Vedic Cosmology Accurate Millenia before Newton

[Guest guest]

Vinod Kumar

>From the Pages of History: Earth's Rotation, its Globular Shape and

Gravity

 

When we talk of the earth going around the sun as it has always done,

its globular shape, the different seasons, different lengths of day

and night, mind goes back to Galileo and Copernicus, scared to death,

holding the truth back lest the fury of the church falls upon them

for letting the world know the reality of nature. When one thinks of

gravity one thinks of Newton sitting under an apple tree watching an

apple fall to the ground and Newton proclaiming "Lo! there is

gravity."

 

If I were to say Hindu philosophers talked and wrote about gravity

and the globular shape of the earth centuries before Newton and

Galileo and Copernicus, I would not only be dismissed as a "fanatical

Hindu communalist" by our 'all-knowing-secular intellectuals' but

also incur their wrath. And who wants that?

 

In order to state the truth and make it acceptable to our 'all-

knowing-secular intellectuals' let me seek the help of a Muslim

scholar from Central Asia. Who around 1030 AD wrote a very

comprehensive book "Indica" about India -- its literature, its

philosophy, its religion, its culture, its languages, its history,

its geography, its customs, its sciences including astronomy. I am

talking about Abu-Raihan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Alberuni -- a scholar and

a devout genuine Muslim by all standards.

 

Before I go into what Alberuni wrote let us take some time to find

out more about this man -- Alberuni.

 

In the words of Edward Sachau -- translator of Alebruni's 'Indica':

 

"Mahmud marched into the country, not without some fighting,

established there one of his generals as provincial governor, and

soon returned to Ghazna with much booty and a great part of Khiva

troops, together with the princes of the deposed family of Mamun and

the leading men of the country as prisoners of war or as hostages.

Among the last was Abu-Raihan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Alberuni. This

happened in the spring and summer of AD 1017."

 

"When he (Alberuni) was brought to Ghazna as a hostage, he enjoyed

the reputation of a great 'munajjim' i.e. "astrologer - astronomer".

By the time he wrote 'Indica' thirteen years later after his

involuntary immigration to Afghanistan, he was a master of astrology,

both according to the Greek and the Hindu systems.

 

"Alberuni felt a strong inclination towards Indian philosophy. He

seems to have thought that the philosophers both in ancient India and

Greece, held in reality the very same ideas, the same as seem to have

been his own i.e. of pure monotheism. He seems to have to have

reveled in the pure theories of Bhagavad-Gita. … There can scarcely

be any doubt that the Muslims of later times would have found fault

with him for going to such length in his interest for these

heathenish doctrines" observes Sachau, but "still he was Muslim,

whether Sunni or Shia cannot be gathered from Indica. He sometimes

takes an occasion for pointing out to the reader the superiority of

Islam over Brahamanical India… He dares not attack Islam but attacks

the Arabs."

 

What was the object of his writing 'Indica'?

"The object which the author had in view and never for a moment lost

sight of, was to afford the necessary information and training to any

one (in Islam) who wants to converse with the Hindus, and to discuss

with them questions of religion, science, or literature, on the very

basis of their own civilization."

 

Alberuni came to India with Mahmud and stayed there. He learnt

Sanskrit and Hindu literature and sciences and indeed wrote a very

comprehensive book about India of those days. As a Muslim he praises

the 'wonderful exploits of Mahmud saying: "Mahmud utterly ruined the

prosperity of the country, and performed those wonderful exploits, by

which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all

directions" but as a scholar he laments "this is the reason, too, why

Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country

conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet

reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places."

 

It seems from above that his study was done in area which was under

Mahmud's control, most likely western Punjab. But still what he

writes is very illuminating. Let us now see what wrote about our

subject: astronomy in India and gravity and the solar system.

 

Quoting from Brahamgupta's Brahamsiddhanta, Alberuni wrote:

 

"Several circumstances, however, compel us to attribute globular

shape to both the earth and the heaven, viz. the fact that the stars

rise and set in different places at different times, so that, e.g. a

man in Yamakoti observes one identical start rising above the western

horizon, whilst a man in Rum at the same time observes it rising

above the eastern horizon. Another argument to the same effect is

this, that a man on Meru observes one identical star above the

horizon in the zenith of Lanka, the country of demons, whilst a man

in Lanka at the same time observes it above his head. Besides all

astronomical observations are not correct unless we assume the

globular shape of heaven and earth. Therefore we must declare that

heaven is a globe, and the observation of these characteristics of

the world would not be correct unless in reality it were a globe. Now

it is evident that all other theories about the world are futile."

 

Earlier philosophers like Aryabhata, Vasishtha and Lata had also come

to the same conclusion and Alberuni goes on to quote Varahmira:

 

"all things which are perceived by the senses, are witness in favor

of the globular shape of the earth, and refute the possibility of its

having any other shape."

 

On the subject of the rotation of the earth Alberuni writes:

 

"As regards the resting of the earth, one of the elementary problems

of astronomy, which offers many and great difficulties, this, too, is

a dogma with the Hindu astronomers. Brahamgupta says in the

Brahamsiddhanta: 'some people maintain that the first motion (from

east to west) does not lie in the meridian, but belongs to the earth.

But Varahmira refutes them by saying: If that were the case, a bird

would not return to its nest as soon as it had flown away from it

towards the west.' And, in fact it is precisely as Varahmira says."

Alberuni agrees with Varahmira that earth does not rotate.

 

Alberuni goes on to quote Brahamgupta:

 

"The followers of Aryabhata maintain that the earth is moving and the

heaven resting. People have tried to refute them by saying that, if

such were the case, stones would and trees would fall from the earth.

Brahamgupta does not agree with them, and says that that would not

necessarily follow from their theory, apparently because he thought

that all heavy things are attracted towards the center of the earth.

He says: 'On the contrary, if that were the case, the earth would not

vie in keeping an even and uniform pace with the minutes of heaven,

the pranas of the times."

 

Alberuni does not agree with Brahamgupta and is unable to understand

the rotation of the earth and goes on to write:

 

"Supposing this to be true, and that the earth makes a complete

rotation eastward in so many breaths as heaven does according to his

(Brahamgupta's) view, we cannot see what should prevent the earth

from keeping an even and uniform pace with heaven."

 

Stubbornly he refuses to accept the theory of the rotation of the

earth and goes on to say:

 

"Besides, the rotation of the earth in no way impair the value of

astronomy, as all appearances of an astronomic character can quite as

well be explained according to this theory as to the other. There

are, however, other reasons which make it impossible."

 

Alberuni says he also has written a book on this subject in which '

we have surpassed our predecessors' but does not tell what his

theories are?

 

On the question of gravity and other issues like top and bottom, high

and low, Alberuni quotes Brahamgupta and says:

 

"Scholars have declared that the globe of the earth is in the midst

of heaven, and that Mount Meru, the home of Devas, as well as

Vadavamukha below, is the home of their opponents; the Daitya and

Dhanava belong to it. But his below is according to them is only a

relative one. Disregarding this, we say that the earth on all its

sides is the same; all people on earth stand upright, and all heavy

things fall down to the earth by a law of nature, for it is the

nature of the earth to attract and to keep things, as it is the

nature of water to flow, that of fire to burn, and that of wind to

set in motion… The earth is the only low thing, and seeds always

return to it, in whatever direction you may throw them away, and

never rise upwards from the earth."

 

Varahmira explains it further:

 

"Mountains, seas, rivers, trees, cities, men, and angels, all are

around the globe of the earth. And if Yamakoti and Rum are opposite

to each other, one could not say that the one is low in relation to

the other, since low does not exist…. Every one speaks of himself, 'I

am above and the others are below,' whilst all of them are around the

globe like the blossoms springing on the branches of a Kadamba-tree.

They encircle it on all the sides, but each individual blossom has

the same position as the other, neither one hanging downward nor then

other standing upright." He emphasized: "For the earth attracts that

which is upon her, for it is the below towards all directions, and

heaven is the above towards all directions."

 

Now these were the thoughts of Hindu philosophers as recorded by

Alberuni in the early part of the eleventh century and these had not

changed for centuries. Alberuni quotes heavily from Brahamgupta whose

Brahamsiddhanta was composed in AD 628. But it was Aryabhata, born in

AD 476, the first to hold that the earth was a sphere and rotated on

its axis and that the eclipses were not the work of Rahu but caused

by the shadow of the earth falling on the moon. His Aryabhatiya was

composed in AD 499.

 

It is clear from above that it was over a millennium before Galileo,

Copernicus and Newton that the Hindu philosophers had formulated the

theories about the globular shape and rotation of the earth and

gravity.