knowledge

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ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE

http://sivaloka.tripod.com/story_of_knowledge.htm

India has been the birthplace of science over ages. Takshashila University (in

Pakistan now) was a great centre of learning where students from Iran and

further west came to study. In the first millennium BC, Iran was highly

Indianized and could be considered an expansion of Indian culture and

civilisation. At the western fringe of it was Asia Minor, modern Turkey, which

was a place of interaction between Greeks and Iranians (Turks did not live there

then). In the 6th century BC, Iran expanded its boarders to include Assyria,

Babylon, whole of Asia Minor and major parts of Greece. Egypt also fell to Iran

soon after. Thus while Iran was engaged in expansion on its western boarders,

its eastern part was in peace , continuously receiving Indian knowledge and

religion. Zoroaster, fifth century BC, lived in the eastern reaches of Persia,

not far from India, and his belief to wage war on evil ,and the idea of

constant struggle between good and bad , light and darkness, is believed by

the scholars of history of theology, to be Indian (Upanishadic) in origin.

Monotheism had reached a full development in the Upanishad literature in India,

from which Zoroastrianism, Judaism , and also Akhenaton of Egypt (1350 BC) had

borrowed it. Upanishadic knowledge did after the death of its only patron

Akhenatan. Mithraism was another branch of Vedic religion which spread widely

over Iran, South Europe and Egypt. Mithra is a Vedic God (the Sun-God). Mithras

celebrated the birthday of God (Sun) on the 25th December which became adapted

by the Christians as the date of birth of God (Jesus). These religions of Indian

origin in Middle East, introduced the principle of righteousness and monotheism

to Judaism and Christianity and thereby to Islam later. Hence the ethical

monotheism, the back bone of Judaism, Christianity and Islam found its origin

in Hinduism.

Apart from these, Indian wandering monks travelled the breadth and length of

this whole area. From Western sources we know that in the third century BC, a

big Indian community lived at Alexandria in Egypt with their Vedic sannyasins

as well as Buddhist bhikshukas. Indian sea- traders also dominated the sea

-trade up to the period of rise of Islam. It was under this background that the

Indian religions, philosophies and science travelled to the West to enlighten it

in the ancient times.

It is also relevant to clarify here that the central dogma of Hinduism is

knowledge. It believes that knowledge of truth is the ultimate goal of life.

Hinduism encourages its followers to seek out the truth. Hinduism also

recognises that although there is only one absolute truth, because of

limitations of human sense organs and mind , truth may be conceived differently

by different individuals under different circumstances. Therefore tolerance for

differing opinions was preached. Tolerance for difference of opinion is the

first requirement for growth of knowledge in any society. The sages said

knowledge is relative. Thus Hinduism gave the theory of Relativity for the

first time and also tried to formulate a unified field theory in the field of

Physics, in the form of the theory of Brahman for the first time. Law of cause

and effect was doctrinated, excluding Divine Will out of the chain of cause and

effects and karma, not the fate was responsible for what people got in their

lives. The doctrine of Karma making people responsible for their acts and

denial of the doctrine of divine will and fate were the first seeds of modern

attitude and scientific temper. Truth was considered a subject of

investigation, not of belief. Every cause has an effect and this effect becomes

a cause or another effect. The Universe (samsara) is but total of the complex

system of causes and effects flowing in time. Hindu religion encouraged

people to know and experience God rather than to believe Him. Because of this

investigative temper, India was ahead of all other nations in science and

mathematics till her subjugation by Muslim conquest in the 12th century.

On the other hand, Jewish religion was based on the faith that only their God is

real and all others false. Hence it was not only belief in one God but it was

also a belief in correctness of only one religion. Christians also adopted the

same attitude and Islam also asserted the same. Fighting the nonbeliever was

considered a prime duty of the believers. The words of the God as revealed to

the Prophet is final and anything contradicting them has to be destroyed. This

gave the concept of heresy.

PYTHAGORAS: A GREAT HINDU GENIUS

History of knowledge in Europe starts with Pythagoras. Pythagoras, in the 6th

century BC was the first European(Greek) who brought Indian knowledge and

mathematics to Greece in an organised way. He was the first European to convert

completely to Hinduism also. Pythagoras was born around 560 BC, on Samos an

island not far from the coast of the Asia Minor .His mother was probably a

native of Samos but his father was probably a Phoenician. His life history was

recorded from oral traditions a couple of centuries after his death, and even

that information has survived only in fragments.

After studying the very best available in his country (music and gymnastics) he

set out for more. He went to Egypt which had already received Indian Geometry

through its contact with Indians as well as with Indo-Iranians and had then

scholars teaching geometry and a bit of astrology. During his stay in Egypt,

Egypt was invaded by Iran and he was brought to Iran as a captive , where he

stayed at Babylon and other cities. Babylon was no more a Semitic city by that

time, and it had been thoroughly Indo-Iranized in language, religion and

knowledge at least a century earlier, when the Medes and the Persians

thoroughly overran the country of Babylon, and it was now a part of Persian

Empire and culturally a part of Indo-Iran. Probably, Pythagoras went to the

Punjab and thence to the Himalayas as well. It thoroughly changed his life

style and thinking. He permanently rejected the long Greek robes, and adopted

trousers turning away from Ionian culture and identifying himself strongly with

the East. Before Pythagoras, trousers were not known to Europe. Woollen trousers

were worn by Indians living at high altitudes in the Himalayas, like people of

Nepal, Laddakh, Tibet, Kashmir etc. (The statue of Indian king Kanishka, found

in Afghanistan, is wearing a long double-breasted coat and trousers). Variants

of trousers like pyjamas and shalwar were worn in the northern plains of

Indo-Iran. The costume which Pythagoras introduced into the Europe was going to

become the ethnic costume of the West!! Having lived twenty years in the east,

he returned to Europe and settled in Croton, a Greek speaking town of South

Italy. He formed an order of ascetics devoted to develop a sense of community

with the help of religious injunctions and instructions. This was aimed to give

the members a real insight into the concordant nature of universe. He preached

that the world, like human society, was held together by the orderly

arrangement of its parts, and it then became their clear duty to cultivate

order in their own lives. He was now acting as an ambassador of Hinduism to the

West. Pythagorians believed in transmigration of life through different life

forms. His contemporary poet Xenophanes writes: “Pythagoras was once passing by

when a man was beating a dog .He took pity on the animal and said, Stop it;

Indeed it is the soul of a friend of mine; I recognised it when I heard its

voice. Pythagoras was even able to recall the details of his own previous

incarnations.” Pythagoras preached the essential unity and kinship of all forms

of life which is the fundamental principle of Hinduism (and also of other later

Indian religions. He preached non-violence and banned killing and eating

animals in his order of ascetics. He was a firm believer in Karmic law and

preached immortality of existence. The human body is temporary ,therefore one

must purify the soul by abstaining from bodily pleasure. By these means soul

would ultimately win release from the wheel of becoming and realise its true

divine status. Pythagoreans believed that anyone who downgraded his life by

immoral and impure acts will be born as animal in his next life. A particular

type of sayings, he named akousmata (things heard) which were probably Greek

translation of the shruti (Sk. Things heard). In his brotherhood, members were

of two kinds. Acousmatics would visit him and seek guidance on how to lead a

simple ,non-violent and virtuous way of life. Others called Mathematikoi lived

inside the math (monastery) and studied the nature of reality more deeply. From

mathematik is derived the word mathematics. Pythagorians studied and further

developed the science of mathematics and philosophy which was brought to them

from India by their great Guru.

The reaction started by Pythagoras resulted in a boom of scholarship in Greece

and finally we find authorities like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes,

Heraclides, Eratosthenes, Archemedes, Euclid etc. During this whole period

transfer of knowledge from India to Greece was never interrupted. This may be

assumed from the fact that whatever theory was given in India e.g. atomic

theory, theory of micro-organism, theory of non-dualism, Brahman, atman, the

five elements (the Greeks accepted only four, and did not include space ),

medicine, the three doshas or whatever; it appears in Greek translation soon

after. It was a good thing. A living and growing civilisation is always ready

to find out and assimilate whatever valuable it notices in other civilisations.