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The Story
of Knowledge A BRIEF HISTORY OF
STRUGGLE OF INTRODUCTION Many people are writing
here and there that Modern Civilisation is a product of Judeo-Christian
tradition. This is totally false. In fact, modern philosophy and science are a
delayed fruition of the tree that was ancient India or in other words Hinduism.
On the other hand, Semitic religions did everything to suppress and destroy the
development of knowledge especially science. In fact, if any thing is the final
product of the Judeo-Christian tradition i.e. the Religion of Abraham, it is the
Islamic fundamentalism. It
sounds absurd to discuss religion while writing the history of knowledge. But
unfortunately some religions have suppressed knowledge so much over the ages
that the story cannot be complete without discussing it. Up to the fifteenth
century, Europe was in the Dark Age. Historians
call this period as the Dark Age because there was no knowledge like
mathematics, science, medicine etc. in
Europe. Long back, there was a
brief period of enlightenment in a
limited part of Europe, i.e. Greece from sixth century BC for a few centuries by import of knowledge from India. This
period is called the first awakening of Europe and the reappearance of knowledge
in the 16th century is called the Renaissance. We will briefly review how
science came to Greece from the East for the first time,
then how it was destroyed
and scholars killed by Romans, and
then by the fundamentalist Christians and finally Muslim invaders. And how
knowledge survived and finally reached the West. ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE 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 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. ALEXANDRIA UNIVERSITY:
A CENTRE OF INDO-GREEK LEARNING After
Alexander established the Hellenistic Empire comprising Egypt, Asia
Minor, Iran, Bactria and North -West India (including Punjab and modern
Afghanistan), the transfer of learning from India to Greece was very much
increased. Alexander himself rounded up hundreds of Brahmin scholars and took
them to Greece to increase the wealth of knowledge of his country. Tens of
thousands of soldiers married Indo-Iranian women and took them to Greece. Trade
routs and diplomatic channels were also established which would facilitate flow
of knowledge from India to Greece. When Alexander came to India he was highly
impressed by the Takshashila university in Punjab. Being inspired by that,
Alexander also established a great university at Alexandria in Egypt. This was
the first university ever built outside of India. In Alexandria, scholars from
Greece, Iran, India and Egypt would come to study and to teach. A large number
of Indian texts were translated into Greek and kept in the library at
Alexandria. Much later , Jesus Christ
started his religion. Jesus was very much like an Indian ascetic. Like Hindu
saints, he followed renunciation and practised celibacy, and preached
non-violence. It is claimed that he had been to India and had received spiritual
training in Indian tradition. Whatever be the fact, we find that many of the
sayings and parables of Jesus, Pythagoras and the Upanishads are common. When Christianity was taking shape, that part of
the world was inhabited by Hindus as well. When they converted to Christianity,
they introduced many things to this new religion e.g. folding hands in Indian
style whenever praying to God; ringing typical Indian style bells in the
churches; introduction of a circular solar halo round the picture of Jesus etc.
Practice of celibacy, renunciation of material life by the monks and asceticism
adopted by Christian saints were Hindu influence on Christianity, because they
are not found in other Semitic religions.
But the vast majority of people who initially accepted Christianity were
Jews. Therefore, they brought in with them the Old Testament(the Jewish
scripture) and most of the beliefs and practices of the Jews. Therefore after
the death of Jesus, Christians now believed , as the Jews did, that only theirs'
is the right religion and only theirs' is the true God. Sorcery, miracle,
witchcraft, mysticism, idol-worship, etc. are satanic acts and people accused to
be involved in them would be killed. Raising any doubt or suggesting
modification in religion was termed heresy, punishable with death. Fighting the
non-Christians to convert or eliminate them was considered religious duty. This
new religion was very anti-science, because science did not support what this
religion preached. Destruction of Greece
and Demolition of Alexandria In the third and second BC
Rome rose up as a big power .Having no
respect for knowledge, they destroyed much of Greek civilisation. They expanded
their empire to include North Africa, Asia Minor and South Europe. Greek
tradition of learning was disrupted in Europe, scholars killed, cities
destroyed, although it continued in Alexandria in Egypt. A few Greek scholars
escaped being killed in Europe as well, who continued their pursuit of knowledge
although in a low profile up till the Byzantine period. It was Justinian, the
Byzantine Emperor who in 529 closed the nine-hundred-year- old Academy of Plato
in Athens and completely destroyed the last remains of Greek knowledge in
Europe, claiming it was a hotbed of paganism and heresy. The scholars were
killed or converted. Many of these
Greek scholars, fearing for their lives and intellectual freedom fled to Persia,
where they established a kind of Academy in exile. In early fourth century
Constantine who had already become Christian, acceded to Roman power.
Christianity now became the state religion. Nonbelievers (non-Christians) were
persecuted, burned and murdered by animated Christian mobs called zealots.
Mathematicians, scientists and philosophers were particularly targeted. Europe
was entering into an era called Dark Age with complete elimination of all the
works of science, mathematics and philosophy. But University
of Alexandria was surviving still in Egypt. In AD 389 Christian Emperor
Theodosius ordered Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria to destroy all pagan
monuments. Hindus were also called pagan by them. The Christian mobs burned the
pagan scholars and the library. Even after this, many scholars survived and
continued their work. One of these was Hyptia, a great scholar of mathematics,
and one of the few female mathematicians in history. She was wise ,learned
,virtuous and beautiful. There was much mistrust among Christians, Jews and
Pagans, but Hyptia taught everyone. She wrote commentaries on Euclid, Apollonius
and on Arithmetica. She wrote books discussing new mathematical problems and
solving old ones. She also wrote books on astronomy, compiled tables of
positions of celestial bodies and designed several scientific instruments. It
was a time of revival of Pythagorianism, the Greek form of Hinduism, as a
Hellenistic (Greek) alternative of the rising tide of Christianity. In AD 412, a fanatic
Christian named Cyril became the patriarch of Alexandria and began the campaign
to rid the city of both Jews and the Pythagorian scholars. Hyptia was asked to
accept Christianity several times. But she always refused. That commitment cost
her life. In AD 415, she was set upon a mob of Christian zealots, dragged from
her carriage and beaten to death. In the account of a fifth century author: they
stripped her stark naked: they raze the skin and rend the flesh of her body with
sharp shells, until the death departed from her body: they quarter her body:
they bring her quarters unto a place called Cinaron and burn them to ashes....
This is only one out of thousands of such atrocities which was going to finish
scientific knowledge, as well Indian influence, from the West for a thousand
years. Even after such attacks,
Alexandrian school was surviving for further two hundred years. This time it was
Islam. Caliph Omar : In AD 642 Caliph Omar overran Egypt. Victorious Caliph
ordered, those books that were contrary to Koran should be destroyed and
furthermore those books that confirmed the Qoran were superfluous and they too
must be destroyed. Manuscripts were used to stove the public baths. The
University library was torched to ashes. The volume of manuscripts was so large
that it kept on burning for six months. Needless to add that all the scholars
were slaughters except those who
embraced Islam. All over Egypt and Libya books
were searched out and burned. As a result of this, the history and literature of
Egypt was lost for ever ,only a fraction of it to be rediscovered later by the
Europeans out of the Pyramids. Greek literature in Egypt was also lost and the
same happened to Babylonian history. Some of the Greek
scholars of Alexandria who embraced Islam and survived, were able to
smuggle some of the manuscripts to their homes. Later they translated these into
Arabic language. These translations included Greek medicine (called Unani now),
much of Greek philosophy e.g. Plato (Aflatoon), Aristotle (Arastu), Socrates (Sukrat) etc. It contained Alexandrian sciences as well as six of the
original thirteen volumes of the mathematical text called Arithmetica, seven
volumes of it being lost for ever. The Arithmetica was
translated many centuries later into Latin.(Arithmetica, Elements, Surya
Siddhanta and the Indian
books on algebra, trigonometry, and arithmetic contained the basic
knowledge which would later propel
Europe into modern age.) It is to be remembered here
that all of Greek medicine ,all of Greek books of philosophy and science were
already burned to ashes in Greece and Europe by Christian zealots. End of
knowledge in the West was complete now. INDIAN SCENARIO In India , scenario was
different. Science, mathematics, logic, philosophy, art , everything was growing
at an unlimited pace. Religion's central dogma was knowledge, and experience,
experiment and reasoning were accepted as very important means of obtaining
knowledge . Arguments were encouraged in religious matters and religious
philosophy and metaphysics had to be based on scientific knowledge. This
scientific bias of Hinduism had led to growth of science much earlier in India
from which Pythagoras and many other people of the West had been benefited over
ages. Earth is round was never
disputed in India. So much so that you will find Varahavatar lifting the rounded
earth on His tusks in many sculpture. You will find a lion (Lord Buddha)
fighting with a dragon (Ignorance) which is holding a round earth by its tail,
in many north-eastern Indian Buddhist icons. Every Hindu is aware of the
metaphoric story of the demon king Hiranyaksha, who finding the earth as a round
ball , seized it to play with it ; then Lord Vishnu had to kill him to save the
earth. The law of conservation of matter and energy
and the law of cause and effect were the two fundamental laws of
Hinduism. Anybody not accepting these two laws would be considered a nastic. The
agnostics and people who refuted the existence of God were considered equally
respected as others. The religion or belief,
was a matter of personal choice and could not be enforced on to anybody
by either the State or the family or the society. Clergy and priests in Western
sense did not exist. Priest would come to perform a rite only if an individual
requested him . Needless to add that fatwa or religious decree kind of things
were beyond imagination in India. The last in the glorious
tradition of scholars was Bhaskaracharya , who invented the gravitational force
also. David E. Duncan writes in his book The Calendar, " After
Brahmagupta, India continued to produce noted mathematicians, including Bhaskara
(1114--1185), considered by mathematicians to be the most brilliant in his field
anywhere during the twelfth century." At this period North India fell to
Muslim invaders and Mohammed Ghouri established the Delhi Sultanate. All the
great Indian Universities viz Taxilla, Nalanda, Odantapuri and Vikramashila were
burnt down to ashes and all inmates killed by Muslim commanders propelling India
into darkness. Scholars were hunted down and Indian system of education was
abolished being replaced by Islamic Muderssas. All education needs state
funding. Once state came under Muslim Rule, all indigenous knowledge vanished
except Sanskrit Grammar, a bit of mathematics, logic, medicine and philosophy
which were preserved by individual efforts of practitioners and scholars. To
sustain their lives these chaps had to serve as priests in the households or
face starvation Pressed under excessive land revenue and communal taxes(like
jezia, birth tax, cremation tax) common people did not have enough money to
donate to maintain the life of scholars. This led to further demoralisation of
the scholars. Once the light of knowledge was gone, ignorance and
social evils embraced India from all sides. Even the books of History were burnt
down and the India of 18th Century had no information about her pre-Muslim
history. But many of the
books dealing with religion, philosophy and history were taken to Sri Lanka,
Burma, Tibet and China from which much of Indian History has been reconstructed
by now. It is remarkable to note that once the Muslim Rule was gone from India
in 1858, India immediately produced a great mathematician again (in 1887). David
Duncan writes " In 1887 another mathematics genius was borne in India,
Srinivasa Ramanujan, who tragically died at the age of 33." Ramanujan
solved many disturbing mathematical problems although he never had any Western
education. Transfer of knowledge
from India to Arabic language Duncan writes in The
Calender "In 773, some 250 years after Aryabhath's death, a delegation of
diplomats from lower Indus River Valley arrived in the new Arab capital of
Baghdad. Dressed in bright coloured silks, turbans and glittering gems, ...
Arriving at last outside the gates of al-Mansur's (the founder of the Abbasid
dynasty) magnificent city This particular delegation also brought with
them an astronomer, ..Kanaka. An expert on eclipse, he carried with him a
small library of Indian astronomical texts to give to the Caliph, including the
Surya Siddhanta and the works of Brahmagupta(containing material on Aryabhata) .
Nothing more is known about this Kanaka. The first known reference to him was
written some five hundred years later by an Arab historian named al-Qifti. According to al-Qifti, the
caliph was amazed by the knowledge in the Indian texts. He immediately ordered
them to be translated into Arabic and their essence compiled into a textbook
that became known as the Great Sindhind (Sindhind
is the Arabic form of the Sanskrit word Siddhanta )." Incidents like this
were necessary " in order to bring the works of India into the sphere of
the early Islamic scholars, whence they would travel to Christian Europe through
Syria, Sicily and Arab controlled Spain. A version of the Great Sindhind would
be translated into Latin in 1126. This was one of the dozens of critical
documents that would contribute to the knowledge base needed to propel Europe
into the modern age" Duncan adds. The pre-Islamic Iran had
Zoroasterian, Mithraic, Shaivite and Buddhist followers. These religions can be
called Hindu or Hindu-like and were not against investigation of truth.
Iran also had the privilege of being just adjacent to India. Therefore
the knowledge was quite developed in Iran at the time of Islamic invasion When
Iran fell to Islam, people accepted Islam but the undercurrent of Hinduism
remained flowing here and there in the form of Sufism and Yoga-Mysticism. Early
Sufis were quite vocal of their philosophy. They were persecuted and many killed
by the orthodox Muslims. Many of the later ones adopted all the external
features of Islam, but maintained Hindu ideas and
attitude of tolerance in philosophy and teachings. The pre-Islamic Iran
had a rich intellectual interaction with India, Greece and Alexandria. It had
acted as a transmitter of Indian knowledge to Egypt for two millennia and
to Greece for one millennium. When Justinian persecuted the Nestorian
people, they had fled to Baghdad with sacs of Greek scientific texts in the
sixth century AD.(Nestorian or Assyrian or Eastern Christians were the people
who believed that Jesus was human as well as divine. After persecution they fled
away to Iran,pre-Islamic Arabia and south
India. Indian Nestorians became re-affiliated to the Roman Catholic Church in
the 16th century.) Although majority of the pre-Islamic literature had been
destroyed in Iran by Muslim crusaders, some Pahlawi and Greek
literature could survive and got translated
into Arabic later. It was at the
time of the third Caliph that the capital of Islamic Empire was shifted to the
Iranian city of Baghdad (in modern Iraq). After the initial phase of victories
and overrunning other nations, which lasted about a century after the death of
the Prophet, the Caliphs from al-Mansur onwards started showing interest in
science and philosophy. These people had come out of the deserts of Arabia where
few were literate, they brought little material culture to the ancient
civilisations now under their sway. The initial reaction of the Muslims
overrunning these civilisations was that of hatred for the infidel, causing
large scale destruction of knowledge wherever Islam went. But credit should be
given to the early Abbasid Caliphs, who transformed his
people into a knowledge loving nation, although only for a few centuries. The period of the reign of
al-Mansur and his successors, Caliph Haroun ar-Rashid(786-809) and his son al-Mamun
(809-833) was the time when Indian
texts were brought to Baghdad in large scale and were translated into Arabic.
They were studied along with the Arabic translation of the knowledge of the
Greek Alexandrines and Nestorians which had escaped destruction by the army of
Caliph Omar as well as surviving bits of Iranian scholarship. Eventually they
were synthesised into the forms which would later reach Europe. Scholars,
engineers, scientists and artists flocked to Baghdad and were honoured and well
paid. Many came bearing manuscripts. This was a great era of translation. The
project was made infinitely simpler when the first paper factory opened in
aghdad in 794, using a process the Arabs
earned from a Chinese prisoner captured during the 712 conquest of
Samarkand , in modern Uzbekistan. This art would be passed on to Europe
centuries later in the 12th century. As the translations of
Indian manuscripts began to stack up, al-Mamun ordered a museum and library
complex to be built which was completed by 833 and became known as the House of
Wisdom (Bait al-hikma). It was now only third in size in the world after the
libraries of Taxila and Nalanda Universities. The Zero, decimal system, Indian
numerals, astronomy, astrology, trigonometry,
ayurveda, chemistry, everything even up to the Hindu dream-analysis,
had now reached Baghdad, and the local Irani scholars were now in a
position to formulate further theorums. Fascinated by Indian astronomy, Caliph
al-Mamun ordered an observatory built in Baghdad in 829 and one soon after outside of
Damascus. Another less well known
fact is that almost all of the scholars known as Arabic to the posterity were
actually Iranian e.g. al-Khwarizmi, al-Biruni etc and some were Spanish but they
wrote in Arabic, Arabic being the language of the Emperor. On the other hand not
much intellectual activity was going on in Arabian peninsula, which was still
the centre of Islamic religious activities. The Indian ideas reaching
Baghdad sparked off an intellectual evolution.
When the Baghdadis came to know from the translations of the works of Aryabhata
that the earth is a sphere of a diameter of 8316 miles, rotating on its axis,
many of them believed it and wanted to measure it themselves too. Similar
inspirations led to development of experimentation in the Abbasid people. It is
a fact that the Arabs who were always engaged in expanding their frontiers into
the Europe did never again invade India after initial victory over Sind and in
Sind also, genocide and forced conversion was stopped soon. Was it partly
because may be they developed a
kind of respect for India? The word for mathematics in Arabic is Hindi sat
meaning the 'Indian Art'. One of the greatest mathematicians in the
Arabic empire was al-Khwarismi(full name , Abu Jafar Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khwarismi,
780-850) who was summoned to Baghdad in 820 by al-Mamun and appointed the 'first
astronomer' and later the head of library. He led two scientific missions to
India to meet scholars and collect manuscripts. Based on them he wrote a book 'Kitab
al-jabr wa al-muqabalah'(Calculation by addition and subtraction, 'jabr' here is
an Arbi-ised form of Apabhramsha language word 'jor' meaning addition, and not
the Arabic word meaning 'difficult'; algebra is a short Latinised form of the
word ).Later its Latin translation became a standard textbook of mathematics in
European universities. He wrote out the oldest surviving ziz--set of
astronomical tables-- surviving
from the Indian charts brought to Baghdad by Kanaka. This ziz later made the
journey to Spanish Cordoba and onwards to the rest of Europe where a Latin
translation made in 1126 became one of the most influential works on astronomy
in medieval Europe. These are to count just a few of the books al-Khwarismi
wrote on mathematics ,the Indian art. In 825, al-khwarismi wrote on the concept of logarithm (this is a Latinised form
of his nane itself), zero and positional
notation system after learning them from the Indian texts especially Brahmagupta,
in his book 'Algoritmi de numero Indorum' (this is the title of the Latin
translation). This book (in its
Arabic form, which unfortunately is not available any more) reached Spain (which
was under Arab control at that time) where, in the 990's, Gerbert of Aurillac
taught the Hindu numbers to his students, but it could not be very popular in
Europe. In c.1100, an Englishman Robert
of Chester visited Spain and translated al-Khwarismi's little book into Latin in
1120. This and other translations
of al-Khwarismi inspired writing of several
Latin textbooks on the 'new arithmetics' including description of the decimal
system and positional notation. Still it took several more centuries before
Europeans entirely abandoned Roman numerals despite their clumsiness and
inferiority to Hindu numerals (D.208). Another standout at Baghdad
was al-Battani (c. 850-929), known in
Europe as Albategneus who studied Indian astronomy and expounded
trigonometric methods to show that that the distance from the earth to the sun
varies during the year. Half a century later another Irani (but known as Arab) astronomer, Abu ar-Rayhan Mohammed ibn Ahmed al-Biruni (call him al-Biruni; 973-1048) was born in central Asia. He extensively studied the Arabic translation of the Indian mathematics and astronomy and by the age of thirty, had written at least eight works. Most important of them was one in which he discussed arguments for and against the earth's rotating on its axis, taking up the debate of Aryabhata versus other Indian astronomers. He went to India with an invading Muslim army of Mehmood Gaznawi . There he learned Sanskrit and studied every ancient text he could find. He compiled his findings into a book called Kitab-ul-Hind (Kitab fi tahqiq ma li 'l-Hind). This offers a remarkably candid and critical analysis of Hindu mathematics and sddhantas as well as philosophy and religion. He wrote a note on Patanjali's Yogasutra, Bhagavadgita and Sankhyakarika. But he also seems to be under fear of fanatics and always writes in reference to what Indians believed. Like, the Indians believe that the earth is five billion years old which is wrong because the Islam says it was created only four thousand and five years back. But overall, he greatly admires Hindu genius and metempsychosis. He discusses in detail the Hindu concept of cycle of evolution and dissolution and re-evolution of universe. He also describes the Hindu concept of geography. He mentions, the Hindus describe an island which is diametrically opposite Rome on the globe. These ideas were later translated into Latin from which people like Columbus would gain inspiration to try reach India by going westward and that would lead to discovery of Americas. Translation of Hindu
Literature in India Before Taxila, Nalanda,
Odantpuri, Vikramshila and other Indian universities were burned down and their
inmates killed by the Musliminvaders, much of Indian science (especially
mathematics, astrology, medicine and philosophy ) had already been translated
into Arabic. The destruction of Indian
literature was so extensive that no record of pre-Islamic history remained in
India. In fact whatever systemic history
of ancient India we know now was reconstructed by the Europeans with the help of
the Indian historical books which survived mainly in Sri Lanka and to a lesser
extent in China, Myanmar, Tibet etc. plus non-historical religious
oriented puranas then
archaeological remains and the Vedas and most extensively by imagination. But still there were too
many manuscripts scattered over the vast country which escaped destruction .
These related mainly to philosophy and religion. Amir Khusraw was impressed by
the depth of learning among Indians and their ability to speak any language. He
greatly admired the Brahmanas for their ability to teach all subjects, who had
devised the numerical system, written Kalila wa Dimma on the art of government
and invented chess. Although a Muslim, chauvinist he admitted that the Hindus
believe in the unity and eternity of God. Nakhshabi translated two Sanskrit
texts. Following his conquest of Nogarkot in 1362 Firuz Shah Tughlaq acquired
1300 books from Jwalamukhi temple. He commissioned Sanskrit scholars to
translate some of them into Persian. On the basis f the translation of works on physics and astronomy, 'Izzu
'd-Din Khalid Khani compiled the Dala 'il-Firuz Shahi. 'Abdu'l
'Aziz Shams Baha-i Nuri translated Brihatsamhita into Persian (it was
earlier translated by al-Biruni into Arabic). Sultan Zaynu'l-'Abidin of Kashmir,
Sultan Sikandar Lodi and several other Muslim rulers ordered the translation of
various Sanskrit works into Persian with a view to enriching their language.
Akbar established a translation bureau(the Maktab Khana) for translation of
Sanskrit texts into Persian and Arabic. Yet more Sanskrit books were translated
during Jehangir's period. Dara Shukoh translated Upanishads into Persian. Later
Anquetil Duperron translated the Persian version into French and Latin. This
Latin version influenced many
intellectuals in Europe including German scholar Schopenhauer who found its
study 'the solace to my life' and 'the solace to my death'. Knowledge moves West The Arabs ruled over a vast
area from Indus to Spain in the eighth century when they started getting
knowledge from India. As the Arabic schools were established all over the
Abbasid empire to produce a regular supply of clergy and teachers, the Arabic
version of Indian knowledge spread all over the empire. Caliph Abd ar-Rahman III
(891--961), a patron of art and learning built a massive new library at Cordoba
in Spain and filled it with a vast
treasure trove of manuscripts brought from Baghdad. The library
contained 400,000 volumes. By 976, Hindu numbers started appearing in
modified form which were going to be the fore runners of modern International
form of Indian numerals. Some of the earliest
translations of Arabic manuscripts into Latin were penned in northern Spain
beginning in the mid-tenth century at the monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll. In
the tenth century, Gerbert of Aurillac (c. 946--1003) learned the Indian
counting system from the Moors of Spain who in 999, became the Pope Sylvester
II. In 990s he taught the Hindu numerals to his students and monks. H e trekked
to northern Spain to carry home Latin translations of Arab treatise on abacus
and astrolabe. He encouraged adoption of this systems especially by merchants. Needless to say that the new numbers
were going to revolutionise accounting which was essential for leading Europe
into a successful mercantile community. Another was Adelard of Bath
(c.1075--1160). He journeyed by ship along the new eastern trade routes to the
Crusader held coast of Syria, where he translated Euclid into Latin using Arabic
translation of the riginal. Most prolific of all these early translators was the
Italian Greard of Cremona (c.1114--1187). Fluent in Greek and Arabic, he was
leading figure in the new 'College of Translators' set up by Spanish archbishop
Raymond after the capture of Toledo
(and its library). He rendered into Latin the Arabic texts by Galen, Aristotle,
Euclid, al-Khwarismi and Ptolemy, among many others. Some of the works of the
ancient Greeks were translated back to Greek from Arabic at this time. The translation of
Hindu-Arabic literature continued till the end of sixteenth century. Apart from
Spain, and Italy, other centres of
translation were Syria, Damascus, Palermo and Sicily. The Arab emirs governing
Sicily imported texts from Baghdad and had a rich library there. A Christian,
Roger Guiscard (1031--1101), son of a baron of Normandy, conquered Sicily in
1072 when he renamed himself Roger I, Count of Sicily. His son Roger II ruled
over Sicily and southern Italy. These two Rogers and their successor, Frederick
II encouraged translation of Arabic texts. Frederick was elected the Holy Roman
Emperor in 1220. He surrounded himself from philosophers and sages from Baghdad
and Syria ,dancing girls from India and Iran. His efforts introduced
many Indian elements into the classical dance of the West. Frederick founded the
University of Naples in 1224 endowing
it with a large collection of Arabic manuscripts .From Spain he brought a
translator who created a Latin summary of Aristotle's biological and zoological
works. The library was endowed with a large collection of Arabic manuscripts of
ancient Greek and Indian scholars as well as commentaries of the Arab
scholars on them. Copies of Latin translation were sent to universities in Paris
and Bologna. . Frederick also led the Fifth Crusade to Palestine in 1228--1229 ,
successfully and recaptured Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. All these efforts
brought back to Europe the works of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the
Greek Medicine which were earlier destroyed from Europe by over zealous
Christian zealots. It also brought to Europe the works of Indian genius in the
fields of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry, philosophy and
music. Europeans learned the art of paper-making from the Arabs and printing
press from the Chinese. In 1450s Gutenburg operated the first European printing
press in Germany. The Europeans were very slow to absorb this much of knowledge
and new type of numbers. Much of the work in universities and monasteries was
limited to copying the manuscripts or to translating them. They were not able to
use decimals until a Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin (1548--1620) explained the
system in a book called La Thiende (The Tenth). After him, Magini and
Christopher Clauvius used them in their works. It was Galileo in the late
sixteenth century who for the first time tried to understand what was containd
in the Latin translation of the Sindhind of Brahmagupta. Once he understood the
theory of rotation of earth he had to suffer the persecution of the Church. In
1621, Bachet published the Latin version of Arithmetica from Arabic. By the year
this time, the era of Europe's Dark Age was over. Understanding of science led
to removal of Church's domination in everyday life. People were now able to work
further on the subjects of science beyond the works of the Hindus which was
presented to them after being translated twice-- first in Arabic and then in
Latin. The decline of Christian faith coupled with rise of knowledge ushered
Europe into all round development and they came in a position to dominate world.
Now knowledge is quite established all over the world, except in a few pockets
of fundamentalist ideologies. References: 1. Margaret
Wertheim,Pythagoras' Trousers, Fourth Estate Ltd , London, 1997, pp.17-24,
33-37. 2. David E. Duncan, The
Calendar, Fourth Estate, London, 1999, pp.150-210 3. S.A.A. Rizvi, The Wonder
That Was India, Part II,Rupa & Co, Bombay,1999, pp.251-257. 4. A L. Basham, The Wonder
That Was India, Part I, Rupa & Co, Bombay, 1999, pp.486-487. 5. Simon Singh, The
Fermat's Last Theoram, Fourth Estate, London, (destruction of Alexandria, and
Arithmetica ) 6. Encyclopedia Britannica
on website www.britannica.com ; Majority of the topics and names discussed in
this article occure in it. Appendix I Decline of Knowledge in the
Arab World Baghdad was destroyed first by a civil war among the later Abbasids.
Then in 1258 the invading Mongol army of Changhiz Khan destroyed it to the last
brick. Although the Islamic Empire was reconstructed, the scientific temper of
the Abbasids could never be restored to the Arabs. Later when Abdul Wahab
started his movement, Muslims would look more and more into religious books
rather than investigate truth in material world. Appendix II Why Indians did not pursue
their quest of knowledge after 12th century? India had a several thousand years
old tradition of education, research and training. After Delhi fell to the Turk
rulers, the great Indian universities were demolished. Libraries were burnt
down. The village schools spread all over the country got starved of funds. The
Govt funds would now go to muderssas which would teach Koran and Arabic and
Persian languages. Even the Indian texts on science and philosophy were
translated into Arabic and Persian. Persian was maintained as the medium
of instruction till the British took over the governance of India, so that
Indians could not take benefit of education. A false allegation has been labeled
to the Brahmanas that they were not imparting education to the masses. But the
fact is that the Brahmanas themselves quickly got deprived of education and
became ignorant within a few generation time after establishment of Turkish
rule. Now Brahmana became a caste and lost the Varna character. As it became a
non-sustainable vocation, teaching disappeared from the Hindu people. The few
Brahmanas who had knowledge, freely imparted it even to the Muslims. Al-Biruni
and Amir Khusaraw etc were taught Sanskrit language and literature without any
consideration of caste or religion. The Muslim rule converted
Brahmanas into priest. This fact can be verified by carefully reading history.
In pre-Muslim period we never find
mention of a Brahmana who lived in a village doing puja-work (priest craft).
They lived as scholars or teachers. They could attend a yajna done by a king as
a respected guest. But such occasions were very infrequent. Abolition of
education profession compelled the Brahmanas to adopt new professions. Some
become village priests. But the majority of Brahmanas never adopted the
degrading job of priests. Many Brahmanas who hated priest-craft became farmers
like the Chitpawan, Anavil, Mohiyal, Nagar, Tyagi etc and survived on
agriculture. Appendix III Conclusion : The knowledge
has survived in spite of all odds against it. Not only in Science , but also in
the field of Modern philosophy,
West has borrowed heavily from India. Europe got all of Indian logic and
philosophy through the
channel of the Arabs, and earlier through the Neo-Platonians. Later when the
British came to India they had first hand knowledge of Indin philosophy. Goethe,
Schopenhauer and most of the German philosopher had studied Indian philosophy
and most of them got influenced by it. They in turn influenced the other
students of philosophy by their writings. The monism of Fichte and Hegel might
never have taken taken forms they did if it had not been for Anquetil-Duperron's
translation of the Upanishads and the works of pioneer Indologists. In
English-speaking world the strongest Indian
influence was felt in America where Emerson, Thoreau and other New England
writers avidly studied much Indian religious literature in translation, and
exerted immense influence on their contemporaries and successors, notably Walt
Whitman" writes A. L. Basham. The list of authors who
admitted Indian influence on them is very big and includes such authors as
Carlyle, Richard Jeffries, Edward Carpenter, Stephen Zwig, Romya Rolland, Jung,
etc. Indian influence is visible on all the major authors of Existential school
as well as the Humanistic school of philosophers. At the moment the West is
trying to understand the yoga, meditation and
transcendental states. The concept of kindness to the animals, vegetarianism, universal
brotherhood, tolerance for differing faiths, etc. are gradually becoming more
and more popular. Ancient Indian thoughts preserves enormous potentialities for
the future of humanity. Appendix IV A note on Arithmetica: Six
volumes of Arithmetica which could survive were translated into Arabic. Many
centuries later this Arabic text was translated into Latin. Nothing is known
about its author except that he worked at Alexandria University and that the
Latin version of his name is Diophantus. In Arabic it was something like Dwbnt.
What was the actual name or country of birth of the author of Arithmatica,
nobody knows. Arithmetica itself is a meaningless word in latin or Greek
languages. But in Sanskrit, Arthamitica is a meaningful word meaning calculation
(miti) of money matters (artha). It can be inferred that the author of the
Arithmetica was an Indian mathematician teaching at Alexandria and this book was
a Greek version of a compilation of
Indian mathematics .His name was probably something like Devabhuti. This raises
a grave question. Almost all of Greek literature was lost. The overwhelming
majority of the literature known today to be of Ancient Greece is actually
translation from Arabic. In a large number of them only information available
about the author is his name. And these books describe the Indian philosophy in
entirely unmodified form. Is it not possible that the Europeans who translated
these Arabic texts did not discriminate between what had come into Arabic from
India and what had come from Alexandria. There motive was definitely mala fide
is clear from many other facts. They very well knew
very name of the text itself(Algoritmi de numero Indorum ) that the
decimal system and the new numbers were Indian . But they kept it secret from
the masses who started calling them Arabic numbers. It was only after ancient
Indian stone inscriptions containing those numerals predating Islam were found
that the Europeans openly accepted the reality. Similarly, the Europeans
including the Greek themselves are kept into darkness about the fact the Greek
philosophy they are reading was actually translated from Arabic the original
having been lost centuries before. These attempts are done in a very organised
way to keep up the morale of their masses but not to let the morale of anyone
else go up. (c)Premendra
Priyadarshi,
2000 |
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