Indian Scientific Tradition [Medieval and Modern] [SLIDE...
Transcript of Indian Scientific Tradition [Medieval and Modern] [SLIDE...
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Indian Scientific Tradition [Medieval and Modern]
-Preeti Awasthi
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"It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as
grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals
and the decimal system."
Will Durant (American Historian, 1885-1981)
Sa`id- al- Andalusi, a leading natural philosopher of the eleventh century Muslim Spain
wrote-."The first nation ,to have cultivated science, is India. This is a powerful nation
having a large population, and a rich kingdom . India is known for the wisdom of its
people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the
Indians in all branches of knowledge," The emphasis in the above quotation is not on
India being "the first nation to cultivate science. It is on the fact that the European
scholars, as late as the eleventh-century, thought India as a leader in science and
technology. This is in contrast with the modern common perception about India in the
Western minds or with the colonial period. [SLIDE NO.3 ]
Science happens when people seek to discover and learn
about the world and their place in that world. These people formulate theories, test
hypotheses, examine issues, manipulate experiments, and evenually apply the knowledge
gained to improve life. Regardless of the type of system explored: physical, chemical, or
biological, the work and the thoughts are accomplished at the hands and in the minds of
people, both individually and in teams. In order to gain a sound appreciation and respect
for the achievements of Indian science, one needs an introduction to the people who
made it happen across the pages of history. People are the priority of science both to
carry it out and to benefit from its occurrence.
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History of Mathematics in India:
The Vedang Jyotish (1000 BC) includes the statement: "Just as the feathers of a
peacock and the jewel-stone of a snake are placed at the highest point of the body (at the
forehead), similarly, the position of Ganit is the highest amongst all branches of the
Vedas and the Shastras."
The Sanskrit word used for mathematics in this verse
is ganita, which literally means “reckoning.” What is unique about the classical Indian
view of mathematics is that number was treated as the primary concept—and not
geometry, as with the Greeks. A distinguished Swiss mathematician-physicist wrote in
1929 that “occidental mathematics has in past centuries broken away from the Greek
view and followed a course which seems to have originated in India” where “the concept
of number appears as logically prior to the concepts of geometry.” After quick adoption
in ninth-century Baghdad, it came slowly to be transmitted to Christian Europe around
the thirteenth century through Jewish scholars working in Islamic Spain. This is
illustrated in the works of a distinguished scholar the Persian mathematician Al-
Khwarizmi , who worked in the House of Wisdom at Baghdad .Apart from numbers, the
idea of equations, in particular of algebraic equations, might also have come from India,
with some very important contributions from West Asia. [SLIDE NO.5 ]
(1) the use of symbols for unknown quantities and for arithmetical operations—addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division—and
(2) a statement of equality between appropriate expressions involving those symbols for
both operations and unknowns.
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The Spread of Indian Mathematics:
The study of mathematics appears to slow down
after the onslaught of the Islamic invasions and the conversion of colleges and
universities to madrasahs. But this was also the time when Indian mathematical texts
were increasingly being translated into Arabic and Persian. Although Arab scholars relied
on a variety of sources including Babylonian, Syriac, Greek and some Chinese texts,
Indian mathematical texts played a particularly important role. Scholars such as Ibn Tariq
and Al-Fazari (8th C, Baghdad), Al-Kindi (9th C, Basra), Al-Khwarizmi (9th C. Khiva),
Al-Qayarawani (9th C, Maghreb, author of Kitab fi al-hisab al-hindi), Al-Uqlidisi (10th
C, Damascus, author of The book of Chapters in Indian Arithmetic), Ibn-Sina (Avicenna),
Ibn al-Samh (Granada, 11th C, Spain), Al-Nasawi (Khurasan, 11th C, Persia), Al-
Beruni (11th C, born Khiva, died Afghanistan), Al-Razi (Teheran), and Ibn-Al-
Saffar (11th C, Cordoba) were amongst the many who based their own scientific texts on
translations of Indian treatises. [SLIDE NO. 7]
Records of the Indian origin of many proofs, concepts and formulations were obscured
in the later centuries, but the enormous contributions of Indian mathematics was
generously acknowledged by several important Arabic and Persian scholars, especially in
Spain. Abbasid scholar Al-Gahethwrote: " India is the source of knowledge, thought and
insight”. Al-Maoudi (956 AD) who travelled in Western India also wrote about the
greatness of Indian science. Said Al-Andalusi, an 11th C Spanish scholar and court
historian was amongst the most enthusiastic in his praise of Indian civilization, and
specially remarked on Indian achievements in the sciences and in mathematics. Of
course, eventually, Indian algebra and trigonometry reached Europe through a cycle of
translations, traveling from the Arab world to Spain and Sicily, and eventually
penetrating all of Europe. At the same time, Arabic and Persian translations of Greek and
Egyptian scientific texts become more readily available in India.
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The Kerala School:
Although it appears that original work in mathematics ceased
in much of Northern India after the Islamic conquests, Benaras survived as a center for
mathematical study, and an important school of mathematics blossomed in
Kerala. Madhava (14th C, Kochi) made important mathematical discoveries that
would not be identified by European mathematicians till at least two centuries later.
His series expansion of the cos and sine functions anticipated Newton by almost three
centuries. Historians of mathematics, Rajagopal, Rangachari and Joseph considered
his contributions instrumental in taking mathematics to the next stage, that of modern
classical analysis. Nilkantha (15th C, Tirur, Kerala) extended and elaborated upon the
results of Madhava while Jyesthadeva (16th C, Kerala) provided detailed proofs of the
theorems and derivations of the rules contained in the works
ofMadhava and Nilkantha. It is also notable that Jyesthadeva's Yuktibhasa which
contained commentaries on Nilkantha's Tantrasamgraha included elaborations on
planetary theory later adopted by Tycho Brahe, and mathematics that anticipated work
by later Europeans. Chitrabhanu (16th C, Kerala) gave integer solutions to twenty-one
types of systems of two algebraic equations, using both algebraic and geometric
methods in developing his results. Important discoveries by the Kerala mathematicians
included the Newton-Gauss interpolation formula, the formula for the sum of an
infinite series, and a series notation for pi.
The Indian numeral system and its place value,
decimal system of enumeration came to the attention of the Arabs in the seventh or eighth
century, and served as the basis for the well known advancement in Arab mathematics,
represented by figures such as Al-Khwarizmi. It reached Europe in the twelfth century
when Adelard of Bath translated Al-Khwarizmi's works into Latin. But the Europeans
were at first resistant to this system, being attached to the far less logical roman numeral
system, but their eventual adoption of this system led to the scientific revolution that
began to sweep Europe beginning in the thirteenth century.
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Maadhava: The Kerala region of South India was home to a very important school of
mathematics. The best known member of this school Maadhava (c. 1444-1545), who
lived in Sangamagraama in Kerala. Primarily an astronomer, he made history in
mathematics with his writings on trigonometry. [SLIDE NO.10 ]
He calculated the sine, cosine and arctangent of the circle, developing the world's first
consistent system of trigonometry. He also correctly calculated the value of p to eleven
decimal places.This is by no means a complete list of influential Indian mathematicians
or Indian contributions to mathematics, but rather a survey of the highlights of what is,
judged by any fair, unbiased standard, an illustrious tradition, important both for its own
internal elegance as well as its influence on the history of European mathematical
traditions. [SLIDE NO.11 ]
The classical Indian mathematical renaissance was an important precursor to the
European renaissance, and to ignore this fact is to fail to grasp the history of latter, a
history which was truly multicultural, deriving its inspiration from a variety of cultural
roots.
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Prof. C.K Raju, a renowned scholar, has researched the “clash of epistemologies” that
occurred in European ideas about numbers. When Europeans started to import Indian
ideas about mathematics, what had been natural to Indian thinkers for a long time was
very hard for Europeans to accept. He divides this into three periods:
1. The first math war in Europe was from 10th to 16th centuries, during which time
it took Europe 500 years to accept the zero, because the Church considered it to
be heresy.
2. The second math war was over the Indian concept of indivisibles, which led to the
theory of real numbers and infinitesimals, paving the way for the development of
calculus. This war lasted three centuries, from the 17th to 19th centuries.
3. The third math war is now under way and is between computational math (Indian
algorithmic approach) and formal math (Western approach).
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Astronomy: The sources for astronomical knowledge are the Jyotish-Vedanga (500BC)
and the Panchasiddhantas, of which, the Suryasiddhanta(Varahamihira, 578 AD) has had
a major influence on Indian astronomical tradition. Similarly, the postulation of atomism
in the Nyaya-Vaisheshikas; the extensive treatise on coinage and minting in Kautilya's
Arthashastra; and the holistic 'science of life' Ayurveda with its outstanding texts
the Charaka, Susruta and Ashtanga samhitas are examples of the advanced scientific
knowledge that was available during the medieval period (c.647 - 1526AD) The Jantar
Mantar astronomical observatory in Jaipur, Rajasthan.The observatory was built in the
early18th century by the astronomerking Sawai Jai Singh II.
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Development of scientific tradition:
1) ‘Akbarnama’wrtten by Abul Fazl,in1602 depicts the defeat of Baz Bahadur of Malwa
by the Mughal troops, 1561. The Mughals extensively improved metal weapons and
armor used by the armies of India.
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2) Indigo was used as a dye in India, which was also a major center for its production
and processing. The Indigo fera tinctoria variety of Indigo was domesticated in India.
Indigo, used as a dye, made its way to the Greeks and the Romans via various trade
routes, and was valued as a luxury product.
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3) The cashmere wool fiber, also known as pashm or pashmina, was used in the
handmade shawls of Kashmir. The woolen shawls from Kashmir region find written
mention between 3rd century BC and the 11th century CE. The founder of the cashmere
wool industry is traditionally held to be the 15th century ruler of Kashmir, Zayn-ul-
Abidin, who introduced weavers from Central Asia.
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4) Crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Gupta dynasty, and the earliest
reference to candied sugar comes from India.
5) Jute was also cultivated in India.
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6) Muslin was named after the city where Europeans first encountered it, Mosul, in what
is now Iraq, but the fabric actually originated from Dhaka in what is now Bangladesh. In
the 9th century, an Arab merchant named Sulaiman makes note of the material's origin in
Bengal (known as Ruhml in Arabic).
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7) Evidence of inoculation for smallpox is found in the 8th century, when Madhav
wrote the Nidāna, a 79-chapter book which lists diseases along with their causes,
symptoms, and complications. He included a special chapter on smallpox (masūrikā) and
described the method of inoculation to protect against smallpox.
8) European scholar Francesco I reproduced a number of Indian maps in his magnum
opus La Cartografia Antica dell India. Out of these maps, two have been reproduced
using a manuscript of Lokaprakasa, originally compiled by the polymath Ksemendra
(Kashmir, 11th century CE), as a source. The other manuscript, used as a source by
Francesco I, is titled Samgrahani.
9) The infinite series for π was stated by Madhava of Sangamagrama (c. 1340-1425) and
his Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. He made use of the series expansion of
arctanx to obtain an infinite series expression, now known as the Madhava-Gregory
series, for π. The development of the series expansions for trigonometric functions (sine,
cosine, and arc tangent) was carried out by mathematicians of the Kerala School in the
fifteenth century CE. Their work, completed two centuries before the invention of
calculus in Europe, provided what is now considered the first example of a power series
(apart from geometric series).
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10) Shēr Shāh of northern India issued silver currency bearing Islamic motifs, later
imitated by the Mughal empire. The Chinese merchant Ma Huan (1413–51) noted that
gold coins, known as fanam, were issued in Cochin and weighed a total of one fen and
one li according to the Chinese standards. They were of fine quality and could be
exchanged in China for 15 silver coins of four-li weight each.
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11) The Seamless celestial globe was invented in Kashmir by Ali Kashmiri ibn Luqman
in 998 AH (1589-90 CE), and twenty other such globes were later produced in Lahore
and Kashmir during the Mughal Empire. Before they were rediscovered in the 1980s, it
was believed by modern metallurgists to be technically impossible to produce metal
globes without any seams, even with modern technology. These Mughal metallurgists
pioneered the method of lost-wax casting in or It was written in the Tarikh-i Firishta
(1606–1607) that the envoy of the Mongol ruler Hulegu Khan was presented with a
pyrotechnics display upon his arrival in Delhi in 1258 CE. As a part of an embassy to
India by Timurid leader Shah Rukh (1405–1447), 'Abd al-Razzaq mentioned naphtha-
throwers mounted on elephants and a variety of pyrotechnics put on display.
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12) Firearms known as top-o-tufak also existed in the Vijayanagara Empire by as early
as 1366 CE. From then on the employment of gunpowder warfare in the region was
prevalent, with events such as the siege of Belgaum in 1473 CE by the Sultan
Muhammad Shah Bahmani.
13) Fathullah Shirazi (c. 1582), a Persian-Indian polymath and mechanical engineer
who worked for Akbar in the Mughal Empire, invented the autocannon, the earliest
multi-shot gun. In A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, James Riddick Partington
describes Indian rockets, mines and other means of gunpowder warfare.
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14) The Indian war rockets were formidable weapons before such rockets were used in
Europe. They had bam-boo rods, a rocket-body lashed to the rod, and iron points. They
were directed at the target and fired by lighting the fuse, but the trajectory was rather
erratic. The use of mines and counter-mines with explosive charges of gunpowder is
mentioned for the times of Akbar and Jahāngir.
15) By the 16th century, Indians were manufacturing a diverse variety of firearms;
large guns in particular, became visible in Tanjore, Dacca, Bijapur and Murshidabad.
Guns made of bronze were recovered from Calicut (1504) and Diu (1533). Gujarāt
supplied Europe saltpeter for use in gunpowder warfare during the 17th century. Bengal
and Mālwa participated in saltpeter production. The Dutch, French, Portuguese, and
English used Chāpra as a center of saltpeter refining.
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16) The construction of water works and aspects of water technology in India is
described in Arabic and Persian works. During medieval times, the diffusion of Indian
and Persian irrigation technologies gave rise to an advanced irrigation system which
bought about economic growth and also helped in the growth of material culture.
17) The scholar Sadiq Isfahani of Jaunpur compiled an atlas of the parts of the world
which he held to be 'suitable for human life'. The 32 sheet atlas—with maps oriented
towards the south as was the case with Islamic works of the era—is part of a larger
scholarly work compiled by Isfahani during 1647 CE. 'The largest known Indian map,
depicting the former Rajput capital at Amber in remarkable house-by-house detail,
measures 661 × 645 cm. (260 × 254 in., or approximately 22 × 21 ft).' Early volumes of
the Encyclopædia Britannica described cartographic charts made by the seafaring
Dravidian people and the gunpowder technology in 18th century Mysore.
India’s contributions to Science and Technology
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Textiles: Indian textiles have been legendary since ancient times. The Greeks and
Romans extensively imported textiles from India. Roman archives record official
complaints about massive cash drainage due to these imports from India.One of the
earliest industries relocated from India to Britain was textiles and it became the first
major success of the Industrial Revolution, with Britain replacing India as the world's
leading textile exporter. What is suppressed in the discourse about India and Europe is
the fact that the technology, designs and even raw cotton were initially imported from
India while, in parallel, India's indigenous textile mills were outlawed by the British.
India's textile manufacturers were de-licensed, even tortured in some cases, over-taxed
and regulated, to 'civilize' them into virtual extinction. Textiles and steel were the
mainstays of the British Industrial Revolution. Both had their origins in India. The
Ahmedabad textile museum is a great resource for scholarly material.
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Iron and Steel: Iron is found in countries neighboring India, leading European scholars
to assume that it came from outside India. Cemeteries in present-day Baluchistan have
iron objects. The earlier iron found in Middle Eastern archeological sites was essentially
meteorite material sculptured as rock/stone carvings, and was not metallurgically
processed at all. Since iron can be a by-product of copper technology, this could be its
likely origin in India because copper was a well-known technology in many parts of
ancient India. A smelting furnace dated 800 BCE is found in Naikund (Maharashtra),
India. Recent discoveries reveal that iron was known in the Ganga valley in mid second
millennium BCE. In the mid-first millennium BCE, the Indian wootz steel was very
popular in Persian courts for making swords. Rust-free steel was an Indian invention, and
remained an Indian skill for centuries. Delhi's famous iron pillar, dated 402 CE, is
considered a metallurgical marvel and shows minimal signs of rust. The famous
Damascus steel swords, now displayed in museums across Europe, were made from
Indian steel imported by Europeans. The acclaimed Sheffield steel in UK was Indian
crucible steel. The best brains of European science worked for decades to learn to
reverse-engineer how Indians made crucible steel, and in this process, modern alloy
design and physical metallurgy was developed in Europe.
Indian industry was dealt a death blow by the colonial masters who banned the
production and manufacture of iron and steel at several places in India, fearing their use
in making swords and other arms. In addition, they also ensured India would depend
upon iron and steel imported from Europe.
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Zinc Metallurgy: Another important Indian contribution to metallurgy was in the
isolation, distillation and use of zinc. From natural sources, zinc content in alloys such as
brass can go no higher than 28 per cent. These primitive alloys with less than 28 per cent
zinc were prevalent in many parts of the world before India. However, to increase the
zinc content beyond this threshold, one must first separate the zinc into 100 per cent pure
form and then mix the pure zinc back into an alloy. A major breakthrough in the history
of metallurgy was India's discovery of zinc distillation whereby the metal was vaporized
and then condensed back into pure metal.There is evidence of zinc ore mining at Zawar
in Rajasthan from the fifth century BCE, but unfortunately there is lack of evidence of
regular production of metallic zinc until the eighth century CE. The earliest confirmed
evidence of zinc smelting by distillation is from Zawar. Europeans learnt it for the first
time in 1743, when know-how was transferred from India. Until then, India had been
exporting pure zinc for centuries on an industrial scale. At archeological sites in
Rajasthan, retorts used for the distillation are found in very large numbers even
today.Once zinc had become separated into a pure metal, alloys could be made with the
required zinc component to provide the required properties. For instance, strength and
durability increase with higher zinc component. Also, copper alloys look like gold when
the zinc component is higher than 28 per cent. Most early brass objects found in other
countries had less than 10 per cent zinc component, and, therefore, these were not based
on zinc distillation technology.
Three important items are now proven about the history of zinc metallurgy: (i) zinc
distillation and metallurgical usage was pioneered in India; (ii) industrial scale production
was pioneered in Rajasthan; (iii) England transferred the technology of zinc from India in
1736. British metallurgy documents do not mention zinc at all prior to this transfer.
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Shipping and Shipbuilding: Shipbuilding was one of India's major export
industries until the British dismantled it and formally banned it. Medieval Arab sailors
purchased their boats in India. The Portuguese also continued to get their boats from
India and not Europe. Some of the world's largest and most sophisticated ships were built
in India and China.The compass and other navigation tools were already in use in the
Indian Ocean long before Europe. (“Nav” is the Sanskrit word for boat, and is the root
word in “navigation” and “navy”.) Using their expertise in the science of seafaring,
Indians participated in the earliest-known ocean-based trading system.Few people know
that an Indian naval pilot, named Kanha, was hired by Vasco da Gama to captain his
ships and take him to India. Some of Europe's acclaimed “discoveries” in navigation
were in fact appropriations of a well-established thriving trade system in the Indian
Ocean. Contrary to European portrayals that Indians knew only coastal navigation, deep-
sea shipping had existed in India as Indian ships had been sailing to islands such as the
Andamans, Lakshdweep and Maldives around 2,000 years ago. Kautilya describes the
times that are good and bad for seafaring. There is also extensive archival material on the
Indian Ocean trade in Greek, Roman, and Southeast Asian sources.
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Forest Management: Many interesting findings have recently come out about the
way forests and trees were managed by each village and how a careful method was
applied to harvest medicines, firewood and building material in accordance with natural
renewal rates. There is now a database being built of 'sacred groves' across India. Once
again, it's a story of an economic asset falling into disuse and abuse because of the
dismantling of local governance and disrespect for traditional systems.Furthermore, when
scholars try to explain India's current ecological disasters, they seldom mention the large-
scale logging of Indian timber by the British in order to fund the two world wars and
various other industrial programs of the empire.
Farming Techniques: Indian farmers developed non-chemical, eco-friendly
pesticides and fertilizers that have modern applications. These traditional pesticides have
been recently revived in India with excellent results, replacing Union Carbide's products
in certain markets. Crop rotation and soil technology that has been passed down for
thousands of years are traditional practices which India pioneered.Historically, India's
agricultural production was large and sustained a huge population compared to other
parts of the world. Surpluses were stored for use in a drought year. But the British turned
this industry into a cash cow, exporting very large amounts of grain even during food
shortages. This caused tens of millions of Indians to die of starvation in the 19th century.
Folk Sciences: The distinction between elite and folk science was non-existent in
ancient times. India's advanced metallurgy and civil engineering was researched and
practiced by artisan guilds. For instance, modern scientists have humbly admitted that the
ecological management practiced today by the tribes of India's Northeast is far superior to
anything they could teach them. A good example is the use of alder (Alnus nepalensis),
which has been cultivated in the jhum (shifting cultivation) fields by the Khonoma
farmers in Nagaland for centuries. It has multiple usages for the farmers, since it is a
nitrogen-fixing tree and helps to retain the soil fertility. Its leaves are used as fodder and
fertilizer, and it is also utilized as timber. One could cite numerous such examples.
Myths and legends sometimes represent the attempts of our ancestors to explain the
scientific observations they made about the world around them and transmitted these to
the future. They chose different models to interpret the observations, but the observations
were empirical.
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Metallurgy: Among the technologies, metallurgy in many ways holds pride of
place. Excavations in the Indus Valley yielded the celebrated figure of a dancing girl cast
in bronze some 4,000 years ago (striking a pose not unfamiliar today). India was a
pioneer in the extraction of zinc—the process used in the Zuvar mines of Rajasthan in
northwestern India since the fourth century B.C.E. was later patented in nineteenth-
century Britain. The iron-and-steel industry throughout India dates from around 1300
B.C.E. Legend has it that one of the gifts that Alexander took from India during his raid
was a ball of steel weighing nearly 15 kilograms. Smiths during the Gupta Empire
(fourth–fifth centuries C.E.) created the much-studied iron pillar that stands today near
the Qutub Minar in Delhi; over seven meters tall and six tons in weight, it shows no sign
of rust whatever. (It was manufactured by forge-welding a number of cylindrical stubs of
the metal.) From around 1000 C.E., South Indian craftsmen began to cast superb bronze
sculptures. The famous Damascus swords of West Asia were forged out of an Indian steel
called wootz (derived from the South Indian word wook in a misprint that was never
corrected). In the late eighteenth century, Tipu Sultan’s rockets surprised British armies
with a performance far exceeding anything then available in Europe, chiefly because of
the excellence of the steel he used for the casings. Until late in the eighteenth century,
India exported iron and steel to England, being the only source apart from Sweden of
high quality iron then known to the British.
The Textile Industry: Perhaps the major industry associated with India for
thousands of years has been textile. India was also at one time famous for boats and
shipping. Although much Indian shipping stayed fairly close to the coast, Indian
craftsmen displayed excellent skills in building ships. The best ships operated by the East
India Company in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were usually made in
the Bombay area. The first Indian to be elected to the Royal Society of London was the
Parsi engineer Ardaseer Cursetji, whose docks in Bombay built ships better than the
British could at the time. Cursetji managed to stay abreast of the industrial revolution in
Britain and experimented with the use of steam engines for ships at about the same time
as Europeans.
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War rockets developed by Hyder Ali, prince of Mysore: Hyder Ali, prince of
Mysore, developed war rockets with an important change: the use of metal cylinders to
contain the combustion powder. Although the hammered soft iron he used was crude, the
bursting strength of the container of black powder was much higher than the earlier paper
construction. Thus a greater internal pressure was possible, with a resultant greater thrust
of the propulsive jet. The rocket body was lashed with leather thongs to a long bamboo
stick. Range was perhaps up to three-quarters of a mile (more than a kilometre). Although
individually these rockets were not accurate, dispersion error became less important when
large numbers were fired rapidly in mass attacks. They were particularly effective against
cavalry and were hurled into the air, after lighting, or skimmed along the hard dry
ground. Hyder Ali's son, Tippu Sultan, continued to develop and expand the use of rocket
weapons, reportedly increasing the number of rocket troops from 1,200 to a corps of
5,000. In battles at Seringapatam in 1792 and 1799 these rockets were used with
considerable effect against the British.
The Postal System: By the end of the 18th century the postal system in the region had
reached high levels of efficiency. According to Thomas Broughton, the Maharaja of
Jodhpur sent daily offerings of fresh flowers from his capital to Nathadvara (320 km) and
they arrived in time for the first religious Darshan at sunrise. Later this system underwent
modernization with the establishment of the British Raj. The Post Office Act XVII of
1837 enabled the Governor-General of India to convey messages by post within the
territories of the East India Company. Mail was available to some officials without
charge, which became a controversial privilege as the years passed. The Indian Post
Office service was established on October 1, 1837. The British also constructed a vast
railway network in the region for both strategic and commercial reasons.
Contributions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:
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Raja Rammohan Roy:
As British power spread across India in the nineteenth century, in
part through the use of superior technology, Indian intellectual leaders beginning with
Raja Rammohan Roy realized that they needed to understand the revolution that had
occurred in European knowledge systems. Eventually they created three major new
institutions.
The first was the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, which was
established in Calcutta in 1876 by the medical practitioner Mahendra Lal Sircar. It was
here that C. V. Raman later did the work in spectroscopy for which he won the 1929
Nobel Prize in physics.
The second was the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore
by JamshedjiN. Tata, an industrialist from Bombay who saw, long before others, that a
Western sense of the pursuit of science as an intellectual discipline was essential for the
well-being of India and its industry. Although initially resisted by British commercial
interests in India, the Institute began work in 1909–1911.
The third institution was the Indian Science Congress, which held in 1914 the
first of a series of annual meetings of all Indian scientists. These enterprises were quickly
followed by a variety of other initiatives, and Indian scientists began to make a mark at
the Presidency Colleges of Madras and Calcutta, and in universities elsewhere.
World attention was caught by the distinguished work of such scientists as J. C. Bose,
who experimented with wireless transmission before Marconi; Meghnad Saha, whose law
of ionization can be considered the first theoretical effort in astrophysics; Nobel Prize–
winner C. V. Raman; and Satyendra Nath Bose, whose unusual statistics and work with
Einstein led to a particle description of radiation.
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Ramanujan: Earlier, the mathematical genius Ramanujan (1887–1920) had
represented a response to Western mathematics that was in the traditional Indian idiom.
His education was not above the pre-university level, and in mathematics was entirely
limited to familiarity with the basic compilations of mathematical formulas found in
British manuals. In particular, Ramanujan was non-Euclidian in the sense that he did not
proceed with proofs of the kind that underlie Western mathematics. However, whether or
not he was able to prove them, his results were almost always correct and astonishingly
original, which made an enormous impression on Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy
and his colleagues. Ramanujan “saw” formulas in their entirety and often claimed that
they were revealed to him by his family goddess in dreams. Littleton, one of his
Cambridge collaborators, remarked, “If a significant piece of reasoning occurred
somewhere, and the mixture of evidence and intuition gave him certainty, he
[Ramanujan] looked no further.” Ramanujan’s brief career seemed to demonstrate to
Indians that their innate scientific abilities could make a mark even in the otherwise
unfamiliar territory of Western mathematics.
By the 1930s there were several Indians with an international reputation in
science, but it was becoming increasingly clear that the opportunities available to them
within the country were far too few. Bitter controversies erupted among scientific leaders
who had to share very scarce resources. Probably the first great Indian scientist to flee the
country in search of opportunity was the renowned astrophysicist Chandrasekhar (Nobel
Prize 1983). He eventually settled down in Chicago after being at Cambridge in England.
The trickle started in the 1930s grew by the 1970s into a westward flood of scientific
talent that continues into the twenty-first century.
[SLIDE NO.34 ]
Development of Science in a free Republic India: With the end of British rule,
the new Indian Republic led by Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors took massive
initiatives for the growth of science, leading to the establishment of new institutions or
the vigorous expansion of older ones, including the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, the Department of Atomic Energy, the Defence Research and Development
Organization, the Indian Institutes of Technology, and the Indian Space Research
Organization, among others. Nehru thought of these institutions, and the dams and
factories that were built in the first decades of the new republic, as “modern temples.” He
was convinced that it was impossible to solve India’s problems without the use of modern
science and technology, and constantly spoke of promoting a “scientific temper” among
the people.
[SLIDE NO.35 ]
Defence, Atomic Energy, Space and Agriculture:
One major feature of Indian science
and technology in republican India has been the growth of the strategic sector. The
country began making relatively large investments in defence, atomic energy, space, and
other related areas. Agriculture was another sector that received massive support, and the
major initiative taken in agriculture in the 1960s turned the tide in a matter of five to ten
years. The sudden and somewhat unexpected growth of the computer software industry in
India plus the prominent role that nonresident Indians are playing in U.S. scientific and
technological enterprises (particularly in Silicon Valley) have drawn attention to Indian
talent in terms that the U.S. public can easily understand. Perhaps the much-discussed
Indian prowess in software is really the most recent manifestation of the long Indian love
affair with numbers.
[SLIDE NO.36 ]
Interaction between Colonial and Native Sciences:
The British education system,
aimed at producing able civil and administrative services candidates, exposed a number
of Indians to foreign institutions. Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858–1937), Satyendra Nath
Bose (1894–1974), Meghnad Saha (1893–1956), P. C. Mahalanobis (1893–1972), Sir C.
V. Raman (1888–1970), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995), Homi Bhabha
(1909–1966), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971),
Hargobind Khorana (1922–), and Harish Chandra (1923–1983) were among the notable
scholars of this period. Extensive interaction between colonial and native sciences was
seen during most of the colonial era. Western science came to be associated with the
requirements of nation building rather than being viewed entirely as a colonial entity,
especially as it continued to fuel necessities from agriculture to commerce. Scientists
from India also appeared throughout Europe. By the time of India's independence
colonial science had assumed importance within the westernized intelligentsia and
establishment.
[SLIDE NO.37 ]
Achievers in Science and technology in modern India: In modern times also the
contributions made by Sir.C.V.Raman to the study of molecular scattering of light; by
J.C.Bose to physiological response of plants to light measuring extremely short intervals
of time and rates of reactions; by Srinivasa Ramanujan to mathematics are noteworthy.
Many a scientist followed and caught up with modern developments and now India is one
of the great countries of scientific advancement in the world.
Jayant Vishnu Nalikar the Astrophysicist who presented
his new theory of gravitation and acclaimed as Indian Einstein; Dr.Swaminathan for his
contributions to Agricultural Science and green revolution; D.Y.Subba Rao for his
discoveries of drugs like Hetrazan and Aureomycin.
[SLIDE NO.38 ]
Dr. Vikram Sarabhai : a physicist considered to be 'the father of India's space
program'—was instrumental in the creation of both the Indian Space Research
Organisation and the Physical Research Laboratory (Ahmedabad).
[SLIDE NO.39 ]
Role of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in India’s scientific developement:
Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India , initiated reforms to promote
higher education, science, technology in India. The Indian Institute of Technology —
conceived by a 22 member committee of scholars and entrepreneurs in order to promote
technical education — was inaugurated on 18 August 1951 at Kharagpur in West Bengal
by then minister of education Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Beginning in the 1960s, close
ties with the Soviet Union enabled the Indian Space Research Organization to rapidly
develop the Indian space program and advance nuclear power in India even after the first
nuclear test explosion by India on May 18, 1974 at Pokhran.
Jawaharlal Nehru aimed "to convert India’s economy into that of a modern state and to fit
her into the nuclear age and do it quickly." Nehru understood that India had not been at
the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, and hence made an effort to promote higher
education, and science and technology in India.
Nehru's Planning Commission (1950) fixed investment levels, prescribed priorities,
divided funds between agriculture and industry, and divided resources between the state
and the federal governments. The result of the efforts between 1947-1962 saw the area
under irrigation increase by 45 million acres (180,000 km2), food production rise by 34
million metric tons, installed power generating capacity increase by 79 million kilowatts,
and an overall increase of 94 percent in industrial production. The enormous population
rise, however, would balance the gains made by Nehru. The economically beleaguered
country was nevertheless able to build a large scientific workforce, second in numbers
only to that of the United States and the Soviet Union.
[SLIDE NO.40 ]
Enhancement of vocational and technical skills:
On 18 August 1951 the minister of
education Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, inaugurated the Indian Institute of Technology at
Kharagpur in West Bengal. Possibly modeled after the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology these institutions were conceived by a 22 member committee of scholars and
entrepreneurs under the chairmanship of N. R. Sarkar. The Sino-Indian war (1962) came
as a rude awakening to Nehru's military preparedness. Military cooperation with the
Soviet Union — partially aimed at developing advanced military technology — was
pursued during the coming years. Defence Research and Development Organisation was
formed in 1958.Radio broadcasting was initiated in 1927 but became state responsibility
only in 1930. In 1937 it was given the name All India Radio and since 1957 it has been
called Akashvani. Limited duration of television programming began in 1959, and
complete broadcasting followed in 1965. The Indian Government acquired the EVS EM
computers from the Soviet Union, which were used in large companies and research
laboratories. Tata Consultancy Services — established in 1968 by the Tata Group —
were the country's largest software producers during the 1960s.
[SLIDE NO.41 ]
Nuclear Power[1967–1987]: The roots of nuclear power in India lie in early acquisition
of nuclear reactor technology from a number of western countries, particularly the
American support for the Tarapur Atomic Power Station and Canada's CANDU reactors.
Stanley Wolpert (2008) describes the measures taken by the Indian government to
increase agricultural output: It was not until the late 1960s that chemical fertilizers and
high-yield food seeds brought the Green Revolution to India. The results were mixed, as
many poor or small farmers were unable to afford the seeds or the risks involved in the
new technology. Moreover, as rice and, especially, wheat production increased, there was
a corresponding decrease in other grain production. Farmers who benefited most were
from the major wheat-growing areas of Haryāna, Punjab, and western Uttar Pradesh.
[SLIDE NO.42 ]
Space Program : The Indian space program received only financial support from
the Soviet Union, which helped the Indian Space Research Organisation achieve aims
such as establishing the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station, launching remote
sensing satellites, developing India’s first satellite—Aryabhatta, and sending astronauts
into the space. [SLIDE NO.43 ]
India sustain its nuclear program during the aftermath of Operation Smiling Buddha —
India's first nuclear tests.
The Steel Authority of India Ltd.:- Though the roots of the Steel Authority of
India Ltd. lie in Hindustan Steel Private Limited (1954), the events leading up to the
formation of the modern avatar can be sum up this way that as soon as the Ministry of
Steel and Mines drafted a policy statement to evolve a new model for managing industry
it was presented to the Parliament on December 2, 1972. On this basis the concept of
creating a holding company to manage inputs and outputs under one umbrella was
mooted. This led to the formation of Steel Authority of India Ltd. The company,
incorporated on January 24, 1973 with an authorized capital of Rs. 2000 crore, was made
responsible for managing five integrated steel plants at Bhilai, Bokaro, Durgapur,
Rourkela and Burnpur, the Alloy Steel Plant and the Salem Steel Plant. In 1978 SAIL
was restructured as an operating company.
[SLIDE NO. 44]
India accounts for about 10% of all expenditure on research and development
in Asia and the number of scientific publications grew by 45% over the past five years.
However, according to India's science and technology minister, India is lagging in
science and technology compared to developed countries. [SLIDE NO.45 ]
India has only 140 researchers per 1,000,000 population, compared to 4,651 in the
United States. India invested US$3.7 billion in science and technology in 2002-2003. For
comparison, China invested about four times more than India, while the United States
invested approximately 75 times more than India on science and technology. [SLIDE NO.
46]
Despite this, five Indian Institutes of Technology were listed among the top 10 science
and technology schools in Asia by Asia Week. However, the number of publications by
Indian scientists is characterized by some of the fastest growth rates among major
countries. India, together with China, Iran and Brazil are the only developing countries
among 31 nations with 97.5% of the world's total scientific productivity. The remaining
162 developing countries contribute less than 2.5% of the world's scientific output.
[SLIDE NO. 47]
Indian agriculture benefited from the developments made in the fields of Biotechnology,
for which a separate department was created in 1986 under the Ministry of Science and
Technology. The effect of the technologically inclined services sector— which includes
the IT industry in India—accounting for 40% of India's GDP and 30% of export earnings
as of 2006, while employing only 25% of its workforce—is summarized by Sharma
(2006) in the Encyclopedia of India: India holds observer status at CERN while a joint
India-EU Software Education and Development Center is due at Bangalore. The scene in
India continues, as always, to be uneven. In spite of its size, India’s presence in the world
of science and technology is still small. The investment required to break into the world
knowledge system is huge, and it appears both India and China will find it difficult to
afford this for quite some time to come. In rough numbers, India accounts for about one-
half percent of the total expenditure in the world on research and development, and about
two percent of the resulting publications. Today the major problem in further
development of India lies in learning to manage the extraordinary talent that the country
possesses. India is often said to be home to one of the largest scientific communities in
the world, but only a small percentage of those graduating in the sciences are doing
research.
[SLIDE NO.48 ]
Mark Twain made a beautiful comment on India which is the best way to
conclude the topic- "So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by
man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his
rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked."
[SLIDE NO. 49]
Thankyou,
Preeti Awasthi
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