G. Ramakrishna
While laying the
foundation-stone for a planetarium in Bangalore recentlyi
the President of India explained how the Vedic lore is replete with
astronomical knowledge. He almost felt that the Vedic people seemed
to know more astronomy than we do.
Shortly after the
president's revelation about Vedic astronomy came Maj. Ahluwalia's
analysis about the three-stage formation of the Himalayas. Giving the
highlights of the book on his Himalayan, adventures, a news agency
underline the rare eminence of this army officer who had discovered
that Kalidasa was aware of the geological history of the Himalayas.
The proof of this was traced to a particular stanza in the poet's
Kumarasambhava.
Such research feats are
registered by our intellectuals quite freely and frequently. A
legislator in the Karnataka Assembly made an observation during the
debate on the motion of thanks to the Governor in February 1982
according to which one has to go to Germany if, one wants to obtain a
PhD on the Atharvaveda. Obviously, to him the Atharvaveda is the
most mysterious ancient text by taking which away from India the
Germans fabricated aircraft, while we remain backward as we don't
understand our texts.
How many times has not Swami Chinmayananda declared rhetorically in his expositions of the Gita that Einstein's theory of relativity is nothing new because our ancient metaphysicians had posited it even more elaborately? No matter whether it is quantum mechanics or qualitative analysis, you have it in our ancient Sanskrit texts, especially the Vedas. There is precious little that you can discover anew in the world of knowledge. This is the kind of chorus, which we hear quite frequently.
If such opinion had
been expressed merely by the laymen, there might have been no
occasion for any alarm. But knowledgeable scientists, too, come up
with such formulations, thereby demonstrating that they prefer to be
greater saintists than scientists. Years ago a certain Mr. Curtis
wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell saying that the more he read the
scriptures, the more convinced he became that the fund of modern
knowledge was all to be found in these ancient texts.
The following
characteristic reply of Russell is well worth our attention: “I am
afraid that I do no agree that contemporary events bear out
scriptural prophecy except in the sense that virtually anything can
be so considered if the inclination to do so exists. My own
preference is to look upon theological writings as the slightly
historical fantasy world of primitive tribesman, often savage and
sometimes to interest” (Dear Russell, Allen and Unwin, P. 49).
Those of our scholars
who fail to recognize the value of our ancient texts othen than by
imposing modern knowledge on them are doing a disservice both to the
texts and to science: to the texts because they fail to estimate the
actual worth of these texts as the chief sources for our
understanding of ancient society, and to science because they ignore
the nature of science and its history. It is puerile to fear that the
Veda might lose its value if some modern knowledge is not found
therein.
For a keen student, the
Veda is a storehouse of inexhaustible rich material about the
evolution of our society. One does not have to mutilate it by
superimposing either modern knowledge or transcendental wisdom on it.
Secondly, how does knowledge grow or what is the nature of science?
To put it in the simplest of terms, knowledge is cumulative and
progressive. If we can see farther than our ancestors did, it is
because we are standing on their shoulders. If mankind does not
commit the folly of committing collective suicide through the
employment of the nuclear arsenal, the horizons of knowledge may be
expected to be extended still further in the ages to come.
There are quite a few questions about
man, nature, and the universe that the present generation is capable
of answering, many of them unanswered before: and yet there are
several questions that even the present generation is unable to
answer. The succeeding generations may answer many of them and in the
process raise further questions, which will remain to be answered by
their successors. For, the fundamental postulate of science is that
there are several things unknown, but nothing unknowable.
What is unknown today
is not something which can or will never be known. History sets a
limit to the amount of knowledge that each given epoch knows and each
epoch reduces the area of the unknown to the extent that is within
its reach. To read the knowledge of a subsequent period into the
treatises of an earlier period is, therefore, illogical and
unnecessary. It is interesting in this connection to note that
elements of modern knowledge are "discovered" in ancient
texts by our profound researchers only after such elements have
been added to the gamut of knowledge through other means and in other
areas.
To wit, why did not our
analysis of the ancient texts expound the theory of relativity,
say, during the 19th century itself through an analysis of the texts,
albeit in a slightly different form than the one in which Einstein
expounded it during the 20th century? Why did they have to wait till
theoretical physicist enunciated it through their studies during
the present century? It is obvious that it is a clear case of min.
placed enthusiasm and dogged romanticism. And it is achieved at the
cost of the genuine scientific method.
The fact of the matter
is that there has been no epoch in man's history when he made no
attempts to come to grips with his surroundings. It is an inherent
quality of man to enquire into the nature of things. He does it
perforce when his survival itself depends on his ability to
understand the law of the phenomena that he witnesses around himself.
It is within man's experience that the level of his· sustenance is
directly related to the power that he obtains to intervene in the
happenings in nature through an understanding of its laws.
Naturally, man's
grappling with nature provides him with ever-new problems for
investigation, each of which when solved teaches him also the
application value of that new knowledge. It is thus foolhardy to
imagine that science is something absolutely new and modern. Science
is coeval with man's confrontation and co-operation with nature. What
is new in science at each successive epoch is its method and the
application of knowledge accruing to man from generation to
generation.
A crude dabbling with
the phenomena of nature in the initial stages of primitive society
places man at the foodgathering stage. Gradually he becomes a
hunter, an agriculturist, a metallurgist, a meteorologist, a
physician, a surgeon, a technician and so on. At no stage is the
unfoldment of his potentialities total and perfect. That,
incidentally, is also why his knowledge at any given stage in history
is neither total nor perfect; it is always a continuing process.
As time passes, this
crude observer of himself and his surroundings takes to early magic
as a possible means of imposing his will on the as yet un understood
and therefore uncontrollable and unpredictable world of nature. Long
after that, he follows the empirical method for increasing his
knowledge before getting down to the theoretical experimental method,
the method now generally accepted as characteristic of science.
The post-modern phase
in the method of science might be of consultation with and guidance
from the computer brains and the robot mechanics. This does not mean
that science has developed its methods only m its current phase; it
has had varying methods earlier, too. And ancient science might have
differed from its modern counterpart only with respect to the
methods.
But the credibility of
ancient science is not lost simply because its methods are different
from the ones adopted by modern science. Science of any given epoch
develops its own ethos and method; they may be considered outdated in
subsequent period, but not irrelevant. To assess the claims of
ancient science with objectivity and not with any romantic fervor is
thus a highly desirable thing.
It is only to be expected that
ancient India, too, should have evolved a scientific method and
apparatus to grapple with nature and enhance the degree of its
freedom with the knowledge thus gained in its struggle with nature.
Nobody can undermine the importance of the systematic work done in
this direction by the ancient Indian scientists whose quest was
sincere and whose limitations they recognized ungrudgingly.
What, however, is unfortunate is that
some present day enthusiasts of ancient Indian science ignore these
limitations which our early scientists themselves recognized and
acknowledged. Our current enthusiasts seem to believe that science
had been developed fully and perfectly by our ancient seers and they
go a step further even and declare that science was developed
intuitively by our ancients and not so much on the basis of
observation and analysis. They unhesitatingly advocate the view that
a nearly complete mastery had been established on nature by these
intuitive ancient scientists.
The extremes to which
the misplaced enthusiasm could go is best illustrated by an amusing
interpretation of a passage in the Rigveda where the words
"Vrishabho roraviti" occur. An enterprising scholar
took this as scientific proof for the existence of tractors in the
Vedic period. The onomatopoeic "roraviti", according
to him, would be appropriate only in the context of a tractor
metaphorically referred to as a "vrishabha" by the
highly imaginative Vedic poet.
This kind of adulation
of the past leads us nowhere. It is a sure indication of an attitude,
which sacrifices science at the altar of romantic eulogy. This is a
none too worthy pursuit of those sections of our contemporary society
which hope to perpetuate the value system and the hierarchical social
gradation of the past by justifying them indirectly. Their "respect"
for ancient Indian science stems from the fact that they are
defenders of the status quo, or even retrogression. If they can
convince us that ancient India had evolved science to a perfect
degree, then it will not be long before they come up with the next
basic assertion that those who had developed science thus must have
also designed a social system along right lines. So accept both!
This is no slander on ancient Indian
scientists themselves. It is only an indictment of the contemporary
impostors of ancient Indian science, the revivalists, whose interests
lie elsewhere than in genuine science. The meticulous care with which
the scientific temper and method were fostered by our early
contributors to science can be partly understood if one is conscious
of the struggle they had to wage to carryon with their scientific
work in the face of almost insurmountable hurdles that the vested
interests placed on their path.
The case of the medical
practitioners illustrates this point amply. They were treated as
outcastes by the orthodox lawgivers as they, more than any other
section of society, broke the barriers of the strictest caste
stratification of society. Are our revivalists prepared to appreciate
the integrity of these ancient medical men of our society who
stubbornly resisted the onslaught unleashed on them by the orthodox
lawgivers? And what dictum did the medical men enunciate as the
fundamental axiom for their science?
The Caraka-samhita
says among other things that "any success attained without
reasoning is as good as sheer accidental success" (vina
tarkena ya siddhih yadriccha siddhireva sa). And yet our
revivalist champions portray ancient Indian science as a complete and
perfect body of systematized knowledge! This raw opinion is
repudiated by the ancient methodologists themselves when they confess
to their shortcomings and limitations. "The little known
and the vast unknown" is what beckons them to renewed scientific
activity, but our all-knowing savants among the revivalists turn a
deaf ear to all their warnings' about the scientific discipline.
Yet another factor that
the revivalists conveniently forget is that ancient Indian science
had a firm materialist basis. This "forgetfulness" is
because of their bias for the idealist school of philosophical
thought. The dual personality of the revivalist of today consists in
his pretentious professing of the illusory nature of the world and
the disgusting manner in which he goes about amassing wealth all the
same.
Our ancient Indian
scientists were singularly free from this blemish as they posited the
reality of the objective world as something independent of the
subjective consciousness of the perceiver and they squarely stood up
to the wrath of the spiteful orthodox law-givers instead of meekly
submitting to their dictates for the sake of comfort and money.
In cases where they
displayed a dual personality, they did so consciously as the only
means of propagating their scientific conclusions. They knew how
orthodoxy would mercilessly trample upon their alleged heretical
views, and hence they couched their findings in a language acceptable
to the orthodoxy. Their devotion to science and perseverance in the
face of heavy odds thus remain an inspiring chapter in the history of
Indian science.
The inescapable
question faced by the revivalists of today is whether they are
courageous enough to follow in the footsteps of the great masters of
ancient India by eschewing romanticism and by braving the monster of
vested interests in its own den. If they dare not do it for any
reason, then it does not lie in their mouth to sing panegyrics to
ancient Indian science. One who renounces the principles, method and
objectives that the ancient Indian scientists so deeply cherished,
has no right whatsoever to show himself off as their trusted
follower. A dishonest reverence for ancient Indian science is worse
than a pronounced anti-science bias. And that is precisely what the
revivalists are guilt of.
i
This essay was first published in Deccan Herald, April 17, 1982
This essay was first published in Deccan Heralad, Bangalore, April 17, 1982
It also appears in The Living
Marx, Ma-Le Prakashana, Bangalore, 1983 (Page 67 - 74)
Dr. G Ramkrishna is the Chief Editor of Hosatu, a progressive periodical in Kannada. He was Professor of English at National College, Bangalore and a Visiting Professor at Kannada University, Hampi. He is the author a number of books in Kannada and English including The Strange Culture of M.S. Golvalkar, The Living Marx, and Philosophy in China (in English), The features of the Anti-Fascist Movement, RSS – A Poisonous Tree, On Hindutva (Kannda)
Email ID: dgrkrishna@gmail.com
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