>While, it may have been true that certain things did get invented/discovered >in these ancient lands (China, India, Iran etc), it seems that many of these >countries live in the their glorious past and have really >forgotten the >lessons of the modern era.
Ram: You are hitting at the bull's eye. We donot gain anything by declaring that the Vedas have everything: Math, Astronomy, God, Philosophy etc. The test is at what we are doing now. The 'past' in most cases is a burden for the most Indians and it has in fact been hampering our tuning to the modern scientific spirit, unless we adjust our outlook at it. The modern scientific spirit, after all is said and done, was started by the Greeks in the past which was picked up by the West in the fifteenth century onwards. The Japanese have done the adjustment to the modern scientific spirit quite successfully. Chinese will do in spite of their present authoritarian communist government. Now what about India? Do we have Democracy or just Elections? Have we the Indians successfully tuned in to the modern scientific spirit? I am not talking of the few Indians who are doing quite well overseas. But as a Nation, are we in yet? That is the million dollar question. Or we are still learning and copying everything from the West for our progredd and blaming the British and the Muslims for all our chaos and confusion? Barua ----- Original Message ----- From: Ram Sarangapani To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [email protected] Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 1:39 AM Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology Barua: Those were some very astute observations. This is an interesting topic, and other netters might want to weigh in. That malady that seemingly affects Indians seems to also affect some others - the Chinese, the Arabs, Japanese etc. It is a standing joke that the Chinese often declare that almost everything originated in China (including the Assembly Line). The Arabs/Iranians declare the number system (decimal system) and chesswas theirs so on and so forth. While, it may have been true that certain things did get invented/discovered in these ancient lands (China, India, Iran etc), it seems that many of these countries live in the their glorious past and have really forgotten the lessons of the modern era. On the flip side, you have people in countries like the US who frequently believe that the US is the center of the universe, and that everything it does is for the benefit of humanity and that it is the caretaker of an errant world. That kind of attitude is what actually led to situations and involvements in Vietnam and Iraq. To go on, people in countries like France believe that they were born with a spoonful of sophistication and the rest of world is still in the dark ages. Now, having said all that: >First Indians never kept any good records of things (not to speak of >historical records). I am not sure how such records were kept by other civilizations. My guess is that the Indian (Hindu) civilization records mostly exist in the ruins of Harappa/Mohenjadaro and of course ancient relics all across the country (like the Chinese or Egyptian ruins). Historians and anthropologists gleaned 'records' from these ruins like they did from the pyramids. And yet you may be right that the East did not keep good records and hence the West gave them little recognition (lack of solid proof). But that still does not say that ancient Hindus were devoid of knowledge of the sciences. (maybe they did not write it down, or maybe these have never been found). But there is a certain bias when the West compares civilizations. It is only recently that they grudgingly give some quarter to the East. The Ancient West hardly saw beyond Rome and Greece. Alexander too stopped at the Hindukush. And it wasn't until Marco Polo that the West really discovered the East, and much later Vasco de Gama to India. And hence the West's reference point was always Rome, Greece and a little beyond. Well, anyway, thats my take. I am not too eager to base everything on India's ancient culture, just as I am not too eager to cast away anything Indian, because its from India. :) --Ram On 8/10/07, Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Ram: Thanks for the reference which I saw before. The website however does not help much. Let me explain what the Indians are up against to establish their creditability. First Indians never kept any good records of things (not to speak of historical records). Say for the case of Geometry. The Greeks have established the fact that Pythagoras started the process of demonstrative geometry back in the 6th century BC starting with the first demonstrative proof of the now famous Pythagoras Theorem. Even if you read the website, you will find that the earliest records of the Hindu Geometry are in the so called Sulba Sutras which are considered to be written after the Vedas somewhere in 3rd or at the most 5th century BC. Then even in those Sulba Sutras, there is no proof of any of the geometry but only the references (sutras) of knowledge of the different geometrical figures including the right angled triangle (Pythagoras triangle). Then in case of Greek geometry, Euclid wrote a complete book with proofs of about 13 famous geometry theorems sometime in 2nd century BC or so. Against this, India never developed any demonstrative proof of any geometry at all till Euclid's book was translated into Sanskrit in sometime in the 16th century . What we read in highschool geometry are all Greek Geometry from Euclid. This is not to say that Indians never discussed proofs on geometry theorems at all. They must have. But where is the proof. Similarly if you take the case of Astronomy, for each and every case of Hindu development, the West cites a prior Greek development so much so that the West is now telling that most of the Astronomy India learned from the Greeks after the Alexander (323 BC). Even writers like Balsham and others admit that India borrowed Astronomy from Greeks. This is again not to say that Indians did not know astronomy before. The Vedas has reference to astronomy. But that is just reference. The record on the other hand shows that India actually were interested in Astronomy nor for the sake of Astronomy but for the sake of Astrology. We actually come to some solid ground only with Aryabhata in the 5th century during the Gupta period (when the Greeks are long gone from the picture). The West actually acknowledges Aryabhata to be one of the greatest Mathematicians who invented Algebra, Trigonometry, a heliocentric solar system, earth is round etc and many more things. (The word 'Sine' as in Sine Theta etc is derived from the Sanskrit word Jaib. The West acknowledge that). But the vital question, during all this long history of Indian mathematics, Indians are having a tough time trying to find any solid (I mean SOLID) record who and when invented the ZERO and when India first started using the Zero as a number and a numeral. Many also suspect that India probably borrowed the idea of Zero from the Babylonians who also had invented a zero long before India. (In fact the Maya also had invented a zero). Only ground India has when Bhramagupta started using the zero as a number in his Algebra. But now we are talking of 6th or 7th century AD. The West recognize Bharhmagupta also. In spite all this, the West now acknowledge the fact that India invented the Zero without going into too much arguments. Thus we see that India has some solid ground and some watery. Against this type of background, some Indians are now trying to proof that India is the originators of everything. That is the problem which West or anybody else do not like to accept. Hope you get the picture. I would like to see netters comments on these. Barua ----- Original Message ----- From: Ram Sarangapani To: barua25 Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 3:33 PM Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology Barua, Just couldn't resist not butting in. Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus :)here is a site about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta (Math) and Kautilya(Politics & Governance). http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html (BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured up in India:) --Ram On 8/10/07, barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: When I say FACTS AND FIGURES, I was talking not about our religious heroes, but about Science and Mathametics. Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics and when? Can you produce any written evidence that India invented the Zero and when? It is difficult. I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva, Krishna etc. I consider these Indian gods to be purely mythical figures transformed from some original tribal religious cults. In my opinion, Shiva was orginally a local god in the Harappa civilization and Krishna was a Dravidian local tribal god. This much history tells. Do you have any other evidence to counter that , not who believes what? Rajen da ----- Original Message ----- From: umesh sharma To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology Rajen-da, Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not agree that most Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and believe that he lived in India thousands of years back --- I wanted to put that on Wikipedia page of Krishna - and they asked for facts -- what do you expect me to do? I believe wiki is a good example of people over the globe trying to have "sameness" - even here there is bias. Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many Indians believe that Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added a BBC report on that with weblink) and that was deleted - saying this is no research evidence -- for Indian news on Indian culture even an obscure reference (with no weblink) in any newspaer article in remote India is considered okay by its editors -- incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing the page. Anyone is free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc -- thats free for all. whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias. Umesh Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: Umesh: What you are saying is right. The West has a Eurocentric view of the world. They claim that the basic foundation of the Western Civilization, especially on science, is mainly based on Greek civilization. They even donot like to give proper credit to the Indian and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science. I would say, the West is still in the Dark Age. However, they have a point. Indians basically donot have any record of what they did. If you want to counter the present Eurocentric view, the best (and only way) is to debate will SOLID facts and figures and not with rhetoric. If you have any specific issue, I would be glad to discus. Rajenda ----- Original Message ----- From: umesh sharma To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM Subject: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised in US was surprised to learn that India had a glorious history - he hardly believed me though. And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize that every civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek and Roman civilization are promoted as ideals (closely followed by Egyptian one) -- Indian and Chinese ones are lesser ones. Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western univs just like Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian college fashion shows. However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars of non Western spheres call themselves (and each other) as the world's foremost/only reliable experts on their chosen area of expertise - namely hows and whys of other civilization. Most believe (I believe) that those in non-western world/developing world are too naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to understand and appreciate the distinction between good and bad; and right and wrong. I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others' views than these experts (whose reputation and even careers depend on promoting what they have always held as true). I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality -speaking against this tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and remove my arguments). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality - I just checked --someone has deleted the page itself. Wiki seems to be about might is right - Any comments? Umesh Umesh Sharma Washington D.C. 1-202-215-4328 [Cell] Ed.M. - International Education Policy Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Class of 2005 http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info) http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info) www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used ) http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. ------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org Umesh Sharma Washington D.C. 1-202-215-4328 [Cell] Ed.M. - International Education Policy Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Class of 2005 http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info) http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info) www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used ) http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Too much spam? Try Yahoo! Mail and we'll help keep the junk out of your inbox. _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
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