An Important and Informative Work

 

ANCIENT HINDU SCIENCE: Its Impact on the Ancient and Modern Worlds. Alok Kumar. Jaico Books. 2019. Pp: 197.  Rs 450/-

Two extremes have marked the discourse on ancient Indian, specifically Hindu, knowledge in the past decade or so. On the one hand are those making fanciful-bordering-on-bizarre claims. On the other are those who rightly mock these claims. But in doing this, they are silent about, and thus unfairly deny, many genuine achievements of ancient scholars. So there is an entire generation growing up not knowing that zero is India’s gift to mathematics, Aryabhatta’s contribution to mathematics and astronomy, Susruta’s and Charaka’s contributions to medicine and much, much else.

Alok Kumar’s Ancient Hindu Science is an important book in this context, helping separate the whacky from the sane. As he himself writes, he has “sorted out the hard facts from fantasy”. This is not a boastful claim. This book is actually a very well-researched one, as the copious footnotes and 22 page bibliography show.

The book deals with Hindu contribution to six areas – mathematics (the most extensive section, and one which can be daunting for those who don’t have a love for numbers), astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. The book has a wealth of information on ancient India’s contribution in these six areas.

Zero is not the only contribution to mathematics, the word sine in trigonometry also has its roots in Sanskrit. Aryabhatta assigned diurnal motion to earth and kept the sun stationary centuries before Copernicus. Charaka, Susruta and Kautilya had written about oxidation, calcination and distillation. The claim that Ganesha’s elephant head is proof of plastic surgery in ancient times is much mocked; Kumar points out that Susruta had described the technique to graft skin – a procedure adopted in the west only in the fifteenth century.

For those who want western/foreign validation on anything related to India, Kumar quotes ancient and modern foreign scholars who have either acknowledged Hindu contribution to these fields or have lamented the lack of such acknowledgement.

Fortunately, the book is written in simple language, which makes it easy for the lay reader, who may not be a mathematician, scientist, geologist, chemist etc. Experts in individual fields may already know much of what is in this book. However, there are points at which interest does flag, when it reads like a mere recounting of achievements. But these is a very minor quibble.

It is possible that someone will challenge much of what Kumar states. But that does not take away from the value of this work.