Science and Technology, Medicine: History of Ancient India (Vol-9)

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The achievements of ancient India in the fields of science, technology and medicine. have been highlighted in this volume. The various dimensions of ancient Indian mathematics (including calculus), physical and chemical thoughts, astronomical ideas and notions of geography have been clearly brought forward in the 'science' section of the book. In the technology section, metallurgy has received detailed, metal-by- metal analysis and this has been supplemented by articles on water- management, textile technology, manuscript preparation, etc. Both the theoretical and surgical dimensions of the ancient Indian medical system have also been clearly discussed. On the whole, the present volume offers a detailed perspective on the issues of ancient Indian mathematical thoughts and ideas of physics, chemistry, and geography and related issues along with both the theoretical and practical features of ancient Indian medical knowledge. The articles on technology also give an objective analysis of many aspects of ancient Indian technological system.

Dilip K Chakrabarti is emeritus professor of south Asian archaeology at Cambridge University.

India is presently undergoing a multidimensional renaissance. Tremendous political, social, economic and demographic changes are underway. In the last few years, there has been a great deal of interest the world over in rising India. People are curious what India's rise means to the world. More important, people want to understand what fresh ideas India brings to the high table. It is therefore essential that Indian scholars should explain India to the world. One way to do so effectively is to understand what true India is like. There is no proper appreciation of India's history and culture even among Indians, let alone the foreigners. I would like to quote from the foreword written by Shri Ajit Doval to the earlier volumes of this series: "One can never understand a society, civilization or a nation unless its past is understood and interpreted correctly. Both by design and default, India's past has been mutated, events arbitrarily selected disproportionate to their real historic import and interpreted to substantiate a preconceived hypotheses. When myth masquerades as reality, then reality becomes the casualty".

Two books, one by BN Seal (1915) and the other by B. K. Sarkar (1918), are among the early scholarly attempts to put ancient Indian science in the context of scientific thoughts and methodology. These are path-breaking publications both in terms of textual and knowledge of the methodology of scientific research. It might be useful to draw brief attention to the contents of these volumes before discussing the present collection of essays.
BN Seal's book, The Positive Sciences of the Hindus, was mainly a quest in search of ancient Indian scientific approach and methods. Seal was an philosopher of his time.
The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigation of physical phenomena, as well as building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindu scientific ideas and methodology (e.g. the inductive method or methods of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia - in the East as well as in the West - in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire. ... Hindu philosophy on its empirical side was dominated by concepts derived from physiology and philology, just as Greek Philosophy was similarly dominated by geometrical concepts and methods. ... I have not written one line which is not supported by the clearest texts.