favorable position to prosecute their study of this great
science.
Lord Ampthill, British Governor, (February 1905) said at Madras: "Now we are beginning to find out that the Hindu Sashtras also contain a Sanitary Code no less correct in principle, and that the great law-giver, Manu, was one of the greatest sanitary reformers the world has ever seen!"
Sir William Jones (1746-1794) came to India as a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta. He said with prophetic warning " Infinite advantage may be derived by Europeans from the various medical books in Sanskrit, which contain the names and descriptions of Indian plants and minerals, with their uses, discovered by experience, in curing disorders."
(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p.21).
Horace Hyman Wilson (1786-1860) says: "The Ancients attained a thoroughly a proficiency in medicine and surgery as any people whose acquaintance are recorded. This might be expected, because their patient attention and natural shrewdness would render them excellent observers, whilst the extent and fertility of their native country would furnish them with many valuable drugs and medicaments. Their diagnosis is said, in consequence, to define and distinguish symptoms with accuracy, and their Materia Medica is most voluminous."
(source: Wilson's Works, Volume III, p. 269.)
Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) writes: "The number of medicinal works and authors is extraordinarily large."
(source: Indian Literature - Albrecht Weber p. 269).
Medicine appears to have been the oldest Indian science, its roots going back to Yoga practices, which stress a holistic approach to health, based primarily on proper diet and exercise. Ancient Indian texts on physiology, identified three body "humours" wind, gall, and mucus - with which are associated the sattva, (true or good), rajas (strong), and tamas, (dark or evil) "strands" of behavior, as primary causal factors in determining good or ill health. Ayurveda focused on longevity, honey and garlic were often prescribed. A wide variety of herbs were listed in ancient India's pharmacopoeia. Some of these medicinal herbs or plant oil have been indeed proved to be cures for specific diseases. Oil from the bark of chaulmugra trees remains the most effective treatment for leprosy. India's oldest medical texts were far superior to most subsequent works in the field.
Anatomy and physiology, like some aspects of chemistry, were by-products of medicine. As far back as the sixth century B.C. Indian physicians described ligaments, sutures, lymphatics, nerve plexus, facia, adipoe and vascular tissues, mucous and synovial membrances, and many more muscles than any modern cadaver is able to show. They understood remarkably well the process of digestion - the different functions of the gastric juices, the conversion of chyme, into chyle, and of this into blood.
Anticipating Weismann by 2400 years Atreya (ca 500 B.C.) held that the parental seed is independent of the parent's body, and contains in itself, in miniature, the whole parental organism. Examination for virility was recomended as a prerequisite for marriage in men; and the Code of Manu warned against marrying mates affected with tuberculosis, epilepsy, leprosy, chronic dysepsia, piles, or loquacity. Birth control in the latest theological fashion was suggested by the Indian medical schools of 500 B.C. in the theory that during the twelve days of the menstrual cycle impregnation is impossible. Foetal development was described with considerable accuracy; it was noted that the sex of the foetus remains for a time undetermined, and it was claimed that in some cases the sex of the embryo could be influenced by food or drugs.
The records of Indian medicine begin with the Arthava-veda; here embedded in incantation, is a list of diseases with their symptoms. Appended to the Atharva-veda is the Ayur-Veda ("The Science of Longevity"). In this oldest system of Indian medicine illness is attributed to disorder in one of the four humors (air, water phlegm and blood), and treatment is recommended with herbs. Many of its diagnoses and cures are still used in India, with a success that is sometimes the envy of Western physicians. The Rig-Veda names over a thousand such herbs, and advocates water as the best cure for most diseases. Even in Vedic times, physicians and surgeons lived in houses surrounded by gardens in which they cultivated medicinal plants.
The great name in Indian medicine are those of Sushruta in the fifth century B.C. and Charaka in the second century A.D. Sushrata professor of medicine at the University of Benares, wrote down in Sanskrit a system of diagnosis and therapy whose elements had descended to him from his teacher Dhanwantari. His book dealt at length with surgery, obstetrics, diet, bathing, drugs, infant feeding and hygiene, and medical education. Charaka composed a Samhita (or encyclopedia) of medicine, which is still used in India, and gave to his followers an almost Hippocratic conception of their calling: "Not for self, not for the fulfilment of any earthly desire of gain, but solely for the good of suffering humanity should you treat your patients, and so excel all." Only less illustrious than these are Vaghata (625 A.D.), who prepared a medical compendium in prose and verse, and Bhava Misra (1550 A.D), whose voluminous work on anatomy, physiology and medicine mentioned, a hundred years before Harvey, the circulation of blood, and prescribed mercury for that novel disease, syphilis, which had recently been brought in by the Portuguese as part of Europe's heritage to India."
Medical Instruments of the Hindu Scriptures - Susruta (1000 B.C.E) enumerates 125 sharp and blunt instruments
Surgical instruments - Courtesy: Institute of History and Medicine - Hydrebad, India.
Refer to Indian Institute of Scientific Heritage
Lord Ampthill, British Governor, (February 1905) said at Madras: "Now we are beginning to find out that the Hindu Sashtras also contain a Sanitary Code no less correct in principle, and that the great law-giver, Manu, was one of the greatest sanitary reformers the world has ever seen!"
Sir William Jones (1746-1794) came to India as a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta. He said with prophetic warning " Infinite advantage may be derived by Europeans from the various medical books in Sanskrit, which contain the names and descriptions of Indian plants and minerals, with their uses, discovered by experience, in curing disorders."
(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p.21).
Horace Hyman Wilson (1786-1860) says: "The Ancients attained a thoroughly a proficiency in medicine and surgery as any people whose acquaintance are recorded. This might be expected, because their patient attention and natural shrewdness would render them excellent observers, whilst the extent and fertility of their native country would furnish them with many valuable drugs and medicaments. Their diagnosis is said, in consequence, to define and distinguish symptoms with accuracy, and their Materia Medica is most voluminous."
(source: Wilson's Works, Volume III, p. 269.)
Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) writes: "The number of medicinal works and authors is extraordinarily large."
(source: Indian Literature - Albrecht Weber p. 269).
Medicine appears to have been the oldest Indian science, its roots going back to Yoga practices, which stress a holistic approach to health, based primarily on proper diet and exercise. Ancient Indian texts on physiology, identified three body "humours" wind, gall, and mucus - with which are associated the sattva, (true or good), rajas (strong), and tamas, (dark or evil) "strands" of behavior, as primary causal factors in determining good or ill health. Ayurveda focused on longevity, honey and garlic were often prescribed. A wide variety of herbs were listed in ancient India's pharmacopoeia. Some of these medicinal herbs or plant oil have been indeed proved to be cures for specific diseases. Oil from the bark of chaulmugra trees remains the most effective treatment for leprosy. India's oldest medical texts were far superior to most subsequent works in the field.
Anatomy and physiology, like some aspects of chemistry, were by-products of medicine. As far back as the sixth century B.C. Indian physicians described ligaments, sutures, lymphatics, nerve plexus, facia, adipoe and vascular tissues, mucous and synovial membrances, and many more muscles than any modern cadaver is able to show. They understood remarkably well the process of digestion - the different functions of the gastric juices, the conversion of chyme, into chyle, and of this into blood.
Anticipating Weismann by 2400 years Atreya (ca 500 B.C.) held that the parental seed is independent of the parent's body, and contains in itself, in miniature, the whole parental organism. Examination for virility was recomended as a prerequisite for marriage in men; and the Code of Manu warned against marrying mates affected with tuberculosis, epilepsy, leprosy, chronic dysepsia, piles, or loquacity. Birth control in the latest theological fashion was suggested by the Indian medical schools of 500 B.C. in the theory that during the twelve days of the menstrual cycle impregnation is impossible. Foetal development was described with considerable accuracy; it was noted that the sex of the foetus remains for a time undetermined, and it was claimed that in some cases the sex of the embryo could be influenced by food or drugs.
The records of Indian medicine begin with the Arthava-veda; here embedded in incantation, is a list of diseases with their symptoms. Appended to the Atharva-veda is the Ayur-Veda ("The Science of Longevity"). In this oldest system of Indian medicine illness is attributed to disorder in one of the four humors (air, water phlegm and blood), and treatment is recommended with herbs. Many of its diagnoses and cures are still used in India, with a success that is sometimes the envy of Western physicians. The Rig-Veda names over a thousand such herbs, and advocates water as the best cure for most diseases. Even in Vedic times, physicians and surgeons lived in houses surrounded by gardens in which they cultivated medicinal plants.
The great name in Indian medicine are those of Sushruta in the fifth century B.C. and Charaka in the second century A.D. Sushrata professor of medicine at the University of Benares, wrote down in Sanskrit a system of diagnosis and therapy whose elements had descended to him from his teacher Dhanwantari. His book dealt at length with surgery, obstetrics, diet, bathing, drugs, infant feeding and hygiene, and medical education. Charaka composed a Samhita (or encyclopedia) of medicine, which is still used in India, and gave to his followers an almost Hippocratic conception of their calling: "Not for self, not for the fulfilment of any earthly desire of gain, but solely for the good of suffering humanity should you treat your patients, and so excel all." Only less illustrious than these are Vaghata (625 A.D.), who prepared a medical compendium in prose and verse, and Bhava Misra (1550 A.D), whose voluminous work on anatomy, physiology and medicine mentioned, a hundred years before Harvey, the circulation of blood, and prescribed mercury for that novel disease, syphilis, which had recently been brought in by the Portuguese as part of Europe's heritage to India."
Medical Instruments of the Hindu Scriptures - Susruta (1000 B.C.E) enumerates 125 sharp and blunt instruments
Surgical instruments - Courtesy: Institute of History and Medicine - Hydrebad, India.
Refer to Indian Institute of Scientific Heritage
Sushruta described many surgical operations - cataract, hernia, lithoromy, Caesarian section, etc - and 121 surgical instruments, including lancets, sounds forceps, catheters, and rectal and vaginal speculums. Despite Brahmanical prohibitions he advocated the dissection of dead bodies as indispensable in the training of surgeons. He was the first to graft upon a torn ear portions of skin taken from another part of the body; and from him and his Indian successors rhinoplasty- the surgical reconstruction of the nose-descended into modern medicine. "The ancient Hindus," says F. H. Garrison, "performed almost every major operation except ligation of the arteries." Limbs were amputated, abdominal sections were performed, fractures were set, hemorrhoids and fistulas were removed.
(source: History of Medicine - By F. H. Garrison Philadelphia., 1929 and The Story of civilizations: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant ISBN: 1567310125 1937 p.531).
Mrs. Charlotte Manning says: "The surgical instruments of the Hindus were sufficiently sharp, indeed, as to be capable of dividing a hair longitudinally." "Greek physicians have done much to preserve and diffuse the medicinal science of India. We find, for instance, that the Greek physician, Actuarius, celebrates the Hindu medicine, called triphala. He mentions the peculiar products of India, of which it is composed, by their Sanskrit name, Myrobalans."
(source: Ancient and Medieval India Volume II. p. 346).
Sushruta laid down elaborate rules for preparing an operation, and his suggestion that the wound be sterilized by fumigation is one of the earliest known efforts at antiseptic surgery. Both Sushruta and Charaka mention the use of medicinal liquors to produce insensibility to pain. In 927 A.D. two surgeons trepanned the skull of a king, and made him insensitive to the operation by administering a drug called Samohini. For the detection of the 1120 diseases he enumerated, Sushruta recommended diagnosis by inspection, palpation, and ausculatation. Taking of the pulse was described in a treatise dating 1300 A.D. Urinalysis was a favorite method of diagnosis.
In the time of Yuan Chwang Indian medical treatment began with a seven-day fast; in this interval the patient often recovered; if the illness continued drugs were at last employed. Even then drugs were used very sparingly; reliance was placed largely upon diet, baths, inhalations, urethral, and vaginal injections. Indian physicians were especially skilled in concocting antidotes for poison.
William Ward (1769-1823) notes:
"Inoculation for the small pox seems to have been known among the Hindoos from time immemorial." The method of introducing the virus is made by incision just above the wrist, in the right arm of the male, and the left of the female. At the time of inoculation, and during the progress of the disease, the parents daily employ a brahmin to worship Sheetula, the goddess who presides over the disease."
(source: A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos - By William Ward volume I I p 339 London 1822).
Vaccination, unknown to Europe before the eighteenth century, was known in India as early as 550 A.D. if we may judge from a text attributed to Dhanwantari, one of the earliest Hindu physicians. "Take the fluid of the pock on the udder of the cow...upon the point of a lancer, and lance with it the arms between the shoulders and elbows until the blood appears; then, mixing the fluid with the blood, the fever of the small-pox will be produced."
Modern European physicians believe that caste separateness was prescribed because of the Brahmin belief in invisible agents transmitting disease; many of the laws of sanitation enjoined by Sushruta and "Manu" seem to take for granted what we moderns, who love new words for old things, call the germ theory of disease. Hypnotism as therapy seems to have originated among Indians, who often took their sick to the temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestion. The Englishmen who introduced hypnotherapy into England-Braid Esdaile and Elliotson- "undoubtedly got their ideas, and some of their experience, from contact with India."
(source: The Story of civilizations: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant 1937 p.531)
Susruta calls surgery, "the first and best of medical sciences." He insisted that those who intend to practice it must have actual experimental knowledge of the subject. He says: "No accurate account of any part of the body, including even its skin, can be rendered without a knowledge of anatomy, hence anyone who wishes to acquire a thorough knowledge of anatomy must prepare a dead body, and carefully examine all its parts." For preliminary training, students were taught how to handle their instruments by operating on pumpkins or cucumbers, and they were made to practice on pieces of cloth or skin in order to learn how to sew up wounds. Major operations, as described by Susruta, included amputations, grafting, setting of fractures, removal of a foetus and operation on the bladder for removal of gallstones. The operating room, he declares should be disinfected with cleansing vapors. He describes 127 different instruments used for such purposes as cutting, inoculations, puncturing, probing and sounding. Cutting instruments, Susruta maintains, should be of "bright handsome polished metal, and sharp enough to divide a hair lengthwise."
(source: The Pageant of India's History - By Gertrude Emerson Sen p. 66 - 68).
"The specific diseases whose names occur in Panini's grammar indicates that medical studies had made great progress before his time (350 B.C.). The chapter on the human body in the earliest Sanskrit dictionary, the Amara-kosha presupposes a systematic cultivation of the science. The works of the great traditional Indian physicians, Charaka, and Susruta, were translated into Arabic not later than the 8th century. The chief seat of the science was at Benares. The name of Charaka repeatedly occurs in the Latin translations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Rhazes (Al Rasi), and Serapion (Ibn Serabi).
Charaka
(image source: Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America. Inc - 2002 calendar).
Indian medicine dealt with the whole area of the science. It described the structure of the body, its organs, ligaments, muscles, vessels, and tissues. The materia medica of the Hindus embraces a vast collection of drugs belonging to the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdom, many of which have been adopted by the European physicians. Their pharmacy contained ingenious processes of preparation, with elaborate directions for the administration and classification of medicines. Much attention was devoted to hygiene, to the regimen of the body, and to diet.
The surgery of the ancient Indian physicians appears to have been bold and skilful. They conducted amputations, arresting the bleeding by pressure, a cup-shaped bandage, and boiling oil. They practiced lithotomy; performed operations in the abdomen and uterus; cured hernia, fistula, piles; set broken bones and dislocations; and were dexterous in the extraction of foreign substances from the body. A special branch of surgery was devoted to rhinoplasty, or operations for improving deformed ears and noses, and forming new ones. They devoted great care to the making of surgical instruments, and to the training of students by means of operations performed on wax spread out on a board, or on the tissues and cells of the vegetable kingdom, and upon dead animals. Considerable advances were also made in veterinary science, and mongraphs exist on the diseases of horses and elephants. "
(source: The Indian Empire - By Sir William Wilson Hunter p.148-150).
Ancient India possessed advanced medical knowledge. Her doctors knew about metabolism, the circulatory system, genetics, and the nervous system as well as the transmission of specific characteristics by heredity. Vedic physicians understood medical ways to counteract the effects of poison gas, performed Caesarean sections and brain operations, and used anesthetics.
Sushruta (5th century BC) listed the diagnosis of 1,120 diseases. He described 121 surgical instruments and was the first to experiment in plastic surgery.
(source: We Are Not The First – By Andrew Tomas - A Bantam Book 1971 New York p. 15 - 49).
The most remarkable part of Charaka's work is his classification of remedies drawn from vegetable, mineral and animal sources. Over two thousand vegetable preparations, derived from the roots, bark, flowers, fruits, seeds or sap of plants and trees, are described vy Charaka, who also gives the correct time of year for gathering these materials and the method of preparing and administering them. Charaka sounds surprisingly modern. He devotes a good deal of attention to children's diseases, and discusses proper feeding and hours of sleep. He stresses the care of the teeth and the necessity of cleaning them. The universal custom among Hindus of using a medicinal stick to clean the teeth and of rinsing the mouth thoroughly after every meal is so firmly established that it must go back to very ancient times. Diagnosis in Charaka's time was primarily based on careful study of the pulse, and that Charaka had a good idea of blood circulation is apparent from this passage in his treatise: "From that great center (the heart) emanate the vessels carrying blood into all part of the body - the element which nourishes the life of all animals and without which it would be extinct."
Charaka's treatise was based on the teaching of Atreya, whose date has been assigned to the sixth century B.C. Previous to Atreya, Ayurveda, "the science of life" was one of the recognized Vedic studies. High ethical standards which should be maintained by medical profession were also stressed by Charaka. He says: "Not for money nor for any earthly objects should one treat his patients. In this the physician's work excels all vocations. Those who sell treatment as a merchandise neglect the true measure of gold in search of mere dust."
(source: The Pageant of India's History - By Gertrude Emerson Sen p. 66 - 67).
Horace Hayman Wilson (1786-1860) Eminent Orientalist, observed:
"That in medicine, or the astronomy and metaphysics, the Hindus have kept pace with the most enlightened nations of the world: and that they attained as thorough a proficiency in medicine and surgery as any people whose acquisitions are recorded." He says further: "It would easily be supposed that their patient attention and national shrewdness would render the Hindus excellent observers."
(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p. 77).
The great picture of Indian medicine is one of rapid development in the Vedic and Buddhist period, followed by centuries of slow and cautious improvement. In the time of Alexander, says Garrison, "Hindu physicians and surgeons enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for superior knowledge and skill," and even Aristotle is believed by some students to have been indebted to them. So too with the Persians and Arabs.
We find Persians and Arabs translating into their languages, in the eighth century A.D., the thousand-year-old compendia of Sushrata and Charaka. The great Caliph Haroun-al-Rashid accepted the preeminence of Indian medicine and scholarship, and imported Indian physicians to organize hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad.
Lord Amphill concludes that medieval and modern Europe owes its system of medicine directly to the Arabs, and through them to India.
(source: The Story of civilizations: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant ISBN: 1567310125 1937 p.531).
Dorothea Chaplin mentions in her book, Matter, myth and Spirit or Keltic and Hindu Links (pp 168-9), "Long before the year 460 B.C., in which Hippocrates, the father of European medicine was born, the Hindus had built an extensive pharmacopoeia and had elaborate treatises on a variety of medical and surgical subjects....The Hindus' wonderful knowledge on a variety of medicine has for some considerable time led them away from surgical methods as working destruction on the nervous system, which their scientific medical system is able to obliviate, producing a cure even without preliminary crisis."
(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp. World Relief Network ISBN: 0961741066 p 31).
The practice of medicine, like all other sciences, was regulated by a code of social ethics. A physician (vaidya) was to be devoted to the service of the sick. Charaka's advice to his students contained the gist of the professional ethics:
"If you want success in your practice, wealth and fame, and heaven after your death, you must pray every day on rising and going to bed for the welfare of all beings and you must strive with all your soul for the health of the sick. You must not betray your patients, even at the cost of your own life. You must not get drunk, or commit evil, or have evil companions. You must be pleasant, of speech and thoughtful, always striving to improve your knowledge."
Free hospitals were maintained by the kings and merchants. Nursing and attending the sick was considered to be one of the highest service to dharma.
(source: Ancient Indian History and Culture - By Chidambara Kulkarni p. 273).
Ancient Hospitals
The Hindus were the first nation to establish hospitals, and for centuries they were the only people in the world who maintained them. The Chinese traveler, Fa-hien, speaking of a hospital he visited in Pataliputra says: "Hither come all poor and helpless patients suffering from all kinds of infirmities. They are well taken care of, and a doctor attends them; food and medicine being supplied according to their wants. Thus they are made quite comfortable, and when they are well, they may go away."
"The earliest hospital in Europe," says historian Vincent A. Smith, "is said to have been opened in the tenth century."
(source: Early History of India - By Vincent Smith p. 259).
Smallpox inoculation started in India before the West
Smallpox inoculation is an ancient Indian tradition and was practiced in India before the West.
In ancient times in India smallpox was prevented through the tikah (inoculation). Kurt Pollak (1968) writes, "preventive inoculation against the smallpox, which was practiced in China from the 11th century, apparently came from India". This inoculation process was generally practiced in large part of Northern and Southern India, but around 1803-04 the British government banned this process. It's banning, undoubtedly, was done in the name of 'humanity', and justified by the Superintendent General of Vaccine (manufactured by Dr. E. Jenner from the cow for use in the inoculation against smallpox).
Dharmapal has quoted British sources to prove that inoculation in India was practiced before the British did. In the seventeenth century, smallpox inoculation (tikah) was practiced in India. A particular sect of Brahmins employed a sharp iron needle to carry out these practices. In 1731, Coult was in Bengal and he observed it and wrote (Operation of inoculation of the smallpox as performed in Bengall from Re. Coult to Dr. Oliver Coult in 'An account of the diseases of Bengall' Calcutta, dated February 10, 1731):
"The operation of inoculation called by the natives tikah has been known in the kingdom of Bengall as near as I can learn, about 150 years and according to the Bhamanian records was first performed by one Dununtary, a physician of Champanagar, a small town by the side of the Ganges about half way to Cossimbazar whose memory in now holden in great esteem as being through the another of this operation, which secret, say they, he had immediately of God in a dream.'
English physician Jenner is credited with discovering vaccination on a scientific basis with his studies on small pox in 1796. A group of Fellows of the Royal Society had earlier studied the method of inoculating people in India and submitted its report in the 1760s. Dr J. Z. Holwell, one of the members who was in the Bengal Province for more than ten years to study the Indian vaccination method, lectured at the London Royal College of Physicians in 1767 "that nearly the same salutary method, now so happily pursued in England,... has the sanction of remotest antiquity (in India), illustrating the propriety of present practice".
Dr. J. Z. Holwell writes the most detailed account for the college of Physicians in London in 1767 (An account of the manner of inoculating for the smallpox in the East Indies, by J. Z. Holwell, F.R.S. addressed to the President and Members of the College of Physicians in London). He wrote:
"Inoculation is performed in Indostan by a particular tribe of Bramins, who are delegated annually for this service from the different Colleges of Bindoobund, Eleabas, Benares, & c. over all the distant provinces: dividing themselves into small parties, of three or four each, they plan their traveling circuits in such wise as to arrive at the places of the operation consists only in abstaining for a month from fish, milk, and ghee (a kind of butter made generally of buffalo's milk). When the Bramins begin to inoculate, they pass from house to house and operate at the door, refusing to inoculate any who have not, on a strict scrutiny, duly observed the preparatory course enjoined them. It is no uncommon thing for them to ask the parents how many pocks they choose their children should have."
(source: An account of the manner of inoculating for the smallpox in the East Indies - by J. Z. Holwell M.D., F.R.S.).
On the efficacy of this practice Holwell has the following to say:
"When the before recited treatment of the inoculated is strictly followed, it is next to a miracle to hear, that one in a million fails of receiving the infection, or of one that miscarries under it.. Since, therefore, this practice of the East has been followed without variation, and with uniform success from the remotest unknown times, it is but justice to conclude, it must have been originally founded on the basis of rational principle and experiment."
Holwell's detailed account, not only describes inoculation, but also shows that the Indians knew that microbes caused such diseases.
(source: Indian Science And Technology in the Eighteenth Century; some contemporary European accounts - By Dharampal 1971. An Account of the manner of inoculating for the Smallpox in the East Indies. Mapusa, Goa: Other India Press. Chapter VIII p. 142 -164. The Healers, the Doctor, then and now - By Pollack, Kurt 1968.English Edition. p. 37-8.).
Also refer to Indian Institute of Science - Prevention of Small Pox in ancient India).
The Sactya Grantham - ancient Brahman medical text ~ 3,500 years old describing brain surgery and anaesthetics, contains the following passages giving instructions on small pox vaccination:
“Take on the tip of a knife the contents of the inflammation, inject it into the arm of the man, mixing it with his blood. A fever will follow but the malady will pass very easily and will create no complications.” Edward Jenner (1749-1823) is credited with the discovery of vaccination but it appears that ancient India has prior claim!"
(source: We Are Not The First – By Andrew Tomas - A Bantam Book 1971 New York p. 15 - 49). and http://www.habtheory.com/1/habrefs.php).
The Brahmins had a theory of their operations. They believed the atmosphere abounded with imperceptible animalculae (refined to bacteria within a larger context today). They distinguished tow types of these: those that are harmful and those not so. The Brahmins therefore believed that their treatment in inoculating the person expelled the immediate cause of the disease. How effective was the inoculation? According to Dr. J. Z. Holwell, FRS, who had addressed the College of Physicians in London:
“When the before recited treatment of the inoculation is strictly followed, it is next to a miracle to hear, that one in a million fails to receiving the infection, or of one that miscarries under it.”
A later estimate by the Superintendent General of Vaccine in 1804 noted that fatalities among the inoculated counted one in 200 among the Indian population and one in 60 to 70 among the Europeans. There is an explanation for this divergence. Most of the Europeans objected to the inoculation on theological grounds.
Small pox has a long history in India; it is discussed in the Hindu scriptures and even has a goddess (Sitala, literally “the cool one") devoted exclusively to its cause. It seems therefore almost natural to expect an Indian medical response to the disease. The inoculation treatment against it was carried out by a particular caste of Brahmins from the different medical colleges in the area. These Brahmins circulated in the villages in groups of three or four to perform their task.
The person to be inoculated was obliged to follow a certain dietary regime; he had particularly to abstain from fish, milk, and ghee, which, it was held, aggravated the fever that resulted after the treatment. The method the Brahmins followed is similar to the one followed in our own time in certain aspects. They punctured the space between the elbow and the wrist with a sharp instrument and then proceeded to introduce into the abrasion “various matter” prepared from inoculated pistules from the preceding year. The purpose was to induce the disease itself, albeit in a mild form; after it left the body, the person was rendered immune to small-pox for life.
The Brahmins had a theory of their operations. They believed the atmosphere abounded with imperceptible animalculae. They distinguished two types of these: those harmful and those not so. The universality of this practices ceased to obtain with the arrival of the British. Like many specialists in India, including teachers, the Brahmin doctors had been maintained through public revenues. With British rule, this fiscal system was disrupted and the inoculators left to fend for themselves.
Two of the more important medical arts of India – plastic surgery and inoculations against small pox. Both were indigenously evolved and the accounts we have, come from Westerners sent out to study them. One of these curious facts was the inoculation against small pox disease, practiced in both north and south India till it was banned or disrupted by the English authorities in 1802-3. The ban was pronounced on “humanitarian” grounds by the Superintendent General of Vaccine.
(source: Homo Faber: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1500-1972 - By Claude Alvares p. 65-67 and Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1492 to the Present Day - By Claude Alvares p.66-67).
European colonists from the sixteenth century onwards, gained knowledge of plants, diseases and surgical techniques that were unknown in the West. One such example is rauwolfia serpentia, a plant used in traditional Indian medicine. The active ingredient is today used to treat hypertension and anxiety in the West.
Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone has written: "Their use of these medicines seems to have been very bold. They were the first nation who employed minerals internally, and they not only gave mercury in that manner but arsenic and arsenious acid, which were remedies in intermittents. They have long used cinnabar for fumigations, by which they produced a speedy and safe salivation. They have long practiced inoculation."
"They cut for the stone, couched for the cataract, and extracted the fetus from the womb, and in their early works enumerate not less than 127 sorts of surgical instruments!" "Their acquaintance with medicines seems to have been very extensive. We are not surprised at their knowledge of simples, in which they gave early lessons to Europe, and more recently taught us the benefit of smoking dhatura in asthma and the use of cowitch against worms."
(source: History of India - Mountstuart Elphinstone London: John Murray Date of Publication: 1849 p. 145).
The Englishman (a Calcutta Daily), in a lead story in 1880, said: "No one can read the rules contained in great Sanskrit medical works without coming the conclusion that in point of knowledge, the ancient Hindus were in this respect very far in advance not only to the Greek and Romans but also to Medieval Europe."
(source: Sanskrit Civilization - By G. R. Josyer p. 28).
Ayurveda or the Veda of Longevity
Ayurveda is a 3,000- to 5,000-year-old holistic healthcare system, which looks at the individual, addresses diet, lifestyle and spirit, and strives for balance in each person. It focuses on prevention, and sees, many illnesses not as a collection of symptoms but as imbalances within the body, mind or spirit that, once balance is restored, eats disease at its root.
"The science of Medicine was cultivated early in India and modern researches have disclosed the fact that the Materia Medica of the Greeks, even of Hippocrates the "Father of Medicine," is based on the older Materia Medica of the Hindus.... Charaka's work is divided into eight books, describing various diseases and their treatment; and Susruta's work has six parts, and specially treats of surgery and operations which are considered difficult even in modern times. Various chemical processes were known to the Hindus. Oxides, sulphates, and suphurets of various metals were prepared, and metallic substances were administered internally in India long before the Arabs borrowed the practice from them, and introduced it in Europe in the Middle Ages."
(source: The Civilization of India - By Romesh C. Dutt p. 64).
A tree resin used in Indian medicine for 2,000 years as a folk remedy for a variety of ailments works to lower cholesterol in lab animals, and in a new way that might lead to the development of improved drugs for people, U.S. researchers report. The tree is known in India as guggul, or the myrrh shrub. It’s been used there since at least 600 BC to battle obesity and arthritis, among other ailments.
(source: Ancient remedy could lead to alternative to today’s drugs - msnbc.com).
"Indian medicine's influence on Portugal was fairly wide. You had echoes of Indian or Ayurvedic practices that come into Portuguese usage. Tamarind, for example, is a plant widely used in Ayurveda. It is applied in Portuguese hospitals. It is used as a cooling agent, in combination with other medicinal plants to help the absorption of those plants and it is used in a poultice, placed on the skin.
(source: West has always benefited from Indian medicine).
"Hindu literature on anatomy and physiology as well as eugenics and embryology has been voluminous. The Hindus knew the exact osteology of the human body 2,000 years before Vesalius (c. 1545) and had some rough ideas of the circulation of blood long before Harvey (1628). the internal administration of mercury, iron and other powerful metallic drugs were practized by the Hindu physicians at least 1,000 years before Paracelsus (1540). And they have written extensive treatises on these subjects."
(source: Creative India - By Benoy Kumar Sarkar published Motilal Banarsi Dass, Lahore 1937. p. 5).
Ayurveda is a traditional healing system of India, with origins firmly rooted in the culture of the Indian subcontinent. Some 5000 years ago, the great rishis, or seers of ancient India, observed the fundamentals of life and organized them into a system. Ayurveda was their gift to us, an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation. Ayurvedic teachings were recorded as sutras, succinct poetical verses in Sanskrit, containing the essence of a topic and acting as aides-memoire for the students. Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, reflects the philosophy behind Ayurveda and the depth within it. Sanskrit has a wealth of words for aspects within and beyond consciousness.
A few treatises on Ayurveda date from around 1000 B.C. The best known is Charaka Samhita, which concentrates on internal medicine. Many of today’s Ayurvedic physicians use Astanga Hrdayam, a more concise compilation written over 1000 years ago from the earlier texts.
(source: The Book of Ayurveda: A Holistic Approach to Health and Longevity - By Judith H. Morrison p. 15 -20).
US medical schools to teach Ayurveda
American medical schools will teach students the goodness of Ayurveda with visiting Indian specialists offering a 12-hour crash course programme on the medical system based on herbs.
Schools in the United States are offering the course taught by Dr Palep under the aegis of Complementary Alternative Medicine and include topics like Ayurveda philosophy, anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, clinical exam and treatments. It also teaches Yoga, meditation and panchkarma therapy (process of detoxification and rejuvenation).
(source: US medical schools to teach Ayurveda - sify.com).
Veterinary science in Ancient India
Since animals were regarded as a part of the same cosmos as humans, it is not surprising that animal life was keenly protected and veterinary medicine was a distinct branch of science with its own hospitals and scholars. Numerous texts, especially of the postclassical period, Visnudharmottara Mahapurana for example, mention veterinary medicine. Megasthenes refers to the kind of treatment which was later to be incorporated in Palakapyamuni's Hastya yur Veda and similar treatises. Salihotra was the most eminent authority on horse breeding and hippiatry. Juadudatta gives a detailed account of the medical treatment of cows in his Asva-Vaidyaka.
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. p.187-188).
According to Stanley Wolpert, " Veterinary science had developed into an Indian medical specialty by that early era, and India's monarchs seem to have supported special hospitals for their horses as well as their elephants. Hindu faith in the sacrosanctity of animals as well as human souls, and belief in the partial divinity of cows and elephants helps explain perhaps what seems to be far better care lavished on such animals... A uniquely specialized branch of Indian medicine was called Hastyaurveda ("The Science of Prolonging Elephant Life").
(source: An Introduction to India - By Stanley Wolpert p. 193-194).
Astronomy
The science of
astronomy flourishes only amongst a civilized people. Hence, considerable
advancement in it is itself proof of the high civilization of a nation. Hindu
astronomy has received the homage of numerous European scholars.
Sir William Hunter (1840-1900) says "The Astronomy of the Hindus has formed the subject of excessive admiration."
"Proof of very extraordinary proficiency," says Lord Elphinstone, "in their astronomical writings are found."
(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 332 - 348).
William Robertson wrote: "It is highly probable that the knowledge of the twelve signs of zodiacs was derived from India."
(source: An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India - By William Robertson p. 280).
India has left a universal legacy determining for instance the dates of solstices, as noted by 18th century French astronomer Jean-Claude Bailly (1736–93) 18th century French astronomer and politician. His works on astronomy and on the history of science (notably the Essai sur la théorie des satellites de Jupiter and History of Astronomy) were distinguished both for scientific interest and literary elegance and earned him membership in the French Academy, the Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Inscriptions. Bailly, who was guillotined during the French Revolution, maintained that the Brahmins of India had been tutors of the Greeks and, through them, of Europe.
Jean-Claude Bailly said:
" The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge."
(source: The Politics of History - By N. S. Rajaram Voice of India ISBN 81-85990-28-X. 1995 p. 47).
The paper of John Playfair (1748-1819) (FRS and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh) is a detailed review (published in 1790) of the book 'Traite de ';astronomie Indienne et Orientale,' by J. S. Bailly (Paris 1787), the famous French historian of astronomy. Taken as if by surprise by Bailly's rather positive evaluation of the origin, antiquity and achievements of Indian astronomy, Playfair states that: "I entered on the study of that work, not without a portion of skepticism....The result was, an entire conviction of the accuracy of the one, and of the solidity of the other.' Both Bailly's book and Playfair's article examine in detail some of the astronomical tables (based on Indian astronomy) that the French had procured from Siam (Thailand), Playfair's main conclusions are the following:
1. The observations on which the astronomy of India is founded, were made more than three thousand years before the Christian era; and in particular, the places of the sun and the moon, at the beginning of the Kali-yoga/Calyougham (i.e., 17/18 February 3102 B.C.), were determined by actual observation.
2. Though the astronomy which is now in the hands of the Brahmins, is so ancient in its origin, yet it contains many rules and tables that are of later construction.
3. The basis of the four systems of astronomical tables which we have examined, is evidently the same.
4. The construction of these tables implies a great knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, and even of the theoretical part of astronomy.
Playfair argues that 'communication is more likely to have gone from India to Greece, than in the opposite direction."
(source: India Through The Ages: History, Art Culture and Religion - By G. Kuppuram p.671-672).
Hindu astronomy received considerable homage from European scholars. Sir William Hunter (1840-1900) says: "The astronomy of the Hindus has formed the subject of excessive admiration." "In some points the Brahmins made advances beyond Greek astronomy. Their fame spread throughout the West, and found entrance into the Chronicon Paschale (commenced about 330 A.D. and revised under Heraclius 610-641). "The Sanskrit term for the apex of a planet's orbit seems to have passed into the Latin translations of the Arabic astronomers. The Sanskrit uccha became the aux (genaugis) of the later translators." "The Arabs became their (Hindus) discipline in the 8th century, and translated Sanskrit treatises, Siddhanats, under the name Sindhends."
Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) says:
"The fame of Hindu astronomers spread to the West, and the Andubarius (or probably, Ardubarius), whom the Chronicon Paschale places in primeval times as the earliest Indian astronomer, is doubtless none other than Aryabhatta, the rival of Pulisa, and who is likewise extolled by the Arabs under the name of Arjabahar."
(source: Indian Literature - By Albrecht Weber ISBN: 1410203344 p. 255).
Research scholars like Sylvain Bailley (1736-1793) and Charles Francois Dupuis (1742-1809) aver that the Hindu Zodiac is the earliest known to man and that the first calendar was made in India in about B.C. 12,000.
(Refer to Bailley's Histoire de Astonomie Ancienne p. 483 as well as the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology - December 1901 part I).
The Hon. Emmeline M. Plunket (1835- ) in the great work Ancient Calendars and Constellations p. 192 - says that there were very advanced Hindu Astronomers in B.C. 6,000.
(source: Hinduism: That Is Sanatana Dharma - By R. S. Nathan p. 38 published by Central Chinmaya Mission Trust. Bombay).
Horace Hyman Wilson (1786-1860) wrote: "The science of astronomy at present exhibits many proofs of accurate observation and deduction, highly creditable to the science of the Hindu astronomers. The division of the ecleptic into lunar mansions, the solar zodiac, the mean motions of the planets, the procession of the equinox, the earth's self-support in space, the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the moon on her axis, her distance from the earth, the dimensions of the orbits of the planet, the calculations of eclipses are parts of a system which could not have been found amongst an unenlightened people."
But the originality of the Hindus is not less striking than their proficiency. Wilson says: "The originality of Hindu astronomy is at once established, but it is also proved by intrinsic evidence, and although there are some remarkable coincidences between the Hindu and other systems, their methods are their own."
(source: History of British India - by James Mill Volume II p, 106-107).
Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote: "Proofs of very extraordinary proficiency in their astronomical writings are found."
The Hindu astronomy not only establishes the high proficiency of our ancestors in this department of knowledge and exacts admiration and applause: it does something more. It proves the great antiquity of the Sanskrit literature and the high literary culture of the Hindus. "Monsieur Bailly, the celebrated author of the History of Astronomy, inferred from certain astronomical tables of the Hindus, not only advanced progress of the science, but a date so ancient as to be entirely inconsistent with the chronology of the Hebrew scriptures. His argument was labored with the utmost diligence and was received with unbounded applause. All concurred at the time with the wonderful learning, wonderful civilization and wonderful institutions of the Hindus!"
(source: History of British India - By James Mill Volume II. p. 97-98).
Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) says: "Astronomy was practiced in India as early as 2780 B.C." "The fame of Hindu astronomers spread to the West, and the Andubarius (or probably, Ardubarius), whom the Chronicon Paschale places in primeval times as the earliest Indian astronomer, is doubtless none other than Aryabhatta, the rival of Pulisa, and who is likewise extolled, by the Arabs under the name of Arjabahar."
(source: Indian Literature - By Albrecht Weber p. 30-255).
But some of the greatest modern astronomers have decided in favor of a much greater antiquity. Cassini, Bailly, Gentil and Playfair maintain "that there are Hindu observations extant which must have been made more than three thousand years before Christ, and which evince even then a very high degree of astronomical science."
Count Magnus Fredrik Ferdinand Bjornstjerna (1779-1847) proves conclusively that Hindu astronomy was very far advanced even at the beginning of the Kaliyug, or the iron age of the Hindus (about 5,000 years ago). He says: "According to the astronomical calculations of the Hindus, the present period of the world, Kaliyug, commenced 3,102 years before the birth of Christ, on the 20th of February, at 2 hours 27 minutes and 30 seconds, the time being thus calculated of the planets that took place, and their tables show this conjunction. Bailly states that Jupiter and Mercury were then in the same degree of the ecliptic, Mars at a distance of only eight, and Saturn of seven degrees; whence it follows, that at the point of time given by the Brahmins as the commencement of Kaliyug, the four planets above-mentioned must have been successively concealed by the rays of the sun (first Saturn, then Mars, afterwards Jupiter and lastly Mercury)....The calculation of the Brahmins is so exactly confirmed by or own astronomical tables, that nothing but an actual observation could have given so correspondent a result."
The learned Count continues: "He (Bailly) further informs us that Laubere, who was sent by Louis XIV as ambassador to the King of Siam, brought home, in the year 1687, astronomical tables of solar eclipses and that other similar tables were sent to Euorpe by Patouillet (a missionary in the Carnatic - India), and by Gentil, which later were obtained from the Brahmins in Tirvalore, and that they all perfectly agree in their calcuations although received from different persons, at different times, and from places in India remote from each other. On these tables Bailly, makes the following observation. The motion calculated by the Brahmins during the long space of 4,385 years (the period eclipsed between these calculations and Bailly's), varies not a single minute from the tables of Cassini and Meyer; and as the tables brought to Europe by Laubere in 1687, under Louis XIV, are older than those of Cassini and Meyer, the accordance between them must be the result of mutual and exact astronomical observations." Then again, "Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe, a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria, and also to the Arabs, who followed the calculation of this school."
"These facts," says the erudite Count, "sufficiently show the great antiquity and distinguished station of astronomical science among the Hindus of past ages." The Count then asks "if it be true that the Hindus more than 3,000 BC., according to Bailly's calculation, had attained so high a degree of astronomical and geometrical learning, how many centuries earlier must the commencement of their culture have been, since the human mind advances only step by step on the path of science."
The length of the Hindu tropical year as deduced from the Hindu tables is 365 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes, 35 seconds, while La Callie's observation given 365-5-48-49. This makes the year at the time of the Hindu observation longer than at present by 1'46". It is however, an established fact that the year has been decreasing in duration from time immemorial and shall continue to decrease.
(source: The Theogony of the Hindoos with their systems of Philosophy and Cosmogony - By Count Bjornstjerna p. 32).
W Brennand had said in his book Hindu Astronomy:
"It is certain that the ancient Hindu astronomers, many centuries before the Christian Era, were in possession of knowledge, derived from observations made by them of the motions of the heavenly bodies, which they were able to use, and did actually use, in very accurate computations of time. "
"Upon the first point (the antiquity of that system), it may be remarked, that no one can carefully study the information collected by various investigators and translators of Hindu works relating to Astronomy, without coming to the conclusion that, long before the period when Grecian learning founded the basis of knowledge and civilization in the West, India had its own store of erudition. Master minds, in those primitive ages, thought out the problems presented by the ever recurring phenomena of the heavens, and gave birth to the ideas which were afterwards formed into a settled system for the use and benefit of succeeding. Astronomers, Mathematicians, and Scholiasts, as well as for the guidance of votaries of religion."
It is in the light of such consideration as these, that the investigator of the facts relating to Hindu Astronomy, is compelled to admit the extreme antiquity of the science. An impartial investigation of the circumstances relating to the question whether the Grecian Astronomy was original in its nature, and was copied by the Hindus, places it beyond doubt that the Hindu system was essentially different from and independent of the Greek.
“No nation in existence can afford to compare to latter [India] in many tenets of science, with its earliest theories and cosmography, without a smile at the expense of ancestors, but the Hindus, in this view, may, with not a little justifiable pride, point to their science of astronomy, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and even of trignometry, as containing within them evidence of a traditional civilisation compared formally with that of any other nation in the world.”
(source: Hindu Astronomy - By W Brennand p. 34 and 320 - 323).
Paul G Johnson has observed in his book, God and World Religions:
"In 600 B.C.E. the writer of Genesis perceived Earth to be the motionless centerpiece of creation, and above its flat surface were two great lights – the Sun and the Moon. Fourteen centuries before, the Hindu scripture – The Rig Veda – had a more accurate picture. Not only did the Sun, Moon, and Earth revolve in orbits, but “the Earth in its orbit revolves around the Sun.” (8:2).
(source: God and World Religions - By Paul G Johnson p. 3).
"In India, we see the beginning of theoretical speculation of the size and nature of the earth. Some one thousand years before Aristotle, the Vedic Aryans asserted that the earth was round and circled the sun. A translation of the Rig Veda goes: " In the prescribed daily prayers to the Sun we find..the Sun is at the center of the solar system. ..The student ask, "What is the nature of the entity that holds the Earth? The teacher answers, "Rishi Vatsa holds the view that the Earth is held in space by the Sun."
"Two thousand years before Pythagoras, philosophers in northern India had understood that gravitation held the solar system together, and that therefore the sun, the most massive object, had to be at its center." "Twenty-four centuries before Isaac Newton, the Hindu Rig-Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together. The Sanskrit speaking Aryans subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth in an era when the Greeks believed in a flat one. The Indians of the fifth century A.D. calculated the age of the earth as 4.3 billion years; scientists in 19th century England were convinced it was 100 million years."
(source: Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science - By Dick Teresi p. 1 - 8 and 159 and 174 -239). For more on Dick Teresi refer to chapters Quotes301_320, GlimpsesVI and GlimpsesVII ).
Historian A. L. (Arthur Llewellyn) Basham wrote:
"The procession of the equinoxes was known, and calculated with some accuracy by medieval astronomers, as were the lengths of the year, the lunar month, and other astronomical constants. These calculations were reliable for most practical purposes, and in many cases more accurate than those of the Greco-Roman world. Eclipses were forecast with accuracy and their true cause understood."
These were achieved without the help of a telescope. Accurate measurement was made possible by the decimal system of numerals, invented by the Indians.
It is certain that the Vedic Indians knew something of astronomy and that it had a high utilitarian value for them as it did for all peoples of antiquity. The Vedic priests had to make careful calculations of times for their rituals and sacrifices, and also had to determine the time of sowing and harvest. Moreover, astronomical periods played an important role in Vedic thought for they were considered to be successive parts of the ever returning cosmic cycle.
The Rig Veda lists a number of stars and mentions twelve divisions of the sun's yearly path (rashis) and also 360 divisions of the circle. Thus, the year of 360 days is divided into twelve months. The sun's annual course was described as a wheel with twelve spokes, which correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac.
The theory of the great cycles of the universe and the ages of the world is of older origin than either Greek or Babylonian speculations about the "great year," the period within which all the stars make a round number of complete revolutions. But there is remarkably close numerical concordance in these theories. The Indian concept of the great year (mahayuga) developed from the idea of a lunisolar period of five years, combined with the four ages of the world (yugas) which were thought to be of unequal perfection and duration, succeeding one another and lasting in the ration of 4:3:2:1.
The last, the Kaliyuga, was one-tenth of the mahayga or 432,000 years. This figure was calculated not only from rough estimates of planetary and stellar cycles, but also from the 10,800 stanzas of the Rig Veda, consisting of 432,000 syllables. The classical astronomers calculated the great period as one of 4,320,000 years, the basic element of which was a number of sidereal solar years, 1,080,000 a multiple of 10,800. According to Berossus, the Babylonian great year was a period of 432,000 years, comprising 120 "saroi" of 3,600 years apiece.
The Rig Veda talks about the annual motion of the earth. The diurnal motion is described in the Yajur Veda. The Aiteriya Brahmana explains that "the sun neither sets nor rises, that when the earth, owing to the rotation on its axis is lighted up, it is called day" and so on.
(source: Haug's Aitreya Brahmana Volume II. p. 242).
The Indian astronomer, Aryabhata lived in during the period in which the Surya Siddhanta was composed. He was born in 476 and reputedly completed his famous work, Aryabhatiya, at the age of twenty-three. A concise and brilliant work of astronomy and mathematics.
The Aryabhatiya introduced certain new concepts, like Aryabhata's new epicyclic theory, the sphericity of the earth, its rotation on its axis and revolution around the sun, the true explanation of eclipses and methods of forecasting them with accuracy, and the correct length of the year were his outstanding contributions. The Arabs preserved the theory of sphericity of earth, and Pierre d'Ailly employed it in 1410 in his map, which was used by Columbus.
As regards the stars being stationary, Aryabhatta says:
"The starry vault is fixed. It is the earth which, moving round its axis, again and again causes the rising and setting of planets and stars." He starts the question: "Why do the stars seem to move? and himself replies: "As a person in a vessel, while moving forwards sses an immovable object moving backwards, in the same manner do the stars, however immovable, seem to move daily."
The Polar days and nights of six months are also described by him. T. E. Colebrooke says: "Aryabhatta affirmed the diurnal revolutions of the earth on its axis. He possessed the true theory of the causes of solar and lunar eclipses and disregarded the imaginary dark planets of mythologists, affirming the moon and primary planets to be essentially dark and only illuminated by the sun."
(source: T. E. Colebrooke's Essays, Appendix G. p. 467). For more refer to Surya Siddhanta.
Centuries ago Aryabhatta told Pluto is not a planet
"Indian astrology did not include Pluto as a planet and the latest announcement by leading global astronomers after a marathon week-long meeting at Prague on Thursday only endorsed the Indian mathematical astrology of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira in the sixth century," eminent mathematical astrologer Mangal Prasad told PTI. "Western astrology uses Pluto as a planet while Pluto was always out of Indian astrology and we do not use it in our calculations. This is the practice from the days of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira," Prasad said.
"Indian astrology is mathematically concerned with the nine planets, two of which are Rahu and Ketu that are nothing but derivatives from the diameter of the Earth, which is a circle having a value Pi (22/7) imbedded in the equator of earth," he said.
"This was discovered and mathematically shown by Aryabhatta and Varahamihira in the sixth century during the golden period of the Guptas," said Prasad, the author of books based on the work of the two great sixth century scientists.Indian astrology is concerned more with astronomy and the derivations are from the equator of the Earth, diameter of the moon, the solar year and how the planets are viewed in the northern lattitudinal region during January and February, soon after the sun has crossed the Tropic of Capricon and moved towards the northern part of the hemisphere.
(source: Pluto demotion vindicates Aryabhatta - ibnlive.com).
As regards to the size of the earth, it is said: "The circumference of the earth is 4,967 yojanas and its diameter is 1,581 1/24 yojanas. A yojanas is equal to five English miles, the circumference of the earth would therefore be 24, 835 miles, and its diameter 7, 905 5/24 miles.
The Yajur Veda says that the earth is kept in space owing to the superior attraction of the sun. The theory of gravity is thus described in the Siddhanta Shiromani centuries before Newton was born:
"The earth, owing to its force of gravity, draws all things towards itself, and so they seem to fall towards the earth." etc..
As regards to the solar and lunar eclipses it is said: "When the earth in its rotation come between the sun and the moon, and the shadow of the earth falls on the moon, the phenomenon is called lunar eclipse, and when the moon comes between the sun and earth the sun seems as if it was being cut off - this is solar eclipse.
The following is taken from Varahamihira's observations on the moon:
"One half of the moon, whose orbit lies between the sun and the earth, is always bright by the sun's rays; the other half is dark by its own shadows, like the two sides of a pot standing in the sunshine."
About the eclipses, he says: "The true explanation of the phenomenon is this: in an eclipse of the moon, he enters into the earth's shadow; in a solar eclipse the same thing happens to the sun. Hence the commencement of a lunar eclipse does not take place from the west side, nor that of the solar eclipse from the east."
(source: Brihat Samhita Chapter V v. 8).
Brahmagupta who was born in 598 and worked in Ujjain, foreshadowed Newton by declaring that " all things fall to the earth by a law of nature, for it is the nature of the earth to attract and keep things". But the law of gravitational itself was not anticipated.
Recognition of the superiority of the Vedic mathematics was also recorded as long as 662 A.D. by Severus Sebokht, the Bishop of Qinnesrin in North Syria. As reported in Indian Studies in Honor of Charles Rockwell (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. Edited by W. E. Clark, 1929), Sebokht wrote that the Indian discoveries in astronomy were more ingenious than those of the Greeks or Babylonians, and their numerical (decimal) system surpasses description.
"I will omit all discussion of the science of the Hindus [Indians], a people not the same as Syrians, their subtle discoveries in the science of astronomy, discoveries more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians; their valuable method of calculation [the decimal system]; their computing that surpasses description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe because they speak Greek, that they have reached the limits of science should know these things, they would be convinced that there are also others who know something."
(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp. World Relief Network ISBN: 0961741066 p 22)
The celebrated European astronomer, John Playfair (1748-1819) says: "The Brahmin obtains his result with wonderful certainty and expedition in astronomy."
(source: Playfair on the astronomy of the Hindus. Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Volume II. p. 138-139).
Professor Sir M. Williams wrote: "It is their science of astronomy by which the (Hindus) heap billions upon millions, trillions upon billions of years, and reckoning up ages upon ages, eons upon eons, with even more audacity than modern geologists and astronomers. In short, an astronomical Hindu ventures on arithmetical conceptions quite beyond the mental dimensions of anyone who feels himself incompetent to attempt a task of measuring infinity."
Mrs. Charlotte Manning exclaimed: "The Hindus had the widest range of mind of which man is capable."
Sir William Hunter (1840-1900) says "The Astronomy of the Hindus has formed the subject of excessive admiration."
"Proof of very extraordinary proficiency," says Lord Elphinstone, "in their astronomical writings are found."
(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 332 - 348).
William Robertson wrote: "It is highly probable that the knowledge of the twelve signs of zodiacs was derived from India."
(source: An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India - By William Robertson p. 280).
India has left a universal legacy determining for instance the dates of solstices, as noted by 18th century French astronomer Jean-Claude Bailly (1736–93) 18th century French astronomer and politician. His works on astronomy and on the history of science (notably the Essai sur la théorie des satellites de Jupiter and History of Astronomy) were distinguished both for scientific interest and literary elegance and earned him membership in the French Academy, the Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Inscriptions. Bailly, who was guillotined during the French Revolution, maintained that the Brahmins of India had been tutors of the Greeks and, through them, of Europe.
Jean-Claude Bailly said:
" The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge."
(source: The Politics of History - By N. S. Rajaram Voice of India ISBN 81-85990-28-X. 1995 p. 47).
The paper of John Playfair (1748-1819) (FRS and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh) is a detailed review (published in 1790) of the book 'Traite de ';astronomie Indienne et Orientale,' by J. S. Bailly (Paris 1787), the famous French historian of astronomy. Taken as if by surprise by Bailly's rather positive evaluation of the origin, antiquity and achievements of Indian astronomy, Playfair states that: "I entered on the study of that work, not without a portion of skepticism....The result was, an entire conviction of the accuracy of the one, and of the solidity of the other.' Both Bailly's book and Playfair's article examine in detail some of the astronomical tables (based on Indian astronomy) that the French had procured from Siam (Thailand), Playfair's main conclusions are the following:
1. The observations on which the astronomy of India is founded, were made more than three thousand years before the Christian era; and in particular, the places of the sun and the moon, at the beginning of the Kali-yoga/Calyougham (i.e., 17/18 February 3102 B.C.), were determined by actual observation.
2. Though the astronomy which is now in the hands of the Brahmins, is so ancient in its origin, yet it contains many rules and tables that are of later construction.
3. The basis of the four systems of astronomical tables which we have examined, is evidently the same.
4. The construction of these tables implies a great knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, and even of the theoretical part of astronomy.
Playfair argues that 'communication is more likely to have gone from India to Greece, than in the opposite direction."
(source: India Through The Ages: History, Art Culture and Religion - By G. Kuppuram p.671-672).
Hindu astronomy received considerable homage from European scholars. Sir William Hunter (1840-1900) says: "The astronomy of the Hindus has formed the subject of excessive admiration." "In some points the Brahmins made advances beyond Greek astronomy. Their fame spread throughout the West, and found entrance into the Chronicon Paschale (commenced about 330 A.D. and revised under Heraclius 610-641). "The Sanskrit term for the apex of a planet's orbit seems to have passed into the Latin translations of the Arabic astronomers. The Sanskrit uccha became the aux (genaugis) of the later translators." "The Arabs became their (Hindus) discipline in the 8th century, and translated Sanskrit treatises, Siddhanats, under the name Sindhends."
Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) says:
"The fame of Hindu astronomers spread to the West, and the Andubarius (or probably, Ardubarius), whom the Chronicon Paschale places in primeval times as the earliest Indian astronomer, is doubtless none other than Aryabhatta, the rival of Pulisa, and who is likewise extolled by the Arabs under the name of Arjabahar."
(source: Indian Literature - By Albrecht Weber ISBN: 1410203344 p. 255).
Research scholars like Sylvain Bailley (1736-1793) and Charles Francois Dupuis (1742-1809) aver that the Hindu Zodiac is the earliest known to man and that the first calendar was made in India in about B.C. 12,000.
(Refer to Bailley's Histoire de Astonomie Ancienne p. 483 as well as the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology - December 1901 part I).
The Hon. Emmeline M. Plunket (1835- ) in the great work Ancient Calendars and Constellations p. 192 - says that there were very advanced Hindu Astronomers in B.C. 6,000.
(source: Hinduism: That Is Sanatana Dharma - By R. S. Nathan p. 38 published by Central Chinmaya Mission Trust. Bombay).
Horace Hyman Wilson (1786-1860) wrote: "The science of astronomy at present exhibits many proofs of accurate observation and deduction, highly creditable to the science of the Hindu astronomers. The division of the ecleptic into lunar mansions, the solar zodiac, the mean motions of the planets, the procession of the equinox, the earth's self-support in space, the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the moon on her axis, her distance from the earth, the dimensions of the orbits of the planet, the calculations of eclipses are parts of a system which could not have been found amongst an unenlightened people."
But the originality of the Hindus is not less striking than their proficiency. Wilson says: "The originality of Hindu astronomy is at once established, but it is also proved by intrinsic evidence, and although there are some remarkable coincidences between the Hindu and other systems, their methods are their own."
(source: History of British India - by James Mill Volume II p, 106-107).
Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote: "Proofs of very extraordinary proficiency in their astronomical writings are found."
The Hindu astronomy not only establishes the high proficiency of our ancestors in this department of knowledge and exacts admiration and applause: it does something more. It proves the great antiquity of the Sanskrit literature and the high literary culture of the Hindus. "Monsieur Bailly, the celebrated author of the History of Astronomy, inferred from certain astronomical tables of the Hindus, not only advanced progress of the science, but a date so ancient as to be entirely inconsistent with the chronology of the Hebrew scriptures. His argument was labored with the utmost diligence and was received with unbounded applause. All concurred at the time with the wonderful learning, wonderful civilization and wonderful institutions of the Hindus!"
(source: History of British India - By James Mill Volume II. p. 97-98).
Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) says: "Astronomy was practiced in India as early as 2780 B.C." "The fame of Hindu astronomers spread to the West, and the Andubarius (or probably, Ardubarius), whom the Chronicon Paschale places in primeval times as the earliest Indian astronomer, is doubtless none other than Aryabhatta, the rival of Pulisa, and who is likewise extolled, by the Arabs under the name of Arjabahar."
(source: Indian Literature - By Albrecht Weber p. 30-255).
But some of the greatest modern astronomers have decided in favor of a much greater antiquity. Cassini, Bailly, Gentil and Playfair maintain "that there are Hindu observations extant which must have been made more than three thousand years before Christ, and which evince even then a very high degree of astronomical science."
Count Magnus Fredrik Ferdinand Bjornstjerna (1779-1847) proves conclusively that Hindu astronomy was very far advanced even at the beginning of the Kaliyug, or the iron age of the Hindus (about 5,000 years ago). He says: "According to the astronomical calculations of the Hindus, the present period of the world, Kaliyug, commenced 3,102 years before the birth of Christ, on the 20th of February, at 2 hours 27 minutes and 30 seconds, the time being thus calculated of the planets that took place, and their tables show this conjunction. Bailly states that Jupiter and Mercury were then in the same degree of the ecliptic, Mars at a distance of only eight, and Saturn of seven degrees; whence it follows, that at the point of time given by the Brahmins as the commencement of Kaliyug, the four planets above-mentioned must have been successively concealed by the rays of the sun (first Saturn, then Mars, afterwards Jupiter and lastly Mercury)....The calculation of the Brahmins is so exactly confirmed by or own astronomical tables, that nothing but an actual observation could have given so correspondent a result."
The learned Count continues: "He (Bailly) further informs us that Laubere, who was sent by Louis XIV as ambassador to the King of Siam, brought home, in the year 1687, astronomical tables of solar eclipses and that other similar tables were sent to Euorpe by Patouillet (a missionary in the Carnatic - India), and by Gentil, which later were obtained from the Brahmins in Tirvalore, and that they all perfectly agree in their calcuations although received from different persons, at different times, and from places in India remote from each other. On these tables Bailly, makes the following observation. The motion calculated by the Brahmins during the long space of 4,385 years (the period eclipsed between these calculations and Bailly's), varies not a single minute from the tables of Cassini and Meyer; and as the tables brought to Europe by Laubere in 1687, under Louis XIV, are older than those of Cassini and Meyer, the accordance between them must be the result of mutual and exact astronomical observations." Then again, "Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe, a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria, and also to the Arabs, who followed the calculation of this school."
"These facts," says the erudite Count, "sufficiently show the great antiquity and distinguished station of astronomical science among the Hindus of past ages." The Count then asks "if it be true that the Hindus more than 3,000 BC., according to Bailly's calculation, had attained so high a degree of astronomical and geometrical learning, how many centuries earlier must the commencement of their culture have been, since the human mind advances only step by step on the path of science."
The length of the Hindu tropical year as deduced from the Hindu tables is 365 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes, 35 seconds, while La Callie's observation given 365-5-48-49. This makes the year at the time of the Hindu observation longer than at present by 1'46". It is however, an established fact that the year has been decreasing in duration from time immemorial and shall continue to decrease.
(source: The Theogony of the Hindoos with their systems of Philosophy and Cosmogony - By Count Bjornstjerna p. 32).
W Brennand had said in his book Hindu Astronomy:
"It is certain that the ancient Hindu astronomers, many centuries before the Christian Era, were in possession of knowledge, derived from observations made by them of the motions of the heavenly bodies, which they were able to use, and did actually use, in very accurate computations of time. "
"Upon the first point (the antiquity of that system), it may be remarked, that no one can carefully study the information collected by various investigators and translators of Hindu works relating to Astronomy, without coming to the conclusion that, long before the period when Grecian learning founded the basis of knowledge and civilization in the West, India had its own store of erudition. Master minds, in those primitive ages, thought out the problems presented by the ever recurring phenomena of the heavens, and gave birth to the ideas which were afterwards formed into a settled system for the use and benefit of succeeding. Astronomers, Mathematicians, and Scholiasts, as well as for the guidance of votaries of religion."
It is in the light of such consideration as these, that the investigator of the facts relating to Hindu Astronomy, is compelled to admit the extreme antiquity of the science. An impartial investigation of the circumstances relating to the question whether the Grecian Astronomy was original in its nature, and was copied by the Hindus, places it beyond doubt that the Hindu system was essentially different from and independent of the Greek.
“No nation in existence can afford to compare to latter [India] in many tenets of science, with its earliest theories and cosmography, without a smile at the expense of ancestors, but the Hindus, in this view, may, with not a little justifiable pride, point to their science of astronomy, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and even of trignometry, as containing within them evidence of a traditional civilisation compared formally with that of any other nation in the world.”
(source: Hindu Astronomy - By W Brennand p. 34 and 320 - 323).
Paul G Johnson has observed in his book, God and World Religions:
"In 600 B.C.E. the writer of Genesis perceived Earth to be the motionless centerpiece of creation, and above its flat surface were two great lights – the Sun and the Moon. Fourteen centuries before, the Hindu scripture – The Rig Veda – had a more accurate picture. Not only did the Sun, Moon, and Earth revolve in orbits, but “the Earth in its orbit revolves around the Sun.” (8:2).
(source: God and World Religions - By Paul G Johnson p. 3).
"In India, we see the beginning of theoretical speculation of the size and nature of the earth. Some one thousand years before Aristotle, the Vedic Aryans asserted that the earth was round and circled the sun. A translation of the Rig Veda goes: " In the prescribed daily prayers to the Sun we find..the Sun is at the center of the solar system. ..The student ask, "What is the nature of the entity that holds the Earth? The teacher answers, "Rishi Vatsa holds the view that the Earth is held in space by the Sun."
"Two thousand years before Pythagoras, philosophers in northern India had understood that gravitation held the solar system together, and that therefore the sun, the most massive object, had to be at its center." "Twenty-four centuries before Isaac Newton, the Hindu Rig-Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together. The Sanskrit speaking Aryans subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth in an era when the Greeks believed in a flat one. The Indians of the fifth century A.D. calculated the age of the earth as 4.3 billion years; scientists in 19th century England were convinced it was 100 million years."
(source: Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science - By Dick Teresi p. 1 - 8 and 159 and 174 -239). For more on Dick Teresi refer to chapters Quotes301_320, GlimpsesVI and GlimpsesVII ).
Historian A. L. (Arthur Llewellyn) Basham wrote:
"The procession of the equinoxes was known, and calculated with some accuracy by medieval astronomers, as were the lengths of the year, the lunar month, and other astronomical constants. These calculations were reliable for most practical purposes, and in many cases more accurate than those of the Greco-Roman world. Eclipses were forecast with accuracy and their true cause understood."
These were achieved without the help of a telescope. Accurate measurement was made possible by the decimal system of numerals, invented by the Indians.
It is certain that the Vedic Indians knew something of astronomy and that it had a high utilitarian value for them as it did for all peoples of antiquity. The Vedic priests had to make careful calculations of times for their rituals and sacrifices, and also had to determine the time of sowing and harvest. Moreover, astronomical periods played an important role in Vedic thought for they were considered to be successive parts of the ever returning cosmic cycle.
The Rig Veda lists a number of stars and mentions twelve divisions of the sun's yearly path (rashis) and also 360 divisions of the circle. Thus, the year of 360 days is divided into twelve months. The sun's annual course was described as a wheel with twelve spokes, which correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac.
The theory of the great cycles of the universe and the ages of the world is of older origin than either Greek or Babylonian speculations about the "great year," the period within which all the stars make a round number of complete revolutions. But there is remarkably close numerical concordance in these theories. The Indian concept of the great year (mahayuga) developed from the idea of a lunisolar period of five years, combined with the four ages of the world (yugas) which were thought to be of unequal perfection and duration, succeeding one another and lasting in the ration of 4:3:2:1.
The last, the Kaliyuga, was one-tenth of the mahayga or 432,000 years. This figure was calculated not only from rough estimates of planetary and stellar cycles, but also from the 10,800 stanzas of the Rig Veda, consisting of 432,000 syllables. The classical astronomers calculated the great period as one of 4,320,000 years, the basic element of which was a number of sidereal solar years, 1,080,000 a multiple of 10,800. According to Berossus, the Babylonian great year was a period of 432,000 years, comprising 120 "saroi" of 3,600 years apiece.
The Rig Veda talks about the annual motion of the earth. The diurnal motion is described in the Yajur Veda. The Aiteriya Brahmana explains that "the sun neither sets nor rises, that when the earth, owing to the rotation on its axis is lighted up, it is called day" and so on.
(source: Haug's Aitreya Brahmana Volume II. p. 242).
The Indian astronomer, Aryabhata lived in during the period in which the Surya Siddhanta was composed. He was born in 476 and reputedly completed his famous work, Aryabhatiya, at the age of twenty-three. A concise and brilliant work of astronomy and mathematics.
The Aryabhatiya introduced certain new concepts, like Aryabhata's new epicyclic theory, the sphericity of the earth, its rotation on its axis and revolution around the sun, the true explanation of eclipses and methods of forecasting them with accuracy, and the correct length of the year were his outstanding contributions. The Arabs preserved the theory of sphericity of earth, and Pierre d'Ailly employed it in 1410 in his map, which was used by Columbus.
As regards the stars being stationary, Aryabhatta says:
"The starry vault is fixed. It is the earth which, moving round its axis, again and again causes the rising and setting of planets and stars." He starts the question: "Why do the stars seem to move? and himself replies: "As a person in a vessel, while moving forwards sses an immovable object moving backwards, in the same manner do the stars, however immovable, seem to move daily."
The Polar days and nights of six months are also described by him. T. E. Colebrooke says: "Aryabhatta affirmed the diurnal revolutions of the earth on its axis. He possessed the true theory of the causes of solar and lunar eclipses and disregarded the imaginary dark planets of mythologists, affirming the moon and primary planets to be essentially dark and only illuminated by the sun."
(source: T. E. Colebrooke's Essays, Appendix G. p. 467). For more refer to Surya Siddhanta.
Centuries ago Aryabhatta told Pluto is not a planet
"Indian astrology did not include Pluto as a planet and the latest announcement by leading global astronomers after a marathon week-long meeting at Prague on Thursday only endorsed the Indian mathematical astrology of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira in the sixth century," eminent mathematical astrologer Mangal Prasad told PTI. "Western astrology uses Pluto as a planet while Pluto was always out of Indian astrology and we do not use it in our calculations. This is the practice from the days of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira," Prasad said.
"Indian astrology is mathematically concerned with the nine planets, two of which are Rahu and Ketu that are nothing but derivatives from the diameter of the Earth, which is a circle having a value Pi (22/7) imbedded in the equator of earth," he said.
"This was discovered and mathematically shown by Aryabhatta and Varahamihira in the sixth century during the golden period of the Guptas," said Prasad, the author of books based on the work of the two great sixth century scientists.Indian astrology is concerned more with astronomy and the derivations are from the equator of the Earth, diameter of the moon, the solar year and how the planets are viewed in the northern lattitudinal region during January and February, soon after the sun has crossed the Tropic of Capricon and moved towards the northern part of the hemisphere.
(source: Pluto demotion vindicates Aryabhatta - ibnlive.com).
As regards to the size of the earth, it is said: "The circumference of the earth is 4,967 yojanas and its diameter is 1,581 1/24 yojanas. A yojanas is equal to five English miles, the circumference of the earth would therefore be 24, 835 miles, and its diameter 7, 905 5/24 miles.
The Yajur Veda says that the earth is kept in space owing to the superior attraction of the sun. The theory of gravity is thus described in the Siddhanta Shiromani centuries before Newton was born:
"The earth, owing to its force of gravity, draws all things towards itself, and so they seem to fall towards the earth." etc..
As regards to the solar and lunar eclipses it is said: "When the earth in its rotation come between the sun and the moon, and the shadow of the earth falls on the moon, the phenomenon is called lunar eclipse, and when the moon comes between the sun and earth the sun seems as if it was being cut off - this is solar eclipse.
The following is taken from Varahamihira's observations on the moon:
"One half of the moon, whose orbit lies between the sun and the earth, is always bright by the sun's rays; the other half is dark by its own shadows, like the two sides of a pot standing in the sunshine."
About the eclipses, he says: "The true explanation of the phenomenon is this: in an eclipse of the moon, he enters into the earth's shadow; in a solar eclipse the same thing happens to the sun. Hence the commencement of a lunar eclipse does not take place from the west side, nor that of the solar eclipse from the east."
(source: Brihat Samhita Chapter V v. 8).
Brahmagupta who was born in 598 and worked in Ujjain, foreshadowed Newton by declaring that " all things fall to the earth by a law of nature, for it is the nature of the earth to attract and keep things". But the law of gravitational itself was not anticipated.
Recognition of the superiority of the Vedic mathematics was also recorded as long as 662 A.D. by Severus Sebokht, the Bishop of Qinnesrin in North Syria. As reported in Indian Studies in Honor of Charles Rockwell (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. Edited by W. E. Clark, 1929), Sebokht wrote that the Indian discoveries in astronomy were more ingenious than those of the Greeks or Babylonians, and their numerical (decimal) system surpasses description.
"I will omit all discussion of the science of the Hindus [Indians], a people not the same as Syrians, their subtle discoveries in the science of astronomy, discoveries more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians; their valuable method of calculation [the decimal system]; their computing that surpasses description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe because they speak Greek, that they have reached the limits of science should know these things, they would be convinced that there are also others who know something."
(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp. World Relief Network ISBN: 0961741066 p 22)
The celebrated European astronomer, John Playfair (1748-1819) says: "The Brahmin obtains his result with wonderful certainty and expedition in astronomy."
(source: Playfair on the astronomy of the Hindus. Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Volume II. p. 138-139).
Professor Sir M. Williams wrote: "It is their science of astronomy by which the (Hindus) heap billions upon millions, trillions upon billions of years, and reckoning up ages upon ages, eons upon eons, with even more audacity than modern geologists and astronomers. In short, an astronomical Hindu ventures on arithmetical conceptions quite beyond the mental dimensions of anyone who feels himself incompetent to attempt a task of measuring infinity."
Mrs. Charlotte Manning exclaimed: "The Hindus had the widest range of mind of which man is capable."
Bramin's Observatory At Benares - By Sir Robert Barker
Benares in the East Indies, one of the principal seminiaries of the Bramins or priests of the original Gentoos of Hindostan, continues still to be the place of resort of that sect of people; and there are many publick charities, hospitals, and pagodas, where some thousands of them now reside. Having frequently heard that the ancient Brahmins had a knowledge of astronomy, and being confirmed in this by their information of an approaching eclipse both of the Sun and Moon, I made inquiry, when at that place in the year 1772, among the principal Bramins, to endeavor to get some information relative to the manner in which they were acquainted of an approaching eclipse.
(source: Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century - By Dharampal).
Sun the center of the Solar System
Dick Teresi has observed that:
"The Vedas recognized the sun as the source of light and warmth, the source of life, and center of creation, and the center of the spheres. This perception may have planted a seed, leading Indian thinkers to entertain the idea of heliocentricity long before some Greeks thought of it. An ancient Sanskrit couplet also contemplates the idea of multiple suns:
"Sarva Dishanaam, Suryaham Suryaha, Surya."
Roughly translated this means, "There are suns in all directions, the night sky being full of them," suggesting that early sky watchers may have realized that the visible stars are similar in kind to the sun. A hymn of the Rig Veda, the Taittriya Brahmana, extols, nakshatravidya (nakshatra means stars; vidya, knowledge)."
"Two thousand years before Pythagoras, philosophers in northern India had understood that gravitation held the solar system together, and that therefore the sun, the most massive object, had to be at its center. "
(source: Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science - By Dick Teresi p. 1 and 130). For more refer to Surya Siddhanta.
Ancient Indians knew Atlantic Ocean
Buddhist Jataka stories wrote about large Indian ships carrying seven hundred people. In the Artha Sastra, Kautilya wrote about the Board of Shipping and the Commissioner of Port who supervised sea traffic. The Harivamsa informs that the first geographical survey of the world was performed during the period of Vaivasvata. The towns, villages and demarcation of agricultural land of that time were charted on maps. Brahmanda Purana provides the best and most detailed description of world map drawn on a flat surface using an accurate scale. Padma Purana says that world maps were prepared and maintained in book form and kept with care and safety in chests.
Surya Siddhanta speaks about construction of wooden globe of earth and marking of horizontal circles, equatorial circles and further divisions. Some Puranas say that the map making had great practical value for the administrative, navigational and military purposes. Hence the method of making them would not be explained in general texts accessible to the public and were ever kept secret. Surya Siddhanta says that the art of cartography is the secret of gods. This being the general thinking at those times, yet, there was one group of people who realized that the maps or the secret texts that contained the geographical surveys will not last a very long time. Only cryptology using words and names would last longer than any.
(source: Ancient Indians knew Atlantic Ocean - By Dr. V.Siva Prasad Retired Professor of Engineering. Andhra University, India).
Earthquakes
and Meteorology
|
|
|
The concept of
"earthquake clouds", has been dealt with in detail in the 32nd
chapter of Varahamihira's Brihat Samhita.
The greatness of philosopher, mathematician and astronomer Varahamihira (505-587 AD) is widely acknowledged. The Ujjain-born scholar was one of the Navaratnas in the court of King Vikramaditya Chandragupta II. His works, Pancha-Siddhantika (The Five Astronomical Canons) and Brihat Samhita (The Great Compilation), are considered seminal texts on ancient Indian astronomy and astrology. Varahamihira was a celebrated astronomer-astrologer-mathematician sought to study earthquakes on the Indian subcontinent. He drew correlations between terrestrial earth, the atmosphere and planetary influences. He described earth as a mass floating on water and spoke of unusual cloud formations and abnormal animal behavior as precursors to earthquakes." What has astonished scientists and Vedic scholars here and has renewed interest in the Brihat Samhita, are references to unusual "earthquake clouds" as precursor to earthquakes. The 32nd chapter of the manuscript is devoted to signs of earthquakes and correlates earthquakes with cosmic and planetary influences, underground water and undersea activities, unusual cloud formations, and the abnormal behavior of animals. "I find it rather odd that the description of earthquake clouds in Brihat Samhita matches the observations made by Zhonghao Shaou at the Earthquake Prediction Centre in Pasadena, California," said B D Kulkarni, head of the National Chemical Laboratory's Chemical Engineering Division. Varahamihira categorises earthquakes into different kinds and says that the indications of one particular kind will appear in the form of unusual cloud formations a week before its occurrence: "Its indications appearing a week before are the following: Huge clouds resembling blue lily, bees and collyrium in colour, rumbling pleasantly, and shining with flashes of lightning, will pour down slender lines of water resembling sharp clouds. An earthquake of this circle will kill those that are dependent on the seas and rivers; and it will lead to excessive rains." (source: A temblor from ancient Indian treasure trove?). Angirasa’s Tract on Meteorology Maharishi Angirasa, whose name occurs in the Puranas frequently, is the Author of the interesting work on Cloud formation named “Meghotpatti-Prakarna.” This book contains detailed descriptions regarding formation of water by electric discharges during thunder and lightning; thunder bolts and their description; also different varieties of lightning, some of which are beneficial as they are water forming while others are ‘destructive’(as they contain electric charge which is killing, causing thunder-bolts). There is another similar book by the same author Maharishi Angirasa called “Karaka Prakarana.” The title signifies “Thunders and thunderbolts.” But in fact, the book deals with different forms of electric discharges and energy-emissions from the Sun as well as from the atmosphere; also described in the book are the different properties of sun’s rays and how different kinds of cloud-formations are caused by the different rays of the sun. This second book is strikingly original in its theories about the origin of various precious stones and crystals in the earth which result from different kinds of Solar flares or Sun’s radiations. It has a very interesting theory regarding the origin of insects, different animals and plants which occur as sudden outbursts at certain times and again as suddenly disappear with the change in atmosphere at other times (like locust swarms, for instance). These sudden waves of seasonal or periodic changes in plant and animal life, according to Angirasa Rishi, are caused by different kinds of weather which in turn, is a result of difference of Sun’s rays. All such atmospheric changes, cloud-formations, thunder and lightning, outbursts of plant and vegetable life, electric discharges in the atmosphere, are all dealt with in this marvelous book “Karakaprakarana” which is a masterly analysis of the Sun’s rays. (source: Hinduism in the Space Age - by E. Vedavyas Published for Vedavyasa Bharathi, University of Vedic Sciences, Yoga Brotherhood of America (Inc) USA; ASIN: 8174600000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 8174600000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting p. 143-144). |
Logic
in Ancient India
Rabindra
Chandra Dutt (1912- ) says: “Comapring dates, we are disposed to say of this as
of many other sciences, the Hindus invented logic, the Greeks perfected it.” We
must not forget the historical fact that there was a close intercourse between
the Greeks and the Hindus from the time of Pythagoras, who, it is said, went to
India to gather the wisdom of the Hindus. Alexander himself was so deeply
impressed, when he heard about the Hindu philosophers, that he desired to make
their acquaintances. It is also said that he brought back many Hindu
philosophers back to Greece with him. These two schools of philosophy, the
Vaisheshika and the Nyaya, supplement each other, and have at present many
followers in some parts of India, especially in Bengal and among the Jains.
Then comes the Sankya system of Kapila. Kapila lived about 700 B.C. He is called the father of the evolution theory in India. His system is more like the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. He rejected the atomic theory by tracing the origin of atoms to one eternal cosmic energy, which he called Prakriti (latin, procreatrix, the creative energy). He maintained that the whole phenomenal universe has evolved out of one cosmic energy which is eternal. Kapila defined atoms as force centers, which correspond to the Ions and Electrons of modern science. It was Kapila who for the first time explained creation as the result of attraction and repulsion, which literally means love and hatred of atoms, as Empedocles puts it.
The Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, in short, is devoted entirely to the systematic, logical, and scientific explanation of the process of cosmic evolution from that primordial Prakriti, or eternal Energy. There is no ancient philosophy in the world which was not indebted to the Sankhya system of Kapila. The idea of evolution which the ancient Greeks and neo-Platonists had can be traced back to the influence of this Sankhya school of thought.
E. W. Hopkins says: “Plato is full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him, but taken from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious philosophical ideas of Pythagoras are current in India. (L. Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of change. "
And again he writes: "Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the Sankhyan system, before they became so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous three qualities of the Sankhyan reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes.'
In his Hindu Philosophy John Davies, speaks of Kapila’s system as the first recorded system of philosophy in the world, and calls it “the earliest attempt on record to give an answer, from reason alone, to the mysterious questions which arise in every thoughtful mind about the origin of the world, the nature and relations of man and his future destiny.”
Furthermore, Mr. Davies says, in reference to the German philosophy of Schopenhauer and of Hartmann, that it is “a reproduction of the philosophic system of Kapila in its materialistic part, presented in a more elaborate form, but on the same fundamental lines. In this respect the human intellect has gone over the same ground that it occupied more than two thousand years ago; but on a more important question it has taken a step in retreat. Kapila recognized fully the existence of a soul in man, forming indeed his proper nature, - the absolute of Fichte, - distinct from matter and immortal; but our latest philosophy, both here and in Germany, can see in man only a highly developed organization.”
It is most startling to find that the ultimate conclusions of this Sankhya system harmonize and coincide with those of modern science. It says:
1. Something cannot come out of nothing
2. The effect lies in the cause, that is, the effect is the cause reproduced
3. Destruction means the reversion of an effect to its caused state
4. The laws of nature are uniform and regular throughout
5. The building up of the cosmos is the result of the evolution of the cosmic energy. These are some of the conclusions which Kapila arrived at through observation and experiment, and by following strictly the rules of inductive logic.
(source: Hindu Philosophy: The Sânkhya Kârikâ of Îúwara Krishna. An Exposition of the System of Kapila - By John Davies Elibron Classics reprint. Paperback. New. Based on 1881 edition by Trьbner & Co., London).
Then comes the Sankya system of Kapila. Kapila lived about 700 B.C. He is called the father of the evolution theory in India. His system is more like the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. He rejected the atomic theory by tracing the origin of atoms to one eternal cosmic energy, which he called Prakriti (latin, procreatrix, the creative energy). He maintained that the whole phenomenal universe has evolved out of one cosmic energy which is eternal. Kapila defined atoms as force centers, which correspond to the Ions and Electrons of modern science. It was Kapila who for the first time explained creation as the result of attraction and repulsion, which literally means love and hatred of atoms, as Empedocles puts it.
The Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, in short, is devoted entirely to the systematic, logical, and scientific explanation of the process of cosmic evolution from that primordial Prakriti, or eternal Energy. There is no ancient philosophy in the world which was not indebted to the Sankhya system of Kapila. The idea of evolution which the ancient Greeks and neo-Platonists had can be traced back to the influence of this Sankhya school of thought.
E. W. Hopkins says: “Plato is full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him, but taken from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious philosophical ideas of Pythagoras are current in India. (L. Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of change. "
And again he writes: "Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the Sankhyan system, before they became so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous three qualities of the Sankhyan reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes.'
In his Hindu Philosophy John Davies, speaks of Kapila’s system as the first recorded system of philosophy in the world, and calls it “the earliest attempt on record to give an answer, from reason alone, to the mysterious questions which arise in every thoughtful mind about the origin of the world, the nature and relations of man and his future destiny.”
Furthermore, Mr. Davies says, in reference to the German philosophy of Schopenhauer and of Hartmann, that it is “a reproduction of the philosophic system of Kapila in its materialistic part, presented in a more elaborate form, but on the same fundamental lines. In this respect the human intellect has gone over the same ground that it occupied more than two thousand years ago; but on a more important question it has taken a step in retreat. Kapila recognized fully the existence of a soul in man, forming indeed his proper nature, - the absolute of Fichte, - distinct from matter and immortal; but our latest philosophy, both here and in Germany, can see in man only a highly developed organization.”
It is most startling to find that the ultimate conclusions of this Sankhya system harmonize and coincide with those of modern science. It says:
1. Something cannot come out of nothing
2. The effect lies in the cause, that is, the effect is the cause reproduced
3. Destruction means the reversion of an effect to its caused state
4. The laws of nature are uniform and regular throughout
5. The building up of the cosmos is the result of the evolution of the cosmic energy. These are some of the conclusions which Kapila arrived at through observation and experiment, and by following strictly the rules of inductive logic.
(source: Hindu Philosophy: The Sânkhya Kârikâ of Îúwara Krishna. An Exposition of the System of Kapila - By John Davies Elibron Classics reprint. Paperback. New. Based on 1881 edition by Trьbner & Co., London).
Art
and Architecture
American historian
Will Durant has said, " Before Indian art, as before every phase of Indian
civilization, we stand in humble wonder at its age and its continuity. Probably
no other nation known to us has ever had so exuberant a variety of arts."
"Textiles were woven with an artistry never since excelled; from the days
of Caesar's to our own the fabrics of India have bee prized by all the world.
Every garment woven in India has a beauty that comes only of a very ancient,
and now almost instinctive, art."
Sir John Marshall, one of the acknowledged authority of the Indus Valley, has said,
" To know Indian art in India alone, is to know but half its story. To apprehend it to the full, we must follow it in the wake of Buddhism, to central Asia, China, and Japan; we much watch its assuming new forms and breaking new forms and breaking into new beauties as it spread over Tibet and Burma, and Siam; we must gaze in awe at the unexampled grandeur of its creations in Cambodia and Java. In each of these countries, Indian art encounters a different racial genius, a different local environment, and under their modifying influence it takes on a different garb. "
Indian architecture can be traced to the Indus Valley civilization. The great Bath at Mohenjodaro is finely built brick structure with a layer of bitumen as waterproofing, and adjoining well that supplied water and an outlet that led to a large drain. Surrounding the bath are porticoes and set of rooms, while as stairway led to an upper level. The well planned residential areas were laid out on a grid pattern ,with main thoroughfares aligned north-south. The people lived in multi-roomed houses, with a bathing room which were connected to a street drain. An estimated 700 wells supplied Mohenjodaro residents with water and even the smallest house was connected to a drainage system. The impressive infrastructure of the Indus cities suggests an effective central authority. The Indus people adorned themselves with beads and ornaments of shell and terracotta, as well as silver and gold necklaces.
During the Gupta period, the Golden Age of India, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta Ellora and Ajanta Ellora and Ajanta were dug out and frescoes painted. The Mighty caves of Ellora were carve out of solid rock with the stupendous Kailasa temple in the center; it is difficult to imagine how human beings conceived this or having conceived it, gave body and shape to their conception. The caves of Elephanta, with the powerful and subtle Trimurti, date also to this period.
K M Pannikkar (1896-1963) has observed: "the two hundred years of the Gupta rule may be said to mark the climax of Hindu imperial tradition."
(source: Indian Heritage and Culture - By P. R. Rao Publisher: Sterling ISBN: 81-207-0930-6 p. 21)
"Stupendous work," wrote British artist James Wales in 1792 of his first view of the Buddhist rock cave temple at Karli. Carved in the face of the Western Ghats, the steep hills separating the coastal plain and the central plateau southeast of Bombay, the temple dated from the first century A.D. Unlike anything Wales had ever seen before, Karli, along with other cave complex in the area, had been hollowed out of the rock by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains as places of worship and monastic residence through the ages.
Wales arrived in Bombay, intrigued by sketches he had seen of a rock temple on the island of Elephanta. The images inspired Wales to visit the great cave there with its high, pillared hall, housing a towering three-headed bust of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Wales took meticulous measurements, copied inscriptions, and sketched the ornate interior of the caves. Following Wales's lead, artist Henry Salt visited Karli in 1804. A companion wrote of their awe at coming upon the temple: "The entrance to the temple was through a very lofty gateway, I should suppose about one hundred feet high, covered with carved work to the summit." So much earth and rock had been gouged by hand, then carved with great delicacy, all with rudimentary tools, that the explorers were overwhelmed by the devotion of the followers of the ancient faith.
(source: What Life Was Like in the Jewel of the Crown: British India AD 1600-1905 - By The Editors of Time-Life Books. p. 106).
Shiva Nataraja: According to Epstein, "Shiva dances, creating the world and destroying it, his large rhythms conjure up a vast eons of time, and his movements have a relentless magical power of incantation. Our European allegories are banal and pointless by comparison with these profound works, devoid of the trappings of symbolism, concentrating on the essential, the essentially plastic."
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995 p. 214).
For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
Also the group of monuments at Mamallapuram in South India. The Ajanta frescoes are very beautiful. They take one back to some distant dream-like and yet very real world.
Hindu Art in the Old Indian Colonies:
It is the magnificent art and architecture of the old Indian colonies that the Indian influence is most marked.
At Ankor Wat, bas-reliefs of the legends of Lord Rama and Krishna are reproduced. Of Angkor, Mr. Osbert Stilwell has written: " Let it be said immediately that Angkor, as it stands, ranks as chief wonder of the world today, one of the summits to which human genius has aspired in stone, infinitely more impressive, lovely and, as well, romantic....The material remains of a civilization that flashed its wings, of the utmost brilliance, for six centuries, and then perished so utterly that even his name has died from the lips of man."
"From Persia to the Chinese Sea," writes Sylvain Levi, "from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales and her civilization. She has left indelible imprints on one-fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that ignorance has refused her for a long time and to hold her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of Humanity."
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995 p .208- 210). For more information please refer to chapter on Suvarnabhumi).
In Shiva’s temple, stone pillars make music - an architectural rarity
Shiva is the Destroyer and Lord of Rhythm in the Hindu trinity. But here he is Lord Nellaiyappar, the Protector of Paddy, as the name of the town itself testifies — nel meaning paddy and veli meaning fence in Tamil. Prefixed to nelveli is tiru, which signifies something special — like the exceptional role of the Lord of Rhythm or the unique musical stone pillars in the temple.In the Nellaiyappar temple, gentle taps on the cluster of columns hewn out of a single piece of rock can produce the keynotes of Indian classical music. “Hardly anybody knows the intricacies of how these were constructed to resonate a certain frequency. The more aesthetically inclined with some musical knowledge can bring out the rudiments of some rare ragas from these pillars.”
The Nelliyappar temple chronicle, Thirukovil Varalaaru, says the nadaththai ezhuppum kal thoongal — stone pillars that produce music — were set in place in the 7th century during the reign of Pandyan king Nindraseer Nedumaran. Archaeologists date the temple before 7th century and say it was built by successive rulers of the Pandyan dynasty that ruled over the southern parts of Tamil Nadu from Madurai. Tirunelveli, about 150 km south of Madurai, served as their subsidiary capital.
Each huge musical pillar carved from one piece of rock comprises a cluster of smaller columns and stands testimony to a unique understanding of the “physics and mathematics of sound." Well-known music researcher and scholar Prof. Sambamurthy Shastry, the “marvellous musical stone pillars” are “without a parallel” in any other part of the country. “What is unique about the musical stone pillars in the Tiruelveli Nellaiyappar temple is the fact you have a cluster as large as 48 musical pillars carved from one piece of stone, a delight to both the ears and the eyes,” The pillars at the Nellaiyappar temple are a combination of the Shruti and Laya types.
This is an architectural rarity and a sublime beauty to be cherished and preserved.
(source: In Shiva’s temple, pillars make music - telegraphindia.com).
Sir John Marshall, one of the acknowledged authority of the Indus Valley, has said,
" To know Indian art in India alone, is to know but half its story. To apprehend it to the full, we must follow it in the wake of Buddhism, to central Asia, China, and Japan; we much watch its assuming new forms and breaking new forms and breaking into new beauties as it spread over Tibet and Burma, and Siam; we must gaze in awe at the unexampled grandeur of its creations in Cambodia and Java. In each of these countries, Indian art encounters a different racial genius, a different local environment, and under their modifying influence it takes on a different garb. "
Indian architecture can be traced to the Indus Valley civilization. The great Bath at Mohenjodaro is finely built brick structure with a layer of bitumen as waterproofing, and adjoining well that supplied water and an outlet that led to a large drain. Surrounding the bath are porticoes and set of rooms, while as stairway led to an upper level. The well planned residential areas were laid out on a grid pattern ,with main thoroughfares aligned north-south. The people lived in multi-roomed houses, with a bathing room which were connected to a street drain. An estimated 700 wells supplied Mohenjodaro residents with water and even the smallest house was connected to a drainage system. The impressive infrastructure of the Indus cities suggests an effective central authority. The Indus people adorned themselves with beads and ornaments of shell and terracotta, as well as silver and gold necklaces.
During the Gupta period, the Golden Age of India, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta Ellora and Ajanta Ellora and Ajanta were dug out and frescoes painted. The Mighty caves of Ellora were carve out of solid rock with the stupendous Kailasa temple in the center; it is difficult to imagine how human beings conceived this or having conceived it, gave body and shape to their conception. The caves of Elephanta, with the powerful and subtle Trimurti, date also to this period.
K M Pannikkar (1896-1963) has observed: "the two hundred years of the Gupta rule may be said to mark the climax of Hindu imperial tradition."
(source: Indian Heritage and Culture - By P. R. Rao Publisher: Sterling ISBN: 81-207-0930-6 p. 21)
"Stupendous work," wrote British artist James Wales in 1792 of his first view of the Buddhist rock cave temple at Karli. Carved in the face of the Western Ghats, the steep hills separating the coastal plain and the central plateau southeast of Bombay, the temple dated from the first century A.D. Unlike anything Wales had ever seen before, Karli, along with other cave complex in the area, had been hollowed out of the rock by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains as places of worship and monastic residence through the ages.
Wales arrived in Bombay, intrigued by sketches he had seen of a rock temple on the island of Elephanta. The images inspired Wales to visit the great cave there with its high, pillared hall, housing a towering three-headed bust of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Wales took meticulous measurements, copied inscriptions, and sketched the ornate interior of the caves. Following Wales's lead, artist Henry Salt visited Karli in 1804. A companion wrote of their awe at coming upon the temple: "The entrance to the temple was through a very lofty gateway, I should suppose about one hundred feet high, covered with carved work to the summit." So much earth and rock had been gouged by hand, then carved with great delicacy, all with rudimentary tools, that the explorers were overwhelmed by the devotion of the followers of the ancient faith.
(source: What Life Was Like in the Jewel of the Crown: British India AD 1600-1905 - By The Editors of Time-Life Books. p. 106).
Shiva Nataraja: According to Epstein, "Shiva dances, creating the world and destroying it, his large rhythms conjure up a vast eons of time, and his movements have a relentless magical power of incantation. Our European allegories are banal and pointless by comparison with these profound works, devoid of the trappings of symbolism, concentrating on the essential, the essentially plastic."
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995 p. 214).
For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
Also the group of monuments at Mamallapuram in South India. The Ajanta frescoes are very beautiful. They take one back to some distant dream-like and yet very real world.
Hindu Art in the Old Indian Colonies:
It is the magnificent art and architecture of the old Indian colonies that the Indian influence is most marked.
At Ankor Wat, bas-reliefs of the legends of Lord Rama and Krishna are reproduced. Of Angkor, Mr. Osbert Stilwell has written: " Let it be said immediately that Angkor, as it stands, ranks as chief wonder of the world today, one of the summits to which human genius has aspired in stone, infinitely more impressive, lovely and, as well, romantic....The material remains of a civilization that flashed its wings, of the utmost brilliance, for six centuries, and then perished so utterly that even his name has died from the lips of man."
"From Persia to the Chinese Sea," writes Sylvain Levi, "from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales and her civilization. She has left indelible imprints on one-fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that ignorance has refused her for a long time and to hold her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of Humanity."
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995 p .208- 210). For more information please refer to chapter on Suvarnabhumi).
In Shiva’s temple, stone pillars make music - an architectural rarity
Shiva is the Destroyer and Lord of Rhythm in the Hindu trinity. But here he is Lord Nellaiyappar, the Protector of Paddy, as the name of the town itself testifies — nel meaning paddy and veli meaning fence in Tamil. Prefixed to nelveli is tiru, which signifies something special — like the exceptional role of the Lord of Rhythm or the unique musical stone pillars in the temple.In the Nellaiyappar temple, gentle taps on the cluster of columns hewn out of a single piece of rock can produce the keynotes of Indian classical music. “Hardly anybody knows the intricacies of how these were constructed to resonate a certain frequency. The more aesthetically inclined with some musical knowledge can bring out the rudiments of some rare ragas from these pillars.”
The Nelliyappar temple chronicle, Thirukovil Varalaaru, says the nadaththai ezhuppum kal thoongal — stone pillars that produce music — were set in place in the 7th century during the reign of Pandyan king Nindraseer Nedumaran. Archaeologists date the temple before 7th century and say it was built by successive rulers of the Pandyan dynasty that ruled over the southern parts of Tamil Nadu from Madurai. Tirunelveli, about 150 km south of Madurai, served as their subsidiary capital.
Each huge musical pillar carved from one piece of rock comprises a cluster of smaller columns and stands testimony to a unique understanding of the “physics and mathematics of sound." Well-known music researcher and scholar Prof. Sambamurthy Shastry, the “marvellous musical stone pillars” are “without a parallel” in any other part of the country. “What is unique about the musical stone pillars in the Tiruelveli Nellaiyappar temple is the fact you have a cluster as large as 48 musical pillars carved from one piece of stone, a delight to both the ears and the eyes,” The pillars at the Nellaiyappar temple are a combination of the Shruti and Laya types.
This is an architectural rarity and a sublime beauty to be cherished and preserved.
(source: In Shiva’s temple, pillars make music - telegraphindia.com).
Percy Brown has remarked, "Konark (Temple) should be the wonder, not the Taj Mahal".
Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India (1890-1905) was the first British ruler to admire Indian civilization and to acknowledge that India’s architectural heritage constituted ‘the greatest galaxy monuments in the world’ As well as his contemporary, the first man to attempt an exposition of Indian art, was Dr. Ernest Binfield Havell.
Havell’s is not a name writ large in the annals of the British Raj. He came to India as principal to the Madras College of Art in the 1890s and left as principal of the Calcutta College of Art some 20 years later. But during this period his work and writings exercised considerable influence both in India and in the West.
Havell (1861-1934) insisted that the Islamic architecture in India was influenced by the Hindus. He supplied the following quotes from the opening quotes of his book, Indian Architecture - Its Psychology, Structure and History from the First Mohammedan Invasion to the Present Day. These give evidence at the admiration the Muslims had for Indian architecture: " Albiruni, the Arab historian, expressed his astonishment at and admiration for the work of Hindu builders. "Our people, he said, "when they see them, wonder at them and are unable to describe them, much less to construct anything like them."
Abdul Fazal (wrote), "It passes our conception of things, few indeed in the whole world can compare with them."
On page 321, Historian Vincent Smith in his book Akbar the Great Moghul, says:
" It is surprising to find unmistakable Hindu features in the architecture of the tomb of a most zealous Musalman saint, but the whole structure suggests Hindu feeling and nobody can mistake the Hindu origin of the column and struts of the porch."
(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 280-9).
Islamic architecture was one of rapid capitulation to the superior indigenous art of India. Akbar was not the exception but the classic example. His wholesale adoption of Hindu styles and his patronage of Indian craftsmen marked the end of a brief experiment with non-Indian forms (Tughlak’s tomb for example), and the beginning of one of the greatest periods of purely Indian building.
Taking the bull firmly by the horn Havell turned to the classic age of Moghul architecture, the reign of Shah Jehan (1628-58), and in particular to none other than the Taj Mahal. The great dome of subtle contour, the soaring minarets, the formal Persian garden, the chaste inlay work and tracery, the clustered cupolas – nothing, surely, could be more typically Mohammedan. But Havell was a determined polemicist and uniquely qualified scholar. His first point was that whatever the inspiration, ‘there is one thing which has struck every writer about the Taj Mahal and that is its dissimilarity to any other monument in any other part of the world..’
Outside India, its supposed precursor, Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, or the other two white marble tombs, those of Itimad-ud-Daula in Agra and Salim Chishti at Fatehpur Sikri, were so inferior as to be unworthy of comparison. There was no precedent in the strictly non-representational art of Islam. If the inspiration for the building was to be sought in sculpture rather than the architecture, then it must be sought in Indian sculpture. The purity of line and subtlety of contour which characterized it were precisely the qualities that distinguished the Mathura Buddhas or the Khajuraho apsaras.
There is also evidence that the building known as Humayun's Tomb is none other than a captured Lakshmi Temple. Abul Fazal says Humayun is buried in Sirhind. French writer G. Le Bon has published in his book The World of Ancient India (Publisher: Editions Minerva - Spain Date of Publication: 1974) a photo of marble footprints found in the building. He describes them as the footprints of Lord Vishnu. This is typical of a Vedic temple, to have the footprints of the main Divinity of the shrine. In this case, it is the husband of Lakshmi, Lord Vishnu.
And only an Hindu artist with his purely conceptual approach could have created a building that was so blatantly seductive.
It was a measure of the Taj’s uniqueness that some Englishmen suggested that its designer might have been one of the Europeans employed by Shah Jehan. It was just another example of foreigners trying to find a non-Indian inspiration for anything in Indian culture that took their fancy. James Todd had mentioned a Jain temple of the fifteenth century with something similar. Besides, the records showed that the inlay artists employed on the Taj were all Hindus.
The gardens, too, which add so much to the staging of the Taj, were the work of a Hindu, from Kashmir. Havell had studied the Silpa-sastras - the traditional manuals of the Hindu builder – and believed that even the bulbous dome conformed more closely to Indian ideals than those of Samarkhand. There was even a sculptural representation of such a dome in one of the Ajanta cave temples. Moreover, the internal roofing arrangement of four domes grouped round the fifth, central, dome conformed exactly to the panch-ratna, the ‘five jewel’ system so common to Indian buildings of all sorts.
All this was not enough to shake the traditional views, but Havell was not finished. In the 19th century, as now, people were inclined to concentrate too much on the buildings of Delhi and nearby Agra. For most, the style were the sum total of Islamic architecture, because they were inclined to concentrate too much on the buildings of Delhi and nearby Agra. Havell, was convinced that away from the political turmoil of north-west India, the architectural continuity before and after the Mohammedan conquest was unbroken; and that it was from these provincial centers that the ideals and craftsmen used by Shah Jehan had been drawn. In Gujarat, some of the mosques of the first Mohammedan dynasty are indistinguishable from temples; also in Gujarat, white marble had been used extensively by both Hindu and Jain.
At Bijapur the Mohammedans also inherited a local building tradition, for nearby lay the great Hindu capital of Vijayanagar. European accounts of Vijayanagar before its destruction only hint at its architectural wonders, but certainly the dome and the pointed arch were in general use. It was no coincidence that the great building period in Mohammedan Bijapur began immediately after the fall of Vijayanagar. Encouraged to concentrate on the dome, the erstwhile Hindu architects produced first the Bijapur Jama Masjid and then the giant Gol Gumbaz with one of the largest domes in the world.
According to Havell, it was on the skills of these master dome builders that Shah Jehan drew for the Taj Mahal.
The Rajput palaces, are arguably the most impressive and certainly the most romantic group of buildings in India. For, as Havell rightly observed, there could be no argument that in secular architecture the styles of Hindu and Mohammedan, of Rajput and Moghul, were one and the same. Moreover, the origins of this style were wholly Indian.
Witness the great fifteenth-century Man Singh palace in the Gwalior fort.
‘One of the finest specimen of Hindu architecture that I have seen…the noblest specimen of Hindu domestic architecture in northern India.” Noted General Sir Alexander Cunningham. Babur, the first of the Moghuls, evidently agreed. His official diary shows that he admired and coveted this building above all others in India. In due course it became the inspiration for all the palaces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for the Moghul forts of Delhi and Agra as well as for the Rajput forts of Orchha, Amber and Jodhpur.
“ If our poets had sung them (wrote Havell of the Rajput palaces), our painters pictured them, our heroes and famous men had lived in them, their romantic beauty would be on every man’s lips in Europe. Libraries of architectural treatises would have been written on them.”
Bishop Heber had been equally impressed when he toured the palace of Amber a century earlier.
“ I have seen many royal palaces containing larger and more stately rooms – many the architecture of which was in purer taste, and some which have covered a greater extent of ground – but for varied and picturesque effect, for richness of carving, for wild beauty of situation, for the number and romantic singularity of the apartments, and the strangeness of finding such a building in such a place, I am unable to compare anything with Amber….The idea of an enchanted castle occurred, I believe, to all of us, and I could not help thinking what magnificent use Ariosto or Sir Walter Scott would have made such a building. “
James Ferguson, historian of India’s architecture, was not blind to the romantic appeal of the Rajput palaces. He praised their settings and lack of affectation.
Havell noted the way these buildings seemed to grow organically out of the rocks on which they stood ‘ without self-conscious striving after effect.’ Thus, above all, their romantic appeal; but there is also a grandeur and an elegance of detail beside which the Moghul palaces pale into mere prettiness. Here was Hindu architecture both more virile and more noble than its Islamic equivalent.
Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, thought the palaces of Datia one of the most architecturally interesting buildings in India. It is also one of the most impressive. Conceived as a single unit, unlike the Moghul palaces, it towers above the little town of Datia like the work of an extinct race of giants. Each side is about 100 yards long rises from the bare rock so subtly that it is hard to tell where nature’s work ends and man’s begins. The impression is of immense strength, and only the skyline of flattened domes and cupolas gives any hint of the treasures within. Datia was built by Rajah Bir Singh Deo in the seventeenth century. The palaces of Orchha were also his work, and here there are more painted halls and dappled pavilions as well as some of the finest carved brackets. Today hardly anyone visits these masterpieces. It is a setting one of ruination – miles of crumbling stables, overgrown gardens and forgotten temples. Forlorn masterpieces indeed.....
(source: India Discovered - By John Keay 1981. chapter 9. pg- 111-130)
For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
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