Are Contributions of Ancient Indian Civilization Under-appreciated

A lot of people blame Indians to be overzealous about the achievements of ancient India, while many others claim that the contributions of ancient Indian civilization remain highly under-appreciated. In this article let us try to find out who is correct.

As a child growing up in India and being schooled in an English medium school following the modern Indian curriculum, I grew up with the impression that most of the rational scientific enquiry that was carried out in the past had been carried out in the western countries, while in India our forefathers were mostly concerned with religion and spirituality. In the schools and, in the media, we saw the same thing.

As a young impressionable kid I was very confused, on one side my parents said that Indian civilization was awesome and wanted me to appreciate it, but in the schools and the popular media I was told west is rational and logical and hence better. Starting from my teenage days thanks to my schooling and media exposure I was sure that western thought was better and all these people who claim the greatness of Indian thinking are Hindu nationalists who have their propaganda to push ahead.

Of late, out of curiosity, I picked up the works of Indian sages and realized that my parents were right. I was impressed by the sheer brilliance of texts written by our sages. This made me realize that I should be more respectful of my Indian heritage than what I actually am. If you open up any scientific concept and look for its history, you will see that the credit is given to the ancient Greeks as the first ones to have inquired about it. Now that I am aware of the work of Indian sages I realize how unfair it is. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that scientific inquiry was practiced in ancient India too, but it all goes unnoticed. As an example here is a passage from Wikipedia on the knowledge of spherical earth

“Early Greek philosophers alluded to a spherical Earth, though with some ambiguity. Pythagoras (6th century BC) was among those said to have originated the idea, but this might reflect the ancient Greek practice of ascribing every discovery to one or another of their ancient wise men. Some idea of the sphericity of the Earth seems to have been known to both Parmenides and Empedocles in the 5th century BC, and although the idea cannot reliably be ascribed to Pythagoras, it might nevertheless have been formulated in the Pythagorean school in the 5th century BC although some disagree. After the 5th century BC, no Greek writer of repute thought the world was anything but round.

And here is what they say about India

“Greek ethnographer Megasthenes, c. 300 BC, has been interpreted as stating that the contemporary Brahmans believed in a spherical Earth as the center of the universe.With the spread of Greek culture in the east, Hellenistic astronomy filtered eastwards to ancient India where its profound influence became apparent in the early centuries AD. The Greek concept of an Earth surrounded by the spheres of the planets and that of the fixed stars, vehemently supported by astronomers like Varahamihir and Brahmagupta, strengthened the astronomical principles”

This is what happens to the achievements of Ancient Indian civilization. First the author says that Indians knew earth is spherical by 300BC and then he goes on telling Greek influence made it a widespread idea in India. An impressionable Indian Kid will read this and obviously think, west is scientific Indian was not scientific. This author is clearly not familiar with the works of Indian sages and so erroneously gives all the credit to the Greeks and sidelines the work of Indian sages. Traces of the theory of heliocentrism and round earth are present in ancient Sanskrit texts written somewhere in 9th to 8th century BCE. Shatapatha Brahman a text written by sage Yajnavalkya states in the third brahamana

“The sun strings these worlds (interpreted as the earth, its atmosphere and other planets) to himself on a thread” Shatpatha Brahmana, 8.7.3.10

Not only is he talking about heliocentric model but there are also traces of his knowledge of some type of force (gravity) that sun generates to keep earth in its place. Clearly our sages were not just about spirituality they were doing some serious thinking in the field of natural sciences

Another Sanskrit text written around the same time is Aitareya Brahman written by Mahidasa Aitereya states in section 3.44

“The Sun never sets nor rises. When people think the sun is setting it is not so; they are mistaken. It is only about after reaching the end of the day and makes night below and day to what is on the other side”

This quote indicates that our ancient sages knew that the earth is round and revolves on its axis. It also makes Sun stationary thus confirming the heliocentric model. If you don’t believe me on these quotes, you can yourself go and look in to the texts, they are available online for free. You know I earlier used to think that maybe Greeks get the credit for everything because they left their texts while Indians did not, but it does not seem to be the case, clearly our sages left written text with their knowledge and still they are sidelined. This made me conclude that Indian civilization is highly under-appreciated rather than we being overzealous about it.

Let us now try to understand why this is

Reason 1: One of the reasons why Indian thought is ignored is because Indian thought looks at the world differently than how West looks. Indian thought takes a holistic view of life, which does not distinguish philosophy, sciences and religion as distinct things to be pursued separately. Instead it recommends you pursue them together and therefore the best scientist of ancient India were also philosophers and priests. Therefore Indian thought is termed as spiritual while the rational aspects are overlooked. Modern day Dhongi Babas who fool the masses further worsen this situation. Anti-religious sentiment makes people reject anything that come from Indian sages.

Reason 2: In response to the apathy towards the work of ancient Indians a lot of people overcompensate and exaggerate the achievements of ancient Indians. This alienates a lot of people, as one cannot really know what is true and what is false. Things get misquoted a lot and this dilutes their validity. This is the reason why Indians are blamed to be overzealous about their culture.

We Indians inherit a very rich culture which has produced brilliant thinkers throughout the ages in all the fields of knowledge be it science, mathematics, philosophy, logic, linguistics, arts, literature mythology, religion or spirituality. As India becomes more and more modern, I hope that we will retain our cultural heritage, so that our way of life does not go extinct.