my speech seminar 2009

8/14/2019 My Speech Seminar 2009

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Indias Scientific Contribution to

Europe and other World Civilizations

Prior to Industrial Revolution

Many eyebrows were raised at the title of this seminar. Deep rooted disbelief

that how can earlier civilizations can be contributors to any Science, as we

understand it today? Science means rational, logical, objective thinking,

something which did not exist in the earlier people in adequate quantity.

The life of these earlier people was governed by religion i.e. superstition,

which is inheritantly, devoid of scientific temper and free will, the hall

mark and pre-requisite of scientific development. Once this premise is

accepted without debate, then West as birth place of all Science is theforgone conclusion.

Religion as anti science is 100% a modern western construct and we need to

understand this thoroughly well. Religion in this case is Christian religion and

Science means modern Western science. This incompatibility of religion with

science in the West automatically gets grafted on non-Western religions and

their relation with science. Concept of Religion in West and East differs

radically in many respects. In the Western concept of religion, it must have a

Prophet and a Book and the followers must abide by the teaching of both. In

the eastern religion specially Hinduism, the concept ofDharma , incorporatesno single Prophet or book and followers are free to choose , accept or reject

philosophy of life, which suits them best. Buddhism and Jainism have their

Prophets and books to follow but never restricted their followers to express

in Arts and Sciences of their choice. Vatsayana who wrote Kamasutra in 3rd

century was never criticized on religious grounds and there are many

commentaries written on him till 15th century. Padmasri was a Buddhist

monk and wrote a book on erotic and worldly pleasures titled

Nagarasarvasva in the 11th century. Many Jain monks authored mathematical

and other mundane scientific texts without any conflict with their religious

belief. Confucius philosophy as well as Buddhism in China never opposed or

restricted their followers from writing scientific treatises.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic or Semitic religions having

continuity at some stage in its emergence, history, spread and geography, at

least in the early stages. In case of Indian civilization same can be said about

Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism etc. This cultural mooring of Western and

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Eastern sciences is very important to understand their contributions to

sciences in West and East. Thus contribution and role of Religion in the

development of science in the West and East are not the same. As

statements like all religions are same may be politically correct but are not

true, howsoever we desire so. Insisting universalization of science in early

period of human civilization equally distorts truth and introduces blunders in

the writing of the history of Science of non Western cultures. It numbs all

inquiry of cultural moorings and thus possible epistemological differences in

the creation of ideas or sciences in different cultures. No wonder then that

we try to analyze or explain Aryabhatas writings in the Euclidian Hypothesis-

Proof model.

Ayurveda, the Indian medical science, which is in practice for at least two

thousand years and was the main stream medicine in India till Colonial rule,

becomes alternative medicine, which actually should be reverse i.e.

allopathic medicine is alternative to Ayurvedic medicine. The same is true

of how we calculate our time, chronology of events in BC and AD. Many

scholars nowadays prefer BP i.e. before present. Archaeologist and Geologist

use Bronze, Iron Age etc. However, central point of this calculation also is

the beginning of Christianity. This labeling may appear simple or innocent,

which it is not. Very tacitly it introduces the hegemony of West over earlier

non-west civilizations. This in association with linear, anthropomorphic model

chosen to express human development, dubs earlier period as period of

infancy, incapable of being logical and rational, which is prerequisite for

scientific development.

Nowadays there is a trend of categorizing ideas or sciences of earlier non-

western civilizations with ethnic label i.e. ethnic medicine, ethnic

mathematics, ethno botany, ethno zoology etc. Many scholars have pursued

this research enthusiastically and with great success. However, the ethno

prefix automatically alienates these contributions from main stream science

development. Ethno prefix carries the baggage of backwardness, tribal,

accidental, lacking modern scientific analytical i.e. Newtonian-Cartesian

model of inquiry, which has inherited Greek logical, rational, objective

methodology to reach any conclusion. Obviously this denies the originality oranteriority of ideas especially when chronology does not favours Western or

Greek contributions. The classical example is of invention of Calculus.

Madhava, an Indian mathematician of 14th century, in his writings has

everything required for the development calculus, which is at least 200 years

prior to Newton or Leibniz who is credited for the invention of Calculus. This

fact is known to scholars for at least two hundred years now. How it reached

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Europe can be a matter of further study, but why then Madhava should be

denied the credit of his origination? All possible arguments are advanced

with great logical and scholarly acrobatic exercise to deny this credit to

Madhava. This is a classical example of mind set of most of the past and

present history of science scholars and writers, who by training believe that

birth of great scientific ideas is natural in Greek and Western tradition and

all search is to establish this presumed hypothesis. As against this, it is

presumed that non-Western civilizations lack this ability inherently and on

this premise then even if proofs are available, they are given secondary

status.

Renaissance means going back to roots. West believes to have their roots in

the pre-Christian Greek and then Roman culture and philosophy. Plato,

Pythagoras, Archimedes, Euclid and many other contemporaries are the

architects of this Civilization. Renaissance was a cultural moment

encompassing all facets of human creativity be it arts, science, religion or

philosophy. It is accepted that renaissance is the turning point in the

development of modern science in west. Even arts both fine and performing

and for that matter all other branches of human activity tried to align

themselves to this change. Renaissance movement in the West is precursor

to the Industrial development. Opposition of Christianity to science from

Galileo, Bruno to cloning in modern times is well documented.

To appreciate contribution of sciences to Europe and rest of the World by

Eastern civilizations, in this case by India, requires one to understand thiscomplex religion-culture-science interdependency and complementarity.

Recent archaeological findings including marine archaeology have unearthed

many new materials at the ancient and medieval Indian Ocean, Middle

Eastern and Mediterranean Seaports. Indias contribution in Mathematical

astronomy and Algebra is well documented. There is huge research

material available now in many other areas. I will try to enumerate few

below.

Siddhasara of Ravigupta is one of the early Ayurvedic text composed in the

middle of the 7th

century (650 AD). Half a century earlier (600 AD) we haveVagbhata and half a century later (700 AD) we have Madhava. Siddhasaras

translations in Tibetan, Khotanese, Uighur, Turkish, Arabic and Sinhalese are

available and well studied. H.W.Bailey published the complete Khotanese

text in facsimile in 1938 and in transcription in 1945, which got reprinted in

1969. However, the most extensive study on all Siddhasar manuscripts is

done by R.E. Emmerick. After publishing two articles in Bulletin of the School

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of Oriental and African Studies in 1971 and 1974 respectively, he published

The Siddhasara of Ravigupta in two volumes in 1980 and 1982.

R.E.Emmerick also contributed an article titled Raviguptas Siddhasara in

Arabic in a volume edited jointly by H.R. Roemer and A.Noth published by

Brill in 1981. In a obituary written by Mauro Maggi on R.E.Emmeric and

published in December 2001 issue ofEast and West(pp. 408-415) informs us

that Emmerick was so much involved in the study of Siddhasara text that he

contributed at least forty articles on Indian and Tibetan medicine. His paper

Raviguptas Place in Indian Medical Tradition read in the Second World

Sanskrit Conference held at Torino, Italy (9 to 15 June 1975) and published in

Indologica Taurinensia ( Vol III-IV, 1975-76, pp. 209-221) provides us

valuable information on Ravigupta and also informs us that Madhavanidana

is probably mentioned in Firdaws al-Hikma authored by a Arabic scholar, Ali

b. Sahl al-Tabari. Very recently Peter Zieme has published an interesting

article in 2007 issue ofAsian Medicine (Vol. 3, pp.308-322) on UighurSiddhasara fragments and enriched us with new information on this text.

Siddhasara text had widespread influence on Central Asian, Persian and

Arabic medical knowledge. Emmerick informs us that Persian and Arabic

scholars held Siddhasara in high esteem. Rhazes, a Persian scholar of

9th/10th century wrote a 20 part medical encyclopedia, Kitab al Hawi , which

has incorporated many passages from Siddhasara along with Greek, Syriac

and early Islamic sources. Faraj Ben Salim a Jewish physician translated

Kitab al Hawi into Latin in the 13th century, titled Liber Continens.This text

becomes so popular in Latin world that it was reprinted five times till 16th

century. Influence ofSiddhasaron the development of Western medicine

awaits scholarly research.

Many Sanskrit medical texts got translated to Persian around 6th century at

Gundishpore,Iran and later into Arabic in the 9th/10th century in Baghdad,

Iraq. During the same period Astronomical and Mathematical Sanskrit texts

were getting translated into Persian first and then into Arabic. One such

minor Indian text concerned only with poisons authored by Shanaq got

translated to Persian by a physician called Mankah in the 9th century. Abu

Hatim translated it from Persian to Arabic during the same time and called itKitab al-Shanaq. Shanaqs text on poisons was used extensively by ibn

Wahashiya in composing his much acclaimed Book on Poison. Along with

Greek source ibn wahshia also informs us of other Indian authors like

Tammashah and Bahlindad whos books he used while composing his book on

poisons. Ibn Wahashia wrote many other books but his book on poisons

remained as referral work for many centuries. Ibn ai-Nadim author ofFihrist

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knew Shanaq and he informs us about Shanaqs works on conduct of life, the

management of war and on cultural studies. Another scholar ibn abi Usaibia

tells us about Shanaqs works on stars,lapidary and one on veterinary

science. Unfortunately we do not have his original Sanskrit or Arabic

translations of these works. As far as Shanaqs text on poisons is concerned,

he follows Sushruta. Martin Levey translated ibn Wahshiyas Book on

Poisons and published it in the Transactions of the American Philosophical

Society, New Series, Vol. 56, No. 7, 1966, pp.1-130.

Recent Archaeological findings have forced us to rethink our early

assumptions of origin of many material objects like silk, cotton, tick, pottery,

spices, perfumery, beads, diamonds and botanical products. Obviously their

place in respective cultures, trade and manufacturing technology and skills

unfolds a new scenario of cultural history.

China had monopoly on silk till this date. Recent paper titled New evidencefor Early Silk in the Indus Civilization published in the 2009 issue of

Archaeometry, Vol.50., will compel us to change this perception of origin of

silk. Earliest export of silk from china dates back to early second century BC

during the reign of Han Emperor Wu-ti, though archaeologist in China have

found isolated find from the Liangzhou Neolithic site of Qianshanyang dating

back to 2570 BC. Archaeologists were puzzled with silk found in sites at

Mediterranean, Egypt, Central Asia and also at a late prehistoric Celtc site in

Germany dating back to 700 BC, much earlier to Wu-ti trade relationship with

the West began. It was taken for granted as export from China withouthaving given thought to the possibility of silk production indigenously or from

regions other than China. In India itself A.N.Gulati in 1961 wrote an article

A note on the early history of silk in India in a publication of Deccan College,

Poona titled Technical Reports on archaeological remains,pp.51-59 producing

evidence of silk from a bead thread from Nevasa, Maharashtra, dating back

to 1500 BC. The new archaeological evidence of Silk from the Indus

civilization sites at Harappa and Chanhu-daro pushes back the silk

production outside China at least by a millennium earlier. Authors of the

paper inArchaeometryhave concluded,

The discoveries described here demonstrate that silk was being used over a

wide region of South Asia for more than 2000 years before the introduction

of domesticated silk from China. Earlier models that attribute the origins of

silk and sericulture exclusively to China need to be re-examined and

revised.(p.8)

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Indian and Greeko- Roman trade contacts are well documented. Writings of

travelers and geographers , ranging from 1 /2nd century BC to 3/ 4th Century

AD, like Natural Historyof Pliny, Strabo and Geographyof Claudius Ptolemy,

Periplus of the erythraean Sea by an anonymous author all have been

describing India and Indian products elaborately. Emperor Justinian who

reigned around 533 AD had composed a list of about 54 dutiable articles

entering Alexandria. This includes many products like hair, drugs and

animals from India by name and even eunuchs. Recent archaeological

findings also have endorsed contacts with Mesopotamia going back to third

millennium BC. India is known to have been exporting spices, diamonds,

cotton, silk etc for the last 5000 years now. Indian tick wood was favorite and

most suitable for ship building. This has been confirmed by study of wood

found in many shipwrecks from Indonesia, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean

ports. A recent paper titled A ninth-century AD Arab or Indian shipwreck in

Indonesia; first evidence for direct trade with China by Michael Fleckerpublished in World Archaeology Vol.32, No.3, Shipwrecks(Feb.2001),pp. 335-

354 States,

This is the first clear archaeological evidence to support historical records

which imply that there was direct trade between the western Indian Ocean

and China during the later part of the first millennium AD(p.335)

Trade is never restricted only to the material exchanges. Along with culture,

scientific information also migrates. Indian influence in South East Asian

countries is well known. Excellent example of this migration is seen in theAngkor Wat temple in Cambodia. Measurements of the temple are related to

Hindu religious symbolism and mathematical Astronomy. An article in the

Science Vol.193, No.4250, 23 July, 1976 titled Astronomy and Cosmology at

Angkor Wat explains this elaborately,

It is not surprising that Angkor Wat integrates astronomy, the calendar, and

religion since the priest-architects who constructed the temple conceived of

all three as a unity.(p.281)

In an exhaustive article by Grant Parker titled Ex Oriente Luxuria: Indian

commodities and Roman Experience published in theJournal of the

economic and Social History of the Orient, 2002, Vol.45, No.1, pp 40-95, has

thrown light on many dark corners of this trade. While commenting on

meager Indian craft goods found in Roman world, his following observations

are interesting,

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A second class of evidence is provided by a number of marble heads now in

Rome. These reveal an unmistakable mixture of Indian and Roman styles:

these have a cirrus knot on the top, creating the effect of an Indian hairstyle

on top of what are otherwise unexceptional marble heads from the Severan

age.27 It is tempting to link these hairstyles with the 'Indian hair' (capilli

Indici) mentioned by Marcian; the available evidence leaves the matter

undecided (Schneider 1986)(p.54)

In the same paper on p.64 Grand Parker informs us more on documentary

and inscriptional evidence found in the West,

Secondly, there are a number of documentary sources. The so-called

Muziris papyrus (P.Vind. G40822 of the mid-second century AD, now in

Vienna), was not published till the 1980s (Harrauera nd Sijpesteijn1 985).

This presupposes a contract that had been concluded between two parties

concerning the transport of goods from Muziris (probably modernCranganore) to Myos Hormos on the north-eastern coast of the Red Sea

(probably Abu Sha'ar), in particular a loan to be paid back on the return

voyage: the papyrus itself sets out the consequences of non-repayment.

Whereas the Periplus suggests that traders would mix low-cost everyday

items within its cargo of predominantly luxury goods, the Muziris papyrus is

limited to expensive articles. In addition, a number of inscriptions

survive testifying to the kind of trade mentioned by Pliny. Annius Plocamus'

freedman left two inscriptions at the Wadi Menih on the Berenike-Koptos

road, both of them dating to the year AD 6: 'I, Lysas, freedman of PubliusAnnius Plocamus, came here on July 2nd (July 5th), AD 6.'44 Excavations at

Quseir al-Qadim (probably Leukos Limen) beginning in the late 1970s turned

up two ostraka inscribed in the southern India's Tamil-Brahmi script. These,

which contain the names Kanan and Catan, have been dated to the first

century AD. Amidst a find of pottery that can be dated to AD 60-70, the

Berenike excavation has also produced two ostraka inscribed in Tamil-

Brahmi (Mahadevan 1996).(Pp.64-65)

Surprisingly we see this legal trade document tradition continued till 12th

century. A huge collection of documents was unearthed in Egypt from theCairo Genizah. They catalogue the social, cultural and religious lives of Jews

around the Mediterranean basin. They have documents related to Jews from

India, involved in the Mediterrian trade. S.D.Goiten worked extensively on

these documents and published many articles- From the Mediterranean to

India: Documents on the trade to India, South Arabia, and East Africa from

the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries published in Speculam, XXIX(1954),181-

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197, From Eden to India, specimens of the Correspondance of Indian Traders

of the Twelfth Century, published inJournal of the Economic and Social

history of the Orient,Vol.23,no1/2(April.,1980),pp 43-66 and Portrait of a

Medieval Indian trader: Three Letters from the Cairo Geniza published in

Bulletin of the school of Oriental and African studies Vol.50, No.3(1987), pp.

449-464. These articles give us valuable information on Indian trade activity

in the 11th and 12th century in the Mediterranean Basin.

Nicole Bovin and D.Q.Fuller in their recent paper titled Shell Middens, Ships

and seeds: Exploring Coastal Subsistence. Maritime trade and the Dispersal

of Domesticates in and Around the Ancient Arabian Peninsula published inJ

World Prehist(2002) 22:113-180 informs us about agriculture, animals of

Indian origin and pepper, which is going to confirm earlier observations and

pre-date the Indian history of trade with west.

Around 1200 BC, the first pepper appears in the Egyptian record, positivelyidentified from the dried fruits in the nostrils of the mummy of Ramses II (Plu

1985). This is the first indication of possible contact between Egypt and

India, though by what route remains unclear. While its royal association

attests to the rarity and high value of this spice at this period, it also can be

taken to suggest the possible early beginnings of direct South Asian to Red

Sea spice trade.(pp. 153-154)

It is in the context of the intensifying trade between Gujarat and Arabia at

the start of the second millennium BC that we should probably consider the

beginnings of contact between Africa and South Asia. The evidence of African

crops, which are unambiguously in Gujarat and Baluchistan in this period,

suggests that Gujarat maritime contacts were no longer only with Oman and

Dilman but also extended further westwards around Arabia towards Yemen

and Africa. At present count, some 33 archaeological sites in South Asia

dating from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000 BC) through the Iron Age (to c.

300 BC) have evidence for crops of African origin for which botanical identity

is acceptable (Table 3;data augmented from Fuller 2003a; with Chanchala

2002; Cooke et al. 2005; Saraswat 2004, 2005; Saraswat and Pokharia

2003). In almost all instances, these crops co-occur with native Indian milletsand pulses, and can be seen as additions to an existing system of summer

monsoon agriculture (Fuller and Madella 2001; Weber 1998, 342344). Only

in the case of Pirak was Sorghum, together with rice (plausibly japonica rice)

and Panicum miliaceum (one of the Chinese millets), added to the

established Indus repertoire of winter crops.(Pp.155-159)

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The other domesticate which moved between the Indian subcontinent and

Africa, probably via Arabian maritime links, was the South Asia-derived zebu

cattle (Bos indicus).That zebu cattle spread from South Asia to Arabia and

Africa is not in doubt, and a maritime route is suggested by genetic data.

Marshall (1989) speculated that this could have occurred in the second

millennium BC as a counter flow to African crops that moved to Asia. Genetic

data show a pattern of inter-regional introgression in which eastern and

southern Africa, together with the Arabian peninsula near Africa, show a

genetic cline, especially in Y-chromosome data, that indicates much higher

zebu bull input than is the case for Mesopotamia and more northerly areas

(Hanotte et al. 2002; Zeder 2006). Nevertheless, there was also clearly

overland movement of zebu cattle from the Indus through Iran towards the

Near East (Kumar et al. 2003), (pp.159)

Usually spices and diamonds are labeled or discussed as exotic products,

which is not true. Grant parker in his Ex Oriente Luxuria gives some

interesting uses of pepper,

The earliest Greek works to mention pepper are the gynecological treatises

attributed to Hippocrates: at one point the author glosses the spice as an

'Indian drug' (On women's diseases 1.81 indikou pharmakou). Its typical use

in these medical texts is for disorders of the eyes, mixed into an ointment.

Theophrastus' work On Odours makes it clear that pepper was among the

spices known and used in the later 4th/early 3rd centuries. Though he uses

the loanword in naming it (peperi), he makes no explicit mention of its Indianorigin, in which respect he differs from the Hippocratic text. Theophrastus'

treatise is in fact central to any analysis of the social meaning of spices in

the ancient world: it makes clear that they were used for perfume-powders

(aromata), cosmetics, incense (thumiamata), and antidotes to poison

(theriaca). But it is in three very different texts of the first century AD that

we have the most extensive evidence for the use of spices. These begin with

the army physic\cian Dioscorides, whose Materia medica (c. AD 65), written

in Greek, illustrates the pharmacological uses. Secondly, Apicius, who lived

under Augustus and Tiberius, composed a series of gourmet recipes, to

whose corpus texts continued to be added until late antiquity. Of 478 recipesthere contained, almost all require some kind of spicing; so did certain

preparations of wine.(p.43)

However, in India we know that most of the spices are also used in Ayurvedic

preparations. Similarly use of diamond as tool in cutting other diamond or

hard object and in the technology of engraving is known to Indians since

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antiquity and is even practiced today in Gujarat. Leonard Gorelick and A.John

Gwinnett in their paper titled Diamonds from India to Rome and Beyond

published inAmerican Journal of archaeology, Vol. 91, No.4 (1988) pp. 547-

552 informs us,

The technological history of diamonds as tools in the ancient world is evenmore obscure than their use as gem-stones. Our experimental evidence for

the use of diamonds in Arikamedu in southeast India, ca. 250 B.C.- A.D. 300,

is the earliest thus far reported. Wheeler found a bead workshop in

Arikamedu, as well as strong evidence for trade with Rome. The Romans are

very likely to have learned to use diamond splinters as drills in Arikamedu.

Pliny states that diamond splinters "are much sought after by engravers of

gems" (HN 37.15.61). Further literary evidence, both Sanskrit and Roman,

adds weight to our finding. Additional references, although meager, help

trace the continued use of diamonds as en-graving tools after the fall of

Rome through the Sassanian and Islamic periods. Evidence is lacking for the

European Middle Ages, but documentation for Europe re-emerges in Europe

in the 15th century A.C. Diamonds are still used in the modern industrial

world, in modern crafts, as well as in the remote bead making village of

Cambay, India. Here a diamond-hafted bow drill is still currently in use for

drilling beads. Beads from Cambay, in fact, provided the initial clues in

interpreting our sub-sequent experimental evidence. (p.547)

Excavations in the last quarter of twentieth century at Quseir al-Qadim

(preliminary reports published by American Research Center in Egypt, Cairoin 1979) and at Egypts Red Sea port Berenike (preliminary report started

appearing since 1995, published by Leiden:Research School CNWS) has

revealed many new objects, confirming our early findings of Indian trade

with Greco-Roman world. Using textile products of Indian origin and Indian

teak found in the Excavation at Berenike, Grant Parker wrote another very

interesting article titled Topographies of Test: Indian Textile and

Mediterranean Contexts inArs Orientalis, Vol. 34, 2004, pp. 19-37 ( almost

all articles in this volume are on Indian Ocean trade). His findings not only

confirm the observations of earlier writers but also inform us the high degree

of technology reached in Indian subcontinent in cultivating andmanufacturing these goods for local consumption as well as for export.

Parker writes in the article,

The desirability and novelty value of this product are immediately apparent.

This cotton or "tree wool" also featured among the accounts of the historians

and scholars accompanying Alexander on his campaign to the east in 327-

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325B .C. For example, the naval commander Nearchusi s quoted in Strabo's

Geography ( 15.1.20 C6g3) on the use of cotton in garments; Strabo

mentions silk in the same breath. Finally, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,

a ship captain's manual from the mid-first century A.D. written in Greek,

makes several references to the transport of cot-ton on the monsoon route.

Both cloth (chapters 48, 49, 5i) and garments (chapters 48, 51, 59) occur

among goods brought into Egypt, whereas exports from Egypt to Arabia,

India, and the East African coast include various kinds of garments (e.g.,

chapters 6, 24, 56).11 At a port called "Ganges" i n the Ganga delta it was

possible to acquire high-quality cotton, in the form of garments: "On [the

Ganges] there is a port of trade [emporion] sharing the same name as the

river, Ganges, through which malabathron, Gangetic nard, pearls, and cotton

garments of the very fin-est quality, the so-called Gangetic, are transported"

(chapter 63). It is typical of the Periplus that various objects are linked in the

context of a particular port. The designation of quality, diaphorotatai, hasconnotations of distinctiveness as well as value.(pp.20-21)

Hindu mathematical and other scientific manuals started migrating to Iran

and Iraq from 6th to 10th century. Hundreds of them got translated to Persian

and Arabic languages. The process of Latin translation of these Arabic and

Persian texts started from 11th century onwards. Indian mathematics and

other sciences reached Europe through this translation industry. Trade

played a vital role in this migration. However, it is least studied and its

contribution is totally neglected. In the same volume ofArs Orientalis (Vol.

34, 2004) Carol Bier wrote an article titled Patterns in Time and Space:Technologies of Transfer and the Cultural Transmission of Mathematical

Knowledge across the Indian Ocean. And in his own words,

This article explores the potential role of textiles in the transfer of

mathematical knowledge from the Indian subcontinent to the central Islamic

lands and west-ward to an emerging modern Europe through an inquiry into

prospective technologies of textile manufacture and pattern-making. Ikat

textiles of the ninth and tenth centuries, found in Egypt but presumed to be

from Yemen, serve as a means to explore possibilities of numeration and

treatment of the spatial dimension. An initial attempt is made to separatepatterning from the technology of textile production in an effort to treat the

mathematical possibilities that patterning offers for the application of

mathematical knowledge. This article proposes an ontology of pattern,

distinct from the category of a textile itself, which raises significant questions

pertaining to the transmission of mathematical knowledge in relation to

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expanded trade routes in the eighth through tenth centuries, coincident with

Islamic developments in the understanding of two-dimensional space(p.173)

Agriculture and Horticulture are other important activities in any culture or

civilization. Newer techniques of Archaeobotany are giving us new tools in

dating. Mehergarh, Baluchistan excavations have placed barley and wheatcultivations in Indian subcontinent around 7000 to 5500 BC. Recent findings

of the Archaeobotanical samples collected from Neolithic site Jhusi, at the

confluence of Ganga and Yamuna rivers in Allahabad U.P. are presented

jointly by Anil K. Pokharia, J.N.Pal and Alka Srivastava in an article titled

Plant macro-remains from Neolithic Jhusi in Ganga Plain: evidence for grain-

based agriculture, in the Vol.97,No. 4, 25 august 2009 issue of Current

Science. We already have the dates of cultivated rice from Kunal, Hariyana

in the range of 3000 to 2500 BC. Rice grains collected at Jhusi have given us

dates in the range of 7100 to 5932 BC. These are probably the earliest dates

of rise grains in at least Indian subcontinent. Their findings of viticulture or

horticulture are more revealing,

Remains of grape-vine have provided unequivocal evidence of viticulture

from pre-Harappan and Harappan times 23,36,37,40. Before the factual

evidences from archaeological sites, information on the grape and its

cultivation was based on the literary and ancient sculptures. Grapes were

known through the accounts of Charak and Susruta in their early medical

treaties (5th century BC), and there was almost no information of their

cultivation, prior to the Muslim conquest of the country 41.The evidence ofgrape-vine on Indian sculptures has come from Sanchi and Bharhut stupas

in Madhya Pradesh, datable to 2nd3rd century AD 42. Smith 43 and

Marshall etal.44, however, regarded the vine as a characteristic motif of

Hellenistic art. According to Watt 45, viticulture in India never at any period

was regarded to have attained the proportions it assumed in the Greek and

Roman ages of Europe. Now, in view of the factually evidenced viticulture

since the Neolithic and Harappan times, all these opinions stand

untenable.(p.569)

Sugarcane cultivation is indigenous to India. We have extensive literaryevidence for this. We have testimony of Greeks in this regard. They

described sugarcane as reeds that make honey without the agency of bees

Megasthenes goes a step forward and even tries to explain why sugarcane

is sweet? Surprisingly there is no trace of sugarcane in any archaeological

excavations in the subcontinent. Lallanji Gopal has written an excellent

paper titled Sugar-making in Ancient India published inJournal of the

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Economic and Social History of the OrientVol. 7, No. 1, 1964, pp. 57-72. He

gives us literary evidence of highly advanced stage of cultivation it had

reached,

Advanced knowledge of sugarcane cultivation is clear from the classification

of the plants into several types, differing according to their qualities 2).Caraka 3) mentions two varieties paundraka and vamsaka. The Amarakosa

4), though by name mentioning only the pundra and kantara types, implies

many others also in the word adayah. Ksirasvamin, the commentator, names

some of these. But Susruta gives by far the most elaborate list. He mentions

twelve varieties: paundraka 5) , bhiruka, vamsaka, sataporaka, tapaseksu,

kasteksu, sucipatraka, naipala, dirghapatra, nilapora and kosakrt 6).(p.59)

Panchatantra and the game of Chess are Indian contributions which reached

East and West, as early as 3rd to 6th century AD. I have dealt with

Panchatantra in my paper History of migration ofPanchatantra and what itcan teach us presented last year in the conference titled Subhashita,

Panchatantra andGnomic Literature in Ancient and MedievalIndia held at

Thane under the auspices of Institute for Oriental Study, Thane on Saturday,

27 Dec. 2008 at Thane http://orientalthane.com/speeches/speech2008.htm

Similarly there is large research material available on Chess. The White

collection in the Cleveland public library is the largest library in the world

dedicated to Chess.

Dominance and universalization of modern science gives a hegemonic statusto West. Colonization of rest of the world by Western countries since 16th

century added to this hegemony. Orientalism is the final outcome of this

process. Study of Indian civilization i.e. Indology is no exception to this

academic exercise. Poor financial recourses and inadequate research

training facilities in the non West world in the post Colonial period, enhances

this dependency on West. No civilization or culture for that matter can claim

exclusivity. However, though Indian trade with West was always bilateral,

when it comes to influence or anteriority of ideas, pointer is unidirectional,

always in the direction of Mesopotamia or Greece.

Transmission of Indian sciences to Europe prior to Industrial revolution is not

easy to understand. Trade, as seen by us earlier, has played a major role in

this transmission. Extensive literary and archaeological material is available

now for this study. However, Indian trade was not restricted to the West only.

Buddhism had reached China and Central Asia few centuries prior to the

beginning of Christian era. Indian trade and culture had also reached South

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East Asian countries since the beginning of Christian era. Hundreds of

philosophical, religious and scientific text from Sanskrit got translated to

Chinese, Khotanese, Uighur, Tibetan and South Eastern languages. Trade

route of West to China passed through Central Asia. We have seen that many

Chinese and Central Asian texts original and translated both, reached

Western civilizations through this trade route. As a matter of fact Sanskrit-

Persian/Arabic Latin transmission started much later than Sanskrit-Chinese-

Central Asian-Greek/Latin transmission. Last route of transmission is after

16th century through missionary and Colonial administrators writings. A

collective and comprehensive study of all these inter disciplinary sciences

including paleo and archaeobotany, archaeozoology and genomic studies will

help us reach conclusions with least bias.

Vijay Bedekar

President,

Institute for Oriental Study, Thane

Saturday, 26 December 2009, Thane.

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