VEDIC IDEAS ON CYTO-GENETICS

Dr.K.S.Balasubramanian

Dy.Director,The K.S.R.I.

Mylapore,Chennai

The Vedas are revered as apauruseya or the scriptures which were not written by any human being. It is also believed that the Vedas came directly from God. Since God is omniscient and all pervading, the Vedas are also the repository of knowledge and are endless . The Vedas are the source of all the knowledge pertaining to this world and other worlds. The uniqueness of the Vedas is that the knowledge imparted by them cannot be derived through any other means. All the branches of Sanskrit literature claim Vedas to be their source. It is therefore no wonder that lot of precious information is hidden in Vedas on many branches of science like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, Botany and so on. This paper gives a glimpse of the contribution of Vedas in the field of Cyto-genetics.

The term Cyto-genetics includes in itself Cytology and Genetics, two branches of special study of Biology. Cytology deals with the structure and functions of cells whereas Genetics specifically deals with the science of genes, the hereditary units which lie within the cells. This fascinating subject has attracted the attention of many scientists now and various branches of study based on them like bio-diversity, bio-technology, bio-chemistry and bio-engineering are quite popular.

It is interesting to know that the Vedic seers were aware of the concepts of Cyto-genetics and they have dealt with this science in many places, in the Samhita, Brahmana and Upanisads. They have described the origin of cells, plant cells, animal cells, water, the unicellular organism, prana and jiva in living organisms, changes in cells, shapes of cells, gene, chromosome and so on. This paper would give an account of all these concepts culled from Vedic texts.