India as a creative civilization

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http://www.organiser.org/21jan2001/cover2.htm

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India as a creative civilization

 

N.S. Rajaram

 

Background: Saving colonial history

 

The recently concluded Indian History Congress saw the Nobel Laureate

(Marxist) Economist Amartya Sen lecturing to historians not to mix

mythology with history, all the while protesting that he had no

competence to tell them how to do their job. This seemingly lofty

exhortation is actually part of a sustained campaign by the

secularist Leftists to save their theories and their reputations from

crumbling. One theme runs through the whole game: label all

challenges to their theories as "Hindutva propaganda" so there is no

debate on their merits. And to do this they trot out some 'eminent

figure' from the West to give them some credibility. A few months ago

it was Michael Witzel and his not-so-eminent sidekick Steve Farmer

telling Indians how they had to abuse Hinduism in order to save India

and objective scholarship from heathens. And now Amartya Sen from

Cambridge is telling Indians that asking for a Ram temple at Ayodhya

is confusing myth for history.

 

Both are diversionary tactics-and part of the same salvage operation.

Witzel & Co created a conspiracy theory involving a horse seal to

hide the fact that their pet colonial-missionary model based on the

Aryan Invasion has collapsed, taking with it the reputations and

possibly careers, of people like him. And now the same tactic is

being applied to Medieval history to obscure the fact that

archaeology exposes temple destructions at Ayodhya and a thousand

other places. Where Witzel and his cohorts are holding up threat

to "India and objective scholarship" as their red flag, Amartya Sen,

the spokesman for secularist historians is holding up "mythologizing

history". But ever true to his colour, he has also advised Indian

Leftists to become like the Chinese!

 

Obscurantism vs. 'progress'

 

Be as it may. My main goal in this essay is to expose the hollowness

of the academic dogma that underlies study of India and her

civilization today. In all this there is an unstated doctrine that

anything Hindu is obscurantist and everything anti-Hindu-Marxism,

Christianity, Islam- is progressive and enlightened. It is a

widespread canard, especially popular in Western academia, but

faithfully followed by their spiritual slaves in India, that Indian

civilization developed mainly by borrowing from others and not

through innovation and creative endeavour. (The Aryan Invasion Theory

is part of this.) This, however, is a recent view, one that can be

traced to the motivated scholarship of the European colonial period

and its immediate aftermath. The reality is that throughout history,

except during the colonial period, peoples of all nations have looked

to India as the most creative and original of civilizations. Medieval

and ancient scholars from Arabia, Spain, China and even Greece-all

acknowledged their indebtendness to Indian science. For example, the

medieval Arab scholar Sa'id Ibn Ahmad al-Andalusi (1029-1070) wrote

in his Tabaqat al-'umam, one of the earliest books on history of

sciences:

 

"The first nation to have cultivated science is India. ... India is

known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the

kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all

the branches of knowledge... The kings of China have stated that the

kings of the world are five in number and all the people of the world

are their subjects. They mentioned the king of China, the king of

India, the king of the Turks, the king of the Persians, and the king

of the Romans... They referred to the king of India as the "king of

wisdom" because of the Indians' careful treatment of ulum (sciences)

and all the branches of knowledge. ... The Indians, known to all

nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the

source of fairness and objectivity. They are people of sublime

pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions. ...

To their credit the Indians have made great strides in the study of

numbers and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and

reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars

(astronomy).... After all that they have surpassed all other peoples

in their knowledge of medical sciences.."

 

Not only medieval Arabs, even early Christian schoalrs recognized

Indian contribution. Writing in 662 AD, when the Byzantine Empire was

at its height and it was thought that there was no knowledge beyond

Greek knowledge, Sebokht, the Bishop of Quinnesrin in North Syria

observed: "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;

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."

 

He was referring of course to the famous place decimal system using

zero invented by the Hindus. (It is sometimes called the Arabic

numeral system, but the Arabs themselves called it the Indian system

acknowledging their indebtedness to India). In fact the Greek (and

the Roman) method of computing and solving equations was cumbersome

in the extreme when compared to the method used by the Indians.

Mathematics as we know today would hardly be possible without this

invention-probably the greatest single advance in the history of

mathematics. This brings up a basic issue about India's contribution:

while the world has by and large acknowledged it in the spiritual

realm-like Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism-there is widespread belief that

the Indians were other worldly and did not pay attention to material

progress.

 

This is far removed from the truth. In addition to mathematics and

astronomy (more of which later), India led the world in ferrous and

non-ferrous metallurgy, until the industrial base was deliberately

destroyed by the British. Indian steel was deemed the best in the

world well into the eighteenth century. (Steel is an Indian

invention.) Indian textiles have been prized throughout history,

until it was suppressed by the British, though it is now being

gradually regained. This being the case, why does this image of India

as largely an imitative civilization still persist? (This though is

mainly in the West and among its Indian followers-not Asia.)

 

Three reasons can be given: (1) colonial stereotyping; (2) Marxist

domination of intellectual life in the post-colonial period; and (3)

scholarly incompetence. The colonial image is gradually eroding but

the Marxist formulation of India as an imitative culture is the

result of what Marx himself wrote about India: "India has no history.

What is called history is only the record of successive intruders."

Marx of course knew nothing about India, but his statement became

sacrosanct to Marxist scholars who continue to dominate the

intellectual scene in India as elsewhere. This is the reason also why

they so fiercely hold on to the Aryan Invasion Theory against all

evidence. To them, anything good in India must be an import.

 

Scholarly incompetence

 

This brings us to the third cause, professional incompetence.

Scholars of the colonial period whose works still constitute standard

references on India, were mostly bureaucrats and missionaries and

lacked the scientific knowledge needed to appreciate true

achievements. This is generally true of history of science. Einstein

himself complained more than once that most historians of science

were linguists who really did not understand the problems that

scientists were grappling with. It is hardly surprising that charges

of lack of scientific capacity and originality on the part of Indians

is made by those who are themselves scientifically ignorant-like

nineteenth century European theologians and linguists continuing down

to their modern Indian followers. It is interesting to contrast their

views with those of the competent scientists who studied ancient

India-that is to say the views of people who were qualified to

express opinions about science.

 

This will help shed light on the true fact-of prejudice and unfounded

charges used as a fig leaf to conceal their own scientific ignorance.

Albrecht Weber was a leading nineteenth century German linguist. At a

time when the relationship between Indian and Greek mathematics was

being seriously debated, he went on to assert that the Vedic

mathematics was borrowed by the Indians from the Greeks following

Alexander's invasion. His actual statement was that there

was "nothing of a literary-historical nature standing in the way of

the assumption of a use (by the Vedic mathematicians) of the

teachings of Hero of Alexandria". Hero of Alexandria is now known to

have been living in 62 AD! Even in Weber's time Hero was known to be

later than 200 BC.

 

Now of course we know from archaeology that Vedic mathematics must

have existed 200 years before that. There is more to this that goes

to highlight the creativity and originality of Indian mathematics.

After more than twenty years of research, the distinguished American

mathematician and historian of science, A. Seidenberg showed that

Greek, Egyptian and Old-Babylonian mathematics are derivatives of the

Vedic mathematics known as the Sulbasutras. In 1962, he reached the

following epoch- making conclusion: "... the elements of ancient

geometry found in Egypt (c. 2050-1800 BC) and Babylonia ( c 1900-1750

BC) stem from a ritual system of the kind observed in the

Sulbasutras." Fifteen years later, in a famous paper, appropriately

titled "The Origin of mathematics" Seidenberg elaborated further on

his revolutionary discoveries: "the arithmetical tendencies here

encountered (in Vedic mathematics) were expanded and, and in

connection with observations on the rectangle led to Babylonian

mathematics...

 

A contrary tendency, namely, a concern for exactness of thought (or

the myth of its importance), together with a recognition that

arithmetic methods are not exact, led to Pythagorian (Greek)

mathematics." In other words, both of the world's great systems of

mathematics that are seen as the basis of Western civilization,

namely, Greek and Egyptian-Babylonian, owe their existence to ancient

Indian (Vedic) mathematics. In the face of this to argue that Indian

civilization did not originate anything is a colossal

misrepresentation based on obsolete and discredited theories. In

fact, it is well known that the Chinese themselves heavily borrowed

from India in fields like astronomy and mathematics. It is a similar

story when we turn to astronomy. William Dwight Whitney and other

linguists of the colonial period claimed that Indian astronomy was

based on the Greek-a position still reiterated by many scholars.

 

A.B. Keith, another linguist of the colonial period gave out the view

that Indians had borrowed their astronomy from some "Semitic source"

without specifying which one. It is illuminating to contrast Keith's

(and Whitney's) statements with what Jean-Sylvain Baily, a leading

French astronomer had to say about the astronomical record of the

Hindus: "...the motions of the stars calculated by the Hindus before

some 4500 years very not even a single minute from the tables of

Cassine and Meyer (used in Europe in the nineteenth century). The

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 calculations of the

school. ...

 

The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that, from

which the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and even the Jews derive the

knowledge." This statement, it is worth noting, is by a great

astronomer-not some colonial bureaucrat or missionary scholar who

knew some Indian language. And this view was echoed by John Playfair,

Astronomer Royal at the University of Edinburgh and many others.

 

Fine arts and spirituality

 

In the spiritual realm, no one seriously disputes India's

contributions, though even these are often distorted. While it is

unnecessary to go into the details of yoga, meditation and others, it

is worth noting that even these have potential for concrete

applications. For example, the great linguist Panini gave the concept

for meta-language-and constructed one-thousands of years before

computer scientists began exploring the same idea. No one has been

able to match him to this day. Similarly, Patanjali, in his

Yogasutra, gives rules for testing the correctness of proofs of

statements and proof theories centuries before mathematicians began

to ponder about these fundamental problems. It is worth noting that

one of the central problems of modern Physics (Quantum Physics) is

the problem of reality and consciousness. This was anticipated by

Vedic seers thousands of years ago.

 

The great physicist. J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote: "The general

notions about human understanding... which are illustrated by

discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly

unfamiliar, wholly unheard of or new. Even in our own culture they

have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable

and central place. What we shall find (in modern Physics) is an

exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom."

It is the same in the arts. In his book The Art of South East Asia,

Philip Rawson writes: "The culture of India has been one of the

world's most powerful civilizing forces. Countries of the Far East,

including China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia owe much of what is

best in their own cultures to the inspiration of ideas imported from

India. The West, too, has its own debts.

 

But the members of that circle of civilizations beyond Burma

scattered around the Gulf of Siam and the Java Sea, virtually owe

their very existence to the creative influence of Indian ideas... No

conquest or invasion, no forced coversion imposed them. They were

adopted because people saw that they were good and that they could

use them..." In the face of this history and this reality, it is not

merely wrong but a grotesque misrepresentation to portray India as

civilization that only received from outside. The truth, as every

serious student knows, is the exact opposite: India has always given

a great deal more than she has received. Civilization as we know

today would not exist without India. This record is what anti-Hindu

scholars are trying to erase. Having failed, they are trying to get

the likes of Amartya Sen and Michael Witzel to help them. This is

called Negationism.

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