Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism

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Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism (1999), by Raja Ram

Mohan Roy. Publishers: Golden Egg Publishing. Paperback. $19.95

 

The Rig Veda does not contain history. Nor is it a treatise on

astronomy. Nor is it just a praise to the Gods. And surely it is not

the emanations of a group of soma-drunk men who wrote the

first "magic-realism" novel. What it is, says Dr. Roy of the

University of Toronto, is a treatise on cosmology, and that it

provides a better understanding of the nature of the cosmos than all

the modern physicists have come up with till now. The Rig Veda is a

book of science, and the only reason that we have not been able to

understand the science in it is because of the layers of ignorance

and misinterpretations that have accumulated over the millennia, says

Roy in his intriguing book, Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of

Hinduism (1999). If you are planning some interesting summer reading,

I recommend this book. (Ed. Click here to read more about this book

on Amazon.)

 

Many during the early 80s' were fascinated with books that tried to

explain quantum physics to lay audiences as well as make connections

to what seemed to be parallels within eastern mysticism. I was

teaching at the Valley School in Bangalore those days and my

colleagues and I would read books by Capra, Zukav and others that

dealt with quantum physics and eastern mysticism, and our discussions

would drag on into the night. After all, in a school that was based

on J. Krishnamurti's philosophy most teachers were familiar with

Krishnamurti's dialogues with scientists, mathematicians, and

psychologists. And there were those innumerable tapes of his

discussions with the theoretical physicist David Bohm (author of

Wholeness and the Implicate Order and some twenty other books on

theoretical physics, cognitive science, etc). Since then there have

been other works by Capra, including the movie Mindwalk (1995) based

on his book The Turning Point. Zukav wrote a more critically

acclaimed book than Capra, titled The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. To this

day of course Capra's The Tao of Physics enjoys the status of

a "modern classic of science". The day Zukav's book was published The

New York Times printed "a rave review of it – all praise and no

criticism". I mention these books because in the past decade or so it

seems like the readership for such books is fading.

The "establishment" has won, and the experimental physicists and

their fellow travelers have been constructing more billion dollar

accelerators and cyclotrons, and chortling over the pictures that the

Hubble telescope is beaming back to Earth. But if Dr. Roy's book

makes any inroads into the establishment scientific enterprise there

could be renewed interest in Hinduism and what its ancient texts may

reveal, and tax payers could worry less about their moneys going

towards digging deep holes in the earth.

 

Most of us, if not all, in the Krishnamurti schools were more

knowledgeable about the books being written by Westerners than of any

attempts by Indians at reconciling the findings of modern scientists

with the knowledge/information contained in the Vedas. Very few of us

were interested in or knew Sanskrit. The physicists and aeronautical

engineers amongst us knew their science and technology but cared

little to read the Vedas or other Hindu texts. The philosophers

amongst us knew little Sanskrit, and less physics. Our knowledge of

Hinduism was "second hand". In short, there wasn't a Dr. Roy amongst

us. A research scientist at the University of Toronto, Roy, a native

of Bihar, did his undergraduate work in metallurgical engineering at

IIT, Kanpur, and got his M.S. and Ph.D. from Ohio State University in

Materials Science and Engineering. That is his engineering and

science background. But unlike the ordinary Indian engineer or

scientist, Roy has not confined himself to his scientific work As he

says in the preface to his book, he has combined his early learning

and training in Sanskrit with his scientific and engineering

vocation. From the marriage of the two comes this fascinating and

challenging book.

 

There are quite a few in India who claim that the Vedas are full of

all kinds of scientific knowledge, but when asked to adumbrate all

that they can do is to mouth some thirdhand version of

the "greatness" of Hinduism. There are also a variety of gurus and

godmen who make the claim that the Hindu texts contain all kinds of

meanings and messages but then they are not trained scientists to

make effective connections between modern science and ancient texts.

Some of them may know their Sanskrit but they don't know their

physics.

 

Most of us who are trained as scientists, or social scientists, or

who have grown up in modern, technological societies are skeptics

when it comes to accepting the "scientific" worth of ancient texts.

There are also too many charlatans and too many "men of faith" who

are willing to take people for a ride as long as they can sell their

religion. Given the trend in modern Indian education too, there are

few of us who are willing to spend time digging into the texts of the

past. Moreover, the trend for a long while was to see Indian texts

mostly as spiritual-religious texts. The latest and most lucrative

path is to "deconstruct" the texts through literary, political,

philosophical, and psychological analyses. Thus it was that at the

last South Asia Conference in Madison in October 1998, there were

Sanskritists who "deconstructed" aspects of the Ramayana: one

professor, wearing a ring in his left ear, speculated that when

Hanuman "grew large" and lifted a mountain and transported it across

the sea, it was merely a metaphor for Hanuman getting an erection

after watching the many semi-clad and/or naked beautiful women in the

gardens and palaces of Ravana. Professors from Berkeley, Columbia,

Harvard and elsewhere cheered and commented on such "exegesis" (or

you could say "excesses"), and there was only standing room in the

conference hall to listen to such "deconstruction". I bring this up

because we are more comfortable with such analyses, and believe they

are "modern" and/or "scientific". In such a world it is rather

difficult to make a new case for old texts. We will believe linguists

or literary critics, but we will be skeptical of other kinds

of "deconstruction," the ones that go against the grain.

 

The "traditional" take on the Rig Veda therefore would be that of

scholars like Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, who has selected, and

translated 108 hymns out of the 1017 for a book (The Rig Veda)

published by Penguins (1981). She basically claims that the Rig Veda

contains details of daily life, the symbolism and mechanism of

ritual, and that it provides insight into mythology, philosophy, and

religion. Very few would argue about those aspects, and most are

happy to accept the Rig Veda as such. Even the great commentators

like Madhwacharya, or the great works like the Upanishads focus on

the "spiritual-psychological-symbolic" aspects of the Vedas. We are

happy when traditional texts or teachers tell us that the central

teaching and the central aim of the Rig Veda is "the seeking after

the attainment of Truth, immortality, and Light," and that the

supreme goal of the Vedic sages was discovering the "One Reality".

Thus the hymns on creation, especially the Purusha Sukta ("the hymn

of man" as it is ordinarily regarded), have been made famous.

According to the traditional reading of the Purusha Sukta the gods

created the universe by dismembering the cosmic giant, Purusha, the

primeval male who is the victim in a Vedic sacrifice (O'Flaherty, p.

29). She claims that the theme of cosmic sacrifice is a widespread

mythological motif, and it is just a part of the Indo-European corpus

of myths of dismemberment. So far, so good, you may say. But Roy

argues that the Rig Veda is a book of ancient cosmology "where the

authors have chosen fundamental particles and forces of nature to

describe the cosmology in a dramatic way...." So, let us see how he

interprets the particular verse in the Purusha Sukta

(10.90.15): "What does the sacrifice of Purusa-animal mean? How can

the God himself be sacrificed? The sacrifice here means a change of

form, a change from unmanifested form to a form of manifested

universe.... As the Purusa ceased to be what the Purusa was before

the creation, he was symbolically sacrificed. This had nothing to do

with human sacrifice" (p. 37-38). Skeptical readers may say, "oh, it

is just a little twist to the original formulation". But let us look

at just one or two more verses, and see if we the "ordinary"

or "literal" meaning makes sense. If it does not, then we need to try

and figure out the symbolism. 10.90.01 is translated by O'Flaherty

thus: "The Man has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand

feet. He pervaded the earth on all sides and extended beyond it as

far as ten fingers". A thousand feet and a thousand eyes, we could

say, is just a poetic metaphor for "God" who is "everywhere"

and "sees everything". But what about the ten fingers? A thousand

eyes and now "his" reach only as far as ten fingers? Roy says the ten

fingers represent "ten dimensions". In modern physics direction and

dimension are synonymous. Thus, he claims, that in Vedic cosmology

universe is seen as ten-dimensional. He quotes the Vayu Purana (4.74-

75) in which it is said that the "whole universe including moon, sun,

galaxies and planets was inside the egg and the egg was surrounded by

ten qualities from outside". Roy provides a more careful context for

the reader to speculate about the nature of the universe. There are

numerous verses from the different hymns of the "ten books" of the

Rig Veda that Roy translates, and provides a "context" which makes

better sense than the merely poetic. A careful reader would therefore

have the opportunity to compare both Roy's translation of the

relevant verse and the analysis of the same.

 

The next important point that the author makes is that since the Rig

Veda is a book of cosmology whatever "history" there is in it is

not "real history". Similarly, he says that whatever else is there in

it is merely tangential. For the establishment historians and other

nay-sayers therefore this is a book that will befuddle and confuse.

It is also a book that will undermine their claims about the Aryan

invasion of India, for Roy musters some fascinating evidence (see p.

110 and p. 123) to support a fresh interpretation of the Harappan

civilization.

 

Roy is aware of the argument by skeptics that the attempts at finding

scientific meanings in scriptures is that they are made only after

the discovery of those scientific facts. But the importance of his

work is that he has tried to show how the scientific meaning

contained in the Vedas is in many ways different from what modern

scientists/physicists have put forward. Let us look at the

difference. I will just summarize a few major points.

 

Roy summarizes for us the latest in modern cosmology, from the

versions of Big Bang to versions of the Steady State models (Chapter

18). He summarizes their strengths and their weaknesses, and then he

adumbrates what he believes (and provides evidence for) is the model

that the Rig Veda constructs. The sages considered the universe to be

made of "fluid" (not as fluid as in water but "the flow of matter

particles"), and that it was rotating. The rotation's effect on this

spherical volume of fluid makes it take the shape of a spheroid (the

shape of an egg). In the standard Big Bang model the universe is not

rotating but its constituents are. The Big Bang theory has been

challenged, for example, by those proposing a steady state model, and

the book provides quick but precise summaries of those opposing

theories. The Big Bang model also proposes that the mass-energy

before the universe came into being was concentrated at a single

point. The Vedas instead tell us that in the beginning there was no

mass-energy. It was a complete void. Ed Tyron in 1973 put forward a

theory that makes the same argument. The Vedic sages considered the

creation of mass-energy to be continuous and that it was being

created on the surface of the universe. If you wonder how a void can

have a surface Roy has some fascinating explanations. In the Vedic

model the universe has a center which is at absolute rest. There is

an axis of the universe passing through this center around which the

universe is rotating. Space can be divided into two, manifested and

unmanifested, and the creation of matter and antimatter will continue

as long as the universe is expanding. While in the Big Bang model the

universe can be open or closed, the Vedic model suggests differently.

And the cyclic model proposed by scientists, that is the universe

will expand and contract continuously is also modified in the Vedic

model. It suggests that each cycle is independent of the other and

there is no limitation on how many cycles there can be. Roy supports

all his claims by providing the specific location of the verse in the

scriptures. The verses have been translated into English, and the

scientific meaning of the verse is explained by dissecting the words

and providing other supporting evidence from elsewhere in the Vedas.

 

The work of Roy is important in that he tries to figure out the

hidden meanings in the Rig Veda by drawing careful analogies and

comparisons, and telling us when he is not sure of a particular

meaning of a particular word or hymn. Thus the contracting universe

is "Martanda", the living universe Vivasvana, the first pair of

particle and anti-particle (matter and anti-matter) are "Yama"

and "Manu", the early part of the universe when the surface tension

was the most important force constraining the expansion of the

universe the battle between these two forces is the immortalized epic

battle of Indra and Vrtra. Radiation is Rudra, and the remnants of

radiation from the early universe, the cosmic background radiation,

is Visha. Brhaspati represents the expansion of the universe, gramya

(the domesticated animal) is boson, aranya (wild animal) is fermion,

and so on. All of Roy's claims are buttressed by relevant hymns, and

he also provides interesting asides on how the myths and fables of

other cultures and religions were borrowed from the latter Brahmanas

and thus were misreadings and wrong or partial interpretations of

Vedic knowledge.

 

At this point, skeptics may wonder how the Vedic sages knew what they

knew. Roy claims that they arrived at their findings and conclusions

based on sound reasoning. This may seem like the Vedic sages were the

precursors of Descartes! I do wish that he had speculated more deeply

on how these ancient people discovered these fascinating truths. What

was the Vedic methodology? Was the nature of the universe "revealed"

or was it discovered? Readers may think this is a weakness of the

book but he, however, makes it plain that modern scientific methods

are not the only way one can investigate the "subtle nature of

reality" (p. xiii). In his foreword to the book, Dr. Subhash Kak

(author/co-author of books on astronomy, mathematics, and computer

science, and a leading figure in the re-interpretation of Vedic

knowledge) says: "Roy's basic premise is that the mind – by analysis,

reflection on everyday phenomena, and grasping the nature of its own

self -- can discover a considerable amount of science, and this is

what the Vedic rishis did.... Roy's method goes counter to the

orthodoxy that outer knowledge cannot be discovered by an analysis of

the inner. But there is accumulating evidence from cognitive science

and biology that the inner and the outer are connected. For example,

biological systems are equipped with clocks tuned to the motions of

the sun, the moon, and other astronomical phenomena. Indian thinkers

have always insisted on the presence of such connections, claiming

that this is how the mind is able to know the physical world. In

Vedic thought this is expressed by the notion of 'bandhu' that

connect the biological, the terrestrial, and the astronomical.... The

Vedic focus on mind and consciousness is paralleled by the central

place of the observer in modern physics. In quantum mechanics the

state changes in an abrupt fashion when an observation is made and

this has prompted some physicists to claim that consciousness should

be the primary category of the universe, distinct from physical

matter" (p. xiii, xiv).

 

What do I wish to see different in this book? Some re-organization, a

more carefully chosen and substantive bibliography, and some

stylistic changes could make this book a bestseller. Some readers may

also find it a little frustrating to come across an interesting idea

and then be told that the explanation of that will come somewhere

later in the book. There are also some repetitious claims of how the

Vedas are mysterious and how they are also scientific. This is so

especially in the earlier chapters. But these are minor faults, and I

hope you will not make the mistake of not picking up this book just

because you don't like typos or that you have to do some going back

and forth.

 

There have been some other books published recently that deal with

the scientific nature of the Vedas: for example, R.L. Thompson's

Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy (1996) and Subhash Kak's The

Astronomical Code of the Rgveda. However, I believe that Dr. Roy's

book is more ambitious and presents a more fascinating picture of the

grand nature and sweep of the Vedas. This book represents a good

marriage of the knowledge of modern science and ancient Hindu texts.

I hope the book will attract a wide readership and rekindle interest

in the study of the Vedas not just by linguists and literary scholars

but by scientists and lay people.