History of Science and Technology in Ancient India-The Beginnings

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (b. 1919-d. 1993) is MA, D Litt of the Calcutta University, D. Sc honoris causa of the Academy of Sciences of Moscow and the Brst Indian Member of the German Academy of Sciences, Berlin. Professor Chattopadhyaya taught Philosophy in the "City College, Calcutta for about three decades. He was a visiting Professor at several universities in India and abroad. I He is about the only contemporary Philosopher and writer of India whose works are extensively translated almost in every major Indian and foreign languages including German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese etc His published works in Bengali and English total over 56 or more including some of the extraordinary books for children and poems written by him, besides his prodigious editorial work like that of Rgveda in Bengali, Lama Taranatha's History of Buddhism in India in English, the Indological quarterly Indian Studies: Past & Present (since 1959) and the two volumes of Studies in the History of Science in India, etc Besides being elected 'National Fellow of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, member of the National Commission of the History of Science in India, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.

It is almost too much of an honour for me to be asked to contribute a foreword to this new book of Chattopadhyaya and the team of excellent scholars which he has gathered together to help him in the enterprise. When I was younger I thought I knew something about the history and the philosophies of India, but now I realise how little it ever was. Yet it is quite clear that the history of science and technology in India will bear comparison with that of all the other ancient civilisations, and I would like to congratulate the main author and all his colleagues warmly on this endeavour, which they have brought to such a successful fruition.

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya made his name in the world of learning some thirty years ago, with his book "Lokayata" in which he showed how much theoretical materialism there had been in ancient India, and how it had been systematically obscured and vilified by the theologians of all the Indian religions. He has never ceased to uphold the banner of the naturalists of India, and some twenty years later, in his book on "Science and Society...." he showed in detail how the medical men had to struggle against the religious theorists. The former were searching for the naturalistic causes of disease a point of view entirely justified by modern medical science-but the theologians always wanted to attribute diseases to the bad karma incurred in previous existences. All this could be demonstrated particularly by the nature and fate of the ancient medical book Caraka-samhita.

If there is one thing more than anything else which has characterised the work of Chattopadhyaya from the beginning, it has been his conviction of the importance of relating the history of science, technology and medicine to the social conditions which surrounded their growth.

A study in science and technology in Indian history is much more than a matter of mere academic exercise. It has pro- found significance for our national requirements, specially in these grim days through which we are passing. We shall try to explain this, beginning with some accredited admissions.

In the inaugural address to the fifty-fifth session of the Indian Science Congress (Varanasi), our prime minister observed: "We must transform an ancient tradition-bound people into a modern nation." For this purpose, she naturally looked for aid from science: "The quicker way is that of science. What do we expect of science? The immediate answer is, generally, that we seek for more advanced technologies and their application to bring material benefit and to take knowledge and training within the reach of different sections of our people, thus enabling them to produce wealth in their fields and factories and to exploit our vast untapped resources. While this must remain a primary objective of scientific endeavour in any country, we are equally aware of the importance of other aspects and of basic science."

Hence she felt anxious to report on how much her government had already done for the spread of science in this country: "It is a measure of our resolve to give science and technology an important place in our scheme of things that India has made considerable investment in stimulating their growth. The awareness of science and technology is part of our national policy and we have made strenuous efforts to give practical shape and content to this ideology in the form of institutions. We have today some thirty national research laboratories. We have more than a dozen major agricultural and medical research centres. We have seventy universities and a sophisticated atomic energy programme."

Still, the prime minister felt that there was something wrong somewhere, and hence added: "And yet we must admit that all these developments have not made a significant impression on the consciousness even of our scientists, educationists and policy planners.

In science, more than in any other human institution, it is necessary to search out the past in order to understand the present and to control the future.

Such an assertion would, at least until recently, have received scant support from working scientists. In natural science, and especially in the physical sciences, the idea is firmly held that current knowledge takes the place of and supersedes all the knowledge of the past. It is admitted that future knowledge will in turn make present knowledge obsolete, but for the moment it is the best available knowledge. All useful earlier knowledge is absorbed in that of the present; what has been left out are only the mistakes of ignorance. Briefly, in the words of Henry Ford. 'History is bunk."

Fortunately more and more scientists in our time are beginning to see the consequences of this attitude of neglect of history, and with it, necessarily, of any intelligent appreciation of the place of science in society. It is only this knowledge that can prevent the scientists, for all the prestige they enjoy, being blind and helpless pawns in the great contemporary drama of the use and misuse of science. It is true that in the recent past scientists and people at large got on very nicely in the comfortable belief that the application of science led automatically to a steady improvement in human welfare. The idea is not a very old one. It was a revolutionary and dangerous speculation in the days of Roger Bacon and was first confidently asserted by Francis Bacon 300 years later. It was only the immense and progressive changes in science and manufacture that came about with the Industrial Revolution that were to make this idea of progress an assured and lasting truth-almost a platitude-in Victorian times. It is certainly not so now, in these grim anxious days, when the power that science can give is seen to be more immediately capable of wiping out civilization and even life itself from the planet than of assuring an uninterrupted progress in the arts of peace. Though even here doubt has crept in and some neo-Malthusians fear that even curing disease dangerous on an overcrowded planet.

Whether for good or ill the importance of science today needs no emphasizing, but it does, just because of that importance, need understanding. Science is the means by which the whole of our civilization is rapidly being transformed. And science is growing; not, as in the past, steadily and imperceptibly, but rapidly, by leaps and bounds, for all to see.