Ancient Indian Texts

https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/home

by amazedsaint • 13 years ago

139 94 13 years ago

sites.google.com

unmole2• 13 years ago

Interesting collection. Disappointed to see the typical Hindu apologist, revivalist nonsense in the description though.

Edit: What I mean by typical: http://youtu.be/RSHFzZmQPj0

seiji3• 13 years ago

Physics - Concepts of atom and theory of relativity were explicitly stated by an Indian Philosopher around 600 BC.

Looks pretty accurate to me. All the best science comes from philosophers backed by feelings and visions instead of math.

markshepard3• 13 years ago

he he. In fact every group claim that the "ancients" already knew "everything" but we just forgot about it and rediscovering it..

jerf• 13 years ago

Based on that sentence, there is an interpretation that would make that true. The idea that the matter may be discrete rather than continuous is quite old; the word "atom" after all from ancient Greece. Wikipedia also mentions Indian philosophers had the idea. Of course, they never were able to prove that the idea was correct, and a modern educated viewer can not help but bring in the modern view of the atom when they see the word "atom" (protons, quarks, gluons, etc), but the modern view would not match either the Greek or Indian conception. The word choice of "stated" is correct enough; they did not prove, they did not demonstrate, they could not resolve the argument, but the very fundamental root idea was recognized.

Similarly, the modern ear hears "relativity" and can't help but think of Einsteinian relativity, but the adjective "Einsteinian" is not redundant as it is not the only idea of relativity. Relativity as a concept also goes back a long way, but it looked more like Galilean relativity (if indeed it was even that formalized, which it probably wasn't), which contains certain contradictions in it which can be determined with pure reasoning, and indeed may have been (see [1]).

The summary leads to misleading ideas about what the Indian philosophers really knew/discovered/thought, if for no other reason than there is no way to accurately summarize the ancient ideas in modern words that briefly; it is not clear to me whether the author of the linked web page is himself confused or being deliberately mendacious.

[1] http://mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm , and indeed, the entire first half of that book or so. Among this book's many points is that physicists were seriously beginning to consider whether they were going to have to give up on the general idea of relativity until Einstein was able to rescue it.

memracom• 13 years ago

Problem is that anyone could come up with the concept of the atom, and even relativity is not beyond the bounds of possibility. We are all genetically identical to the earliest Homo Sapiens who left Africa. And the ones who stayed in Africa. Any one of those people who had the fortune to have a life of diverse experience and the spare time needed to think about things, would have discovered any number of supposedly modern things. They might have even written about it 10,000 years ago on parchment or leaves which have long since disappeared.

But we have no evidence of any of this, and therefore we claim that it did not happen. That is not a very rational position to take. It should be clear by now that wonderfuly discoveries often happen in parallel in different geographical locations. Sometimes they are almost forgotten for generations until a historian discovers old documents. There is no good reason to believe that this kind of thing has been going on since Homo Sapiens first came to be.

The only real advantage that we have today is the law of large numbers and the network effect.

managuru• 13 years ago

Agreed - why dig up ancient books that did not stand the test time? Just go forward with what is present and focus on future.

seiji3• 13 years ago

When these issues come up, there's always a vague "comes from india" contingent willing to riot and avenge their country over the fact they are the best at everything. (Don't bring up any discussions about infosys, else you'll be inundated with how great and expansive they are.)

Maybe it's because such a huge population actually has an origin place and story going back quite far? I don't have an origin. I come from some vague stock of medium-tall people with transparent skin in northern europe where the sun don't shine. I've nothing of ancestry to fight for, so I'm not sure I can even understand how they approach the world largely focused on the past.

lallysingh• 13 years ago

History is important.

nu2ycombinator2• 13 years ago

Why indeed, And also why to spend time and money on exploring the archeological places and rebuilding old ancient machines? In short it interests some people and it gives clear picture of how knowledge evolved. It does not need to be advanced than the current technologies.

droid5• 13 years ago

"universe is also ancient, why are we still exploring it, by calling such a process as science" ?

The answer is simple. "Human Thirst for knowledge never ends" and nobody really knows for sure where they are headed.

"The present" which we feel really proud of, will be called ancient and worthless in the future. Because, the knowledge of humans increases with time (or understanding of nature increases with generations, some become dumb over time as well)

"The future" few people have envisioned it (saints in ancient form - who didn't expect anything from anybody but wanted to spread the knowledge, "visionaries" in the current business world - who want to rule the world with money, etc)

"stand the test time" just because they are not accessible doesn't mean they didnt' stand the test time. We keep discovering the same things whichever has been told in the past and the same things will happen in future as well. Its just that we love to call it with different names.

Someone has to connect the dots. Nobody has time in the current world. Everyone just moves on.

s-topper4• 13 years ago

CTRL+F - hindu - 0 results in home page. Where is the "nonsense" that you're talking about?

demodifier• 13 years ago

In general, when talking about pre-Islamic India to an Indian audience the word Hindu is not always used explicitly since Hindu culture was the dominant culture in that period and there is no need to distinguish it from any competing culture except in special circumstances. The claims of greatness of culture spread though out the site refer to a period such as this.

pflats3• 13 years ago

If you take a look at the math subsection (https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/math) be aware that Brahmagupta was a beast of a mathematician. His sucessors, the two Bhaskaras, were ridiculously good as well. Their names aren't nearly as big as any of the European mathematicians you know, but they were powerhouses of math during Europe's dark ages.

Brahmagupta was pretty much the first recorded dude to use 0 in math, so he's got that going for him, and the only issue people take with his work is that he was weak around the indeterminate forms (e.g. claiming 0/0 = 0)[1]. His work on Pell's equation is pretty awesome too, but then we're veering into more esoteric mathematics, so I digress.

Bhaskara II invented a rough and early verison of differential calculus to calculate instaneous rates of change in the mid 1100s. Newton finished his Method of Fluxions in 1671. (Newton's work was independent of Bhaskara II's and is said to be far more rigourous with greather breadth and depth of usage and applications; I haven't read enough of either to be an honest source, but the claim seems reasonable.)

[1]For an ancient, though, this is understandable. We know that 0⨯0 = 0, that b|a iff a = b⨯k, and that a = bq + r, so it's reasonable to assume that since 0 = 0⨯0 + 0 and 0|0, that 0/0 = 0. (Phew!) When you pretty much codify 0 in math, I'll cut you a break on that one.

unmole2• 13 years ago

Don't forget Aryabhata. His work in trigonometry and calendars was perhaps a wee bit more important Bramhagupta's acomplishments in practical terms.

pflats3• 13 years ago

I had done exactly that. Oops! (I knew a major trigonometer came before Bramhagupta, but I forgot his name.)

shas3• 13 years ago

The 'problem' with Indian math was the general aversion (or ignorance) of the importance of the method of proof. The more well known works of Greek mathematics were great in emphasizing the importance of the concept of mathematical proof. Yet, Greek mathematics, with the exception of Archimedes and Diophantus had an aversion for arithmetic (especially the concept of infinity and infinitesimals) and algebra and an over-reliance on geometry[1]. Engaging in a bit of counter-factuals, if either of the following had happened: (1) Indians picking up on the method of proof, (2) Greeks adopting more arithmetic and algebra, history of mathematics may have looked significantly different than today.

However, the OP link has a ton of apologist/revisionist history with insufficient archaeological evidence mixed in with a little bit of the good stuff. Example: references to vastu shastra, which is astrological woo.

[1] Eric Temple Bell, 'The Development of Mathematics,' Dover, 1992.

pflats3• 13 years ago

Based on my reading, I couldn't agree more with your post. Hence my note about Bhaskara II's work being "rough"; I was trying to write for a lay audience.

I too find myself wondering what the world would be like if there were more crossover between the early mathematical cultures. A few pages of Fibonacci's Liber Abaci pretty much transformed European math.

I saw a couple criticisms of the page's overall tone; I wanted to direct people to the stuff I knew was pretty good. I don't know enough about things like the vastu shastra, but I've studied my math history pretty extensively and am more than happy to comment on that.

abecedarius• 13 years ago

Were there any ancients besides the Greeks who did appreciate proof? It seems like Europe didn't quite measure up on that score again until the 1800s, either.

monsterix7• 13 years ago

vastu shastra, which is astrological woo.

I'd give you that in its current marketed form it is astrological bullshit, but originally Vastu Shastra was a formal form of science [1] grounded on engineering principles and urban design. All persevering to obtain a 'calm' for the dweller.

One can still infer from the high precision N-S-E-W positioning of fairly huge ancient Hindu temples, historical remains of homes and dwellings, monasteries and other artefacts. Even the 1000+ step staircases in some of the forts and fortresses [2][3], transoceanic bridges [4] suggest the quality of math that was in play.

The choice and placement of stone, wood and metal w.r.t Sun, tropical climate and other ergonomic needs is simply mind blowing. Math has to be at the root of it.

Obviously not many records exist to substantiate the level of skill and academia prevalent at the time. I wish someone undertook a journey to research and substantiate just about "everything" that we have from Egypt to Indonesia (Hindu kingdoms spanned that far, yes!). At the risk of being shooed away by existing pride.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastu_shastra

Even the wikipedia here, for example, says ... "while Vastu had long been essentially restricted to temple architecture..." which is completely wrong, and they defeat it in the third paragraph where they define "the Sanskrit word vastu means a dwelling or house with a corresponding plot of land" which is what Vaastu Shastra was all about, not temples alone.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChandBaori.jpg

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chand_Baori

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Bridge

sn41• 13 years ago

This criticism of aversion to proofs is in general valid. However, be aware that Indians also made some significant steps towards calculus, and the first book explaining this had "arguments" and worked out examples. (This is not second hand knowledge, I know the language and have a copy of one volume of the book.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuktibh%C4%81%E1%B9%A3%C4%81

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_school_of_astronomy_and_...

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

The dates of ancient texts from India are claimed over a whole wide range. There is as much as 2,000 years of divergence between the earliest speculative date and absolutely attested known date for the Vedas, for example. A good outline of the issues in historiography of India can be found in Mathematics in India by Kim Plofker[1], who was trained both as a mathematician and Sanskrit scholar. Not always knowing when a particular text was composed has a lot of influence on knowing or not knowing which ideas appeared in what era in the development of science and mathematics in India.

(One difference between India and either China or the near east is that the writing materials used in India, often plaited sheets of palm leaves, were much less durable than the silk sheets or bamboo slats used in China, or the fired clay tablets or papyrus sheets or parchment hides used in the near east. So many of the earliest writings from India have perished, while remarkably old writings still exist from either China or Sumer.)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-India-Kim-Plofker/dp/06911...

maaku3• 13 years ago

The oldest writings in China are not much more than 2,000 years old. Maybe you're thinking of oracle bones & bronze inscriptions? But those are rarely more than a sentence or two in isolation.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

The formation of the texts of Confucius and Mencius of course is older than that. The Qin book-burning destroyed a lot of the books that were that old, but bamboo manuscripts and silk manuscripts are still being discovered from archeological sites that are much older than any surviving writings from India. I have personally read in museums bronze inscriptions that are more than just a few sentences long, dating back about three millennia.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/2010/01/29/rare-bamboo-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui_Silk_Texts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_and_wooden_slips

pramalin4• 13 years ago

//Ancient India was a land of sages, saints and seers as well as a land of scholars and scientists. Rishis were the sages who built our great culture. They devoted their life, energy and experience for the welfare of people. They wrote Vedas - the manual of vibrations. Following this many field of science evolved in India. //

This is typical hindutva propaganda, where they claim that anything and everything originated from Vedic scriptures, which are for welfare of people.

Before buying into it, I would suggest the readers to review the works of Dr. Ambedkar such as Riddle In Hinduism. http://www.ambedkar.org/riddleinhinduism/

the__prestige3• 13 years ago

Yup, that link is definitely not propaganda.

krrishd• 13 years ago

of course it is, but it just generally helps looking at it from multiple perspectives if you aren't directly affected, so you aren't affected more by one side of the argument, and perhaps even have a better, more informed perspective than some Indian people who may have been raised to think one way or another, sticking to one of the sides.

selimthegrim2• 13 years ago

Ambedkar was one of the primary drafters of the Indian Constitution - usually not something you entrust to a fount of bias.

s-topper4• 13 years ago

>>>Before buying into it, I would suggest the readers to review the works of Dr. Ambedkar such as Riddle In Hinduism. http://www.ambedkar.org/riddleinhinduism/

You're saying fight one "propaganda" with another "propaganda"? LOL!

xerophtye4• 13 years ago

>They wrote Vedas - the manual of vibrations. Following this many field of science evolved in India.

Eh? What gives? How can people believe that?

PS: I thought the original Aryans brought the Vedas with them from central Asia, instead of the Rishis of India writing them. No?

Jonovono3• 13 years ago

This is neat! Thanks.

I have wanted to learn Sanskrit for a long time, and I think the stuff you could read after learning that would be interesting.

And then there is NASA (apparently) using Sanskrit for AI: http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html

laichzeit0• 13 years ago

As someone who put in the years required to learn Classical Latin and Attic Greek I can but only heed you to make very, very sure you are willing to invest the enormous amount of time required to learn an ancient language.

If you have a normal job, wife and children, and can't find at minimum 2 hours out of your day to dedicate to language study, then don't bother. You will never read any Sanskrit at a comfortable pace if you can't commit to such an investment. I'm talking about picking up a book and not hitting an unknown word 3 times a sentence. You'll need at minimum 2 years of a full time schedule like before it even becomes fun.

It's the unfortunate and sad reality about the time commitment required in learning ancient languages to the level of fluency.

Jonovono3• 13 years ago

That's good to know. Ya, I understand it would be a huge time investment. Luckily I don't have any of those barriers, and am still quite young!

aktiur• 13 years ago

And then there is NASA (apparently) using Sanskrit for AI: http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html*

This is a hoax. The article reproduced there does exist though: it was published in an artificial intelligence journal in 1985 and made no reference to NASA, except for the fact that the author worked at the NASA Ames Research Center. You can find it there: http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/46...

A quick search on internet for "sanskrit nasa" shows that all occurences are either copies, extracts or translations of this article taken out of its context. The belief that NASA has used sanskrit seems to come from this internet echo chamber.

I could find no reference about it on any NASA website, nor any other articles written by this Rick Briggs. I was able to find only one other article on sanskrit and AI, quoting the one by Briggs, dated to 1987: http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/~srihari/papers/KRIS87.pdf

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Jonovono3• 13 years ago

Thanks! It did seem weird to me (sketchy website and what not). Thanks for clearing that up.

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the__prestige3• 13 years ago

If there is a lesson to be learnt, it is that one should be humble about the notion of being the first to invent anything. I'm pretty sure the many of the concepts expressed in these texts go further back in time without any record. Everything is an addition or evolution of the past, regardless of whether it is explicitly or wittingly so.

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djdj123• 13 years ago

You may have picked up on the author's not-so-subtle self-congratulation in the use of the phrase: "our great culture".

There is a lot of wonderful material to be absorbed in the ancient texts of India, but the text of that page has a strong Hindu religious nationalist tone (which in Indian languages is called "Hindutva", or "Hindu-ness").

The vast (in time and space), and diverse Indian culture that produced these works was far more tolerant and open to the world's ideas than the apparent mindset of the individual(s) who created this site.

So try to enjoy the actual linked texts, but observe, and then ignore the religious nationalism that seems to have inspired the site.

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smoyer2• 13 years ago

"our great culture"

Do you mean cultural heritage? I wouldn't call the culture so great now with the corruption in politics, etc.

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datacog2• 13 years ago

how does politics get to be a part of culture ?

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eklavya2• 13 years ago

Maybe you are being too skeptical, maybe he is just feeling proud? Is it fanatical to feel proud of your nation, don't you guys love yours?

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vram222• 13 years ago

Interesting, will check the site out. Apropos: I had blogged this a while ago:

Bhaskaracharya and the man who found zero:

http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/06/bhaskaracharya-and-man-who...

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vram222• 13 years ago

And here is one of his books, the Lilavati:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilavati

I noticed this at that page:

"Bhaskara II gives the value of pi as 22/7 in the book but suggest a more accurate ratio of 3927/1250 for use in astronomical calculations."

I also remembered reading somewhere that some ancient Indians had a simple formula for pi that was somewhat accurate; take the first 3 odd positive integers, twice each, as one single number, split it down the middle, and divide the right half by the left half, i.e. 113355 => 355/113 = ~pi.

So I checked, using Python:

$ python >>> from math import pi >>> pi 3.141592653589793

>> print 3927.0/1250 3.1416
>> print 355.0/113 3.14159292035

The approximation that uses 113355 matches pi (from Python) upto 6 decimal places.

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elangoc• 13 years ago

This sort of topic has come up before, and to put it gently, blog posts like these have been lacking in context and substance. See a previous HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4154755

Also see a previous HN post about a PNAS publication that talks about the people from current-day South India 4000 years ago (while South Indians' language is not based on Sanskrit, and 4000 years ago far predates the time period mentioned in the original post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5078076

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pinkskip• 13 years ago

meh..

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yarou• 13 years ago

I'm really confused by the comments that say the tone of this site is "Hindu nationalist". I see no mention of the word "Hindu" in the entire page. In fact, it's as far from politicized text as possible. Not everything on the web has some hidden meaning or subtext.

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chattoraj• 13 years ago

The site has a page on "Vimanika shastra"[1] ("Science of Flying Machines"), which is known to be a bullshit text from the 20th century[2].

Definitely a Hindutva site.

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/ancientbharat/aeronautics

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaim%C4%81nika_Sh%C4%81stra

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s-topper4• 13 years ago

>>Definitely a Hindutva site.

And, your point is?

That site also has collections about works of legit ancient Indian mathematicians, Vedas etc. So, you are going to disregard them because they're Hindus?

If somebody mentions about these things, then they're said to be peddling this so called Hindu propaganda. Now, THAT'S a real propaganda.

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smoyer2• 13 years ago

Yep ... I know that eye glasses and cataract surgery were done there first (the ruined lens was poked out of place with a copper wire, then a pair of glasses became the primary lens and the cornea became the secondary lens). And obviously you needed to be able to produce glass to make eye glasses. There was also early production of stainless steel.

I'm not as well-versed in Indian history as I should be ... with that kind of science, you would have expected a dominant technical culture but why was this knowledge lost instead?

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tomrod• 13 years ago

That's a big question I have on these types of technological regression.

It seems like technoliterate civilizations are eventually replaced by fundamentalism then animism, perhaps?

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kamaal• 13 years ago

>you would have expected a dominant technical culture but why was this knowledge lost instead?

One word, Entropy!

As an Indian, I can tell you India has seen many cycles of ups and downs. And its not just mere technical culture, there is tons of other things. Food, literature, language, poetry, food, clothes, music, religions, philosophy and what not. I don't know any other country in the world comes close to matching this. Buddha arrived in India in around 500 BC. And that was one of India's peak times in Spiritual and philosophical tradition.

There are languages that are totally extinct, cultures that have faded away. Massive amounts of literature lost completely to mankind.

But Mainland India has been invaded many times, colonized, bulk of its wealth plundered. Add to this the overall entropy of the system.

A simple question to you would be like this. Can you be sure US will remain the world super power 200 years from now.

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eklavya2• 13 years ago

A small correction there, Buddha WAS from India :)

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taway121• 13 years ago

I pass no comment on the site, but on assertions here about hindutva as hindu religious propaganda/nationalism. This is incorrect, hindutva does not proscribe or prescribe any religion.

Veer Savarkar's pamphlet on which modern notions of hindutva are based on can be read at [1]

Sarvakar includes all Indian religions in the term "Hinduism" and outlines his vision of a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation) as "Akhand Bharat" (United India), stretching across the entire Indian subcontinent.

Hindu in the context of hindutva is not religious. It speaks about a common identity for a united nation. Savarkar's writing need to be read in the context of the period that they were written, English oppression and the fight for independence, before the idea of a muslim state, Pakistan were first proposed. During this time, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh were one nation commonly know not as India, but Hindustan. Hindustan represented not a Hindu state, but a country where people who shared the hindu ethos reside.

At the level of practice, the Hindutva or Hindu ethos, outlook boils down to upholding righteousness (Sat-guna) and fighting ignoble attitudes (Dur-guna).

Quoting Savarkar, "We Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affections warm, but also by the tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilization - our Hindu culture"

Modern India was founded at independence on the same beliefs, in the quote above replace hindus by India and hindu culture by Indian culture.

Please read the literature on the subject and not what is simply presented on modern pop culture.

[1] http://www.savarkar.org/content/pdfs/en/essentials_of_hindut...

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selimthegrim2• 13 years ago

Please enlighten us on Savarkar's reaction to Ambedkar wanting to convert Dalits away from Hinduism.

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nitin1213• 13 years ago

Indian culture was always inclusive in nature right from its point of origin.but now we only see it becoming exclusive and narrow concentrating only on the Hindu side of the culture.

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dschiptsov• 13 years ago

Ancient texts should be considered as a philosophy rather than science, because almost nothing was formally proved that time, but lots of phenomena were correctly inferred or guessed.

Most famous insights, of course, were these about the nature of mind from the Upanishads, which uses state of sleep, deep-sleep (without dreams) and wakefulness as metaphors to illustrate what we now call "models of the world", "contexts", "cognitive dissonance", "frames of reference", or just the role of the mind (consciousness) in cognition - how we constantly distort, reinterpret and even ignore perceived reality.

Roughly, it was a notion clarified later by Buddha - "Life is shaped by our mind, we become what we think", the notion that all our (at least psychological) "suffering" begins (and ends) inside our skulls and doesn't exist in the world outside.

Another great notion was one of the Dzongchen sect of Tibetan Bon tradition, when they use analogy of a mirror to how our mind should "work" - as a mirror isn't affected by what it reflects, so the mind in its "primordial" (original, such that of a child) state is just a "tool" to "do everything", including things done by Buddha or Einstein.

More recent marvels from India including "Want to see a God - look between two thoughts" by "modern" saint Ramakrishna, which is "in continuum" back to Upanishads.

In short, in decent texts composed by highly intelligent authors (including so-called fiction) there is a possibility to find correct inferences and guesses for almost every observable phenomena, if your own mind is lucid enough.

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anovikov• 13 years ago

"Russia is the motherland of elephants" (old Soviet joke)... how familiar...

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Ancient Indian Texts

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