https://www.youtube.com/watch?
-
Showing posts with label India's greatness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India's greatness. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Singing our Past glory- a popular refrain
Pride of ancestry is the hope
for the future. India has it in great measure and justifiably so, despite all
the false history propagated to the contrary by our invaders and our own home
grown betrayers in various fields/walks of life.
Having said that to be always
preening and patting ourselves with almost a nostalgic ethnocentric pride, especially
laboriously staking claim for our contributions, our ancientness etc, announces
a sense of complex which portrays us as pathetic attention seekers. It also sounds
as if we are considered weak and therefore need to keep repeating our great
feats and past glory at every juncture, every forum and opportunity.
Truth always finds its own
way to manifest, however historians may attempt selectively to highlight or
hide it. While the whole world knows Columbus as a great discoverer, without
any doubt, the world also gradually came to know that every discovery of his [though
he was not responsible for it] ended up enslaving and killing many human beings
who were otherwise leading a happy life. Even if European history books written
with excessive emphasis of world wars, industrial revolution, French revolution
etc the contributions of ancient Greek civilization, Roman Empire etc can never
be overlooked.
Our greatest weakness was
lack of documentation, failing to propagate at the right time [not after many
centuries have passed by], fail to do and/or promote contextually relevant and
most import thing [prioritizing first things first] at specific junctures etc.
Of course, the last factor
mentioned above i.e. prioritizing contextually relevant thing was taken care
of, mostly, as if by some divine intervention, at crucial times through roles played by some great souls :-
Like Adi
Shankara who actually united the country psychologically and culturally by
unearthing many important concepts of Sanathana Dharma;
Like Swami Vivekananda
who brought to the notice of the Western world the great teachings of Sanathana
Dharma by opting to address them in their language and in the idiom that would
appeal to them, both these acts were timely;
Similarly the 68th
Sankaracharya of Kanchi Mutt popularly known as Mahaperiyava Sri
Chandrasekarendra saraswathy ensured the introduction of some parts of article
26 of The Indian Constitution which enable every Indian to worship and practice
his/her respective religion or sect, “Again,
when the Indian Constitution was being framed, Paramacharya called a well-known
Vedic scholar and asked him to meet Sardar Vallabhai Patel to pass on a message
from Him on the need for a vital provision in the Constitution to the effect
that the religious belief. This message was duly transmitted through a meeting
arranged by "The Hindu" with the visiting officials of the Indian
Government with the Vedic scholar deputed by Paramacharya. As a result Article
26 of the Constitution was enshrined and this extended constitutional
protection, not just to the major religions-Hinduism or Islam-but to every
sub-sect of these religion”-[ http://www.kamakoti.org/souv/5-52.html
];
After independence Sardar Vallabhai Patel ensured uniting the multiple
smaller kingdoms;
In the early 90s one man wanted to retire from politics and
moved away but he was inducted as Prime Minister Shri P.V.Narasimha Rao, who
for the first time, post Independence made parliamentarians know that, besides
politics, economic progress and activities towards that were also part of
Government;
Similarly recently when corruption, atrocities and anti –national activities
reached a saturation point, destiny of India has found in MODI a leader who has
a vision, intention, credentials, mandate etc to lead the nation to greater
heights.
So, in the present context
what India needs to do, is not to resort to singing the refrain of its past
glories but rather prioritize and concentrate, with wisdom, to progress in
domains that matter more at present like economic development which will take
care of better survival conditions for many, eradication of poverty to a very
great extent, generate employment, improve education and research in science, technology,
communication, infrastructure etc.
Once our status in this area
i.e. economic development improves, then, the world will listen to us and look
up to us, till then all our belated parading of our past glory, sometimes ad
nauseam, will sound as if we are trying hard to market ourselves as a great
glorious nation with a enviable past and it may also inadvertently divert the
attention of youth from concentrating on economic developmental activities.
Too much of addiction to past
glory will give a sense of false complacency and trap us in the quagmire of
ethnocentric adulation leading to despicable existence as has happened in the
case of the glorious Greece.
Scientists have named latest particle
discovery as HIGGS BOSON recognizing the great scientist BOSE of India about whom
many Indians do not know anything at all.
What was more interesting was
this psychological affliction of claiming credit and creating connection after
a thing is established, to which , with all due respects, even Sri Sri
Ravishankar of the Art of Living was susceptible, when he gave a lecture immediately
after announcement of results of Higgs-Boson particle results in Germany , read
here the transcript of that speech http://www.srisriwisdom.com/index.php/en/daily-satsang/96-wssstd-srisritalksabouttherecentlydiscoveredgodparticle-eng
Not that I am averse to know
and share the many great gems that exist in ancient Indian scriptures. In fact,
I have been requesting people to take up detailed study of DEVI BHAGAVATHAM
paying attention to probable esoteric references to unearth many hitherto unknown
mysteries.
Let us listen to lectures by
people like Shatavadhani Dr. R. Ganesh
http://www.culturalindia.org/data/rganesh.asp
who can pack in a single topic the entire gamut of India’s multi-faceted glory
or
people like Swami Atmapriyananda, [Vice Chancellor of
Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University since 2005] who explain in
very scientific terms synergizing our past glory with the necessity and methods
to apply it to present day requirements.
India's past glory does not require any promoters as it will automatically manifest itself at the appropriate time and place.
Here are some links that
throw light on some aspects of our past glory for all of us to know
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
India's greatness, India's contributions
LOST TREASURES GONE TO 0
By Ambati M. Rao, Jayakrishna Ambati, Balamurali K. Ambati, Gomathi S. Rao
Rediff On The Net
December 30, 1999
'In science, more than in any other human institution, it is necessary to search out the past in order to understand the present and to control the future.'
- J D Bernal, Science in History
As we hurtle into a new millennium, we would do well to reflect where all those 0s came from. The greatness that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome started their numeral systems at one. The Arabs brought the modern numerals, including zero, to Europe centuries ago. But while 1, 2, 3, are commonly and mistakenly referred to as the "Arabic" numerals, they actually originated in India, and are but one of many achievements that became treasures lost to the oblivion of history.
India is the epitome of diversity in all respects, geographically and culturally. From such diversity bloomed the myriad blossoms of science and mathematics.
By Ambati M. Rao, Jayakrishna Ambati, Balamurali K. Ambati, Gomathi S. Rao
Rediff On The Net
December 30, 1999
'In science, more than in any other human institution, it is necessary to search out the past in order to understand the present and to control the future.'
- J D Bernal, Science in History
As we hurtle into a new millennium, we would do well to reflect where all those 0s came from. The greatness that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome started their numeral systems at one. The Arabs brought the modern numerals, including zero, to Europe centuries ago. But while 1, 2, 3, are commonly and mistakenly referred to as the "Arabic" numerals, they actually originated in India, and are but one of many achievements that became treasures lost to the oblivion of history.
India is the epitome of diversity in all respects, geographically and culturally. From such diversity bloomed the myriad blossoms of science and mathematics.
Indian science flowered long before the classical age of Europe and flourishes to this day.
India must be credited with the primacy of the invention of unaccountably finite principles and theorems that have been granted to later Arabs and Europeans. In celebrating India's contribution to learning we shall find a deep and long-nurtured reverent and respectful love of learning.
There is still much to be learned from ancient Indian science. The depths of the Vedas and other scriptures, as well as more "scholarly" extant work, offer much to the modern world of science. Indeed, we can all profit from an in-depth examination of ancient Indian science. Yet it is a sad testament to our community's inability to transmit our heritage to our youth that most of our youngsters don't know the difference between Brahmagupta and Brahmaputra.
This article focuses on some of the more important and relevant inventions and discoveries of ancient Indians and attempts to analyze the reasons why these scientists never received their due credit.
In the 16th century, there grew a tendency in Europe to trace scientific thought to the achievements of Mediterranean antiquity. This direct link between modern science and ancient Greece is increasingly perpetuated by a flourishing literature in the cause of a simplistic, but false, understanding of the history of science. Most Western historians preach the tale that a Greek miracle led to the dawn of science. The facts of older civilizations are cursorily covered and mainly for the perverted purpose of showing why there was no real science before the Greeks.
Arnold Reymand echoed these sentiments well: "Compared to empirical and fragmentary knowledge which the peoples of the East had laboriously gathered together during long centuries, Greek science constitutes a veritable miracle."
However, historian Will Durant correctly observed: "Europe and America are the spoiled child and grandchild of Asia and have never quite realized the wealth of their pre-classical inheritance." Most Western study of ancient India has been a tunnel vision dominated by a prefabricated psychology. The parochial provincialism of mindless Eurocentrism has distorted the history of civilization as originating in Greece while summing up India's contribution in a line or two.
However, our own apathy in addition to Western neglect has led to the demise of ancient Indian science from the pages of history. The disguised racism of some historians notwithstanding, we must share the blame for this tragedy. It is imperative that we shed our ignorance and elucidate what for countless centuries has been buried in the recess of history.
India's most important contribution to science is nothing: the concept of nothing, or zero, is central to the understanding of all else. It is time that we raise out scientific heritage from what it is today: nothing.
No ancient civilization possessed more talent or accomplished more feats in mathematics than India. For instance, the most ingenious creation in all of mathematics, the decimal system, of which the famed mathematician LaPlace wrote: "It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by 10 symbols, a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity."
These misnomered "Arabic" numerals appeared on the Rock Edicts of Ashoka (256 BC), a thousand years before they appeared in the Arabic literature. Even those few who know this fact know little more about the myriad contributions of Indian mathematics.
India's work in science is young as a secular pursuit but old as an auxiliary interest of her priests. Science started with the priests, originated in astronomy and mathematics governing religious festivals, and was preserved in the temples and transmitted through the generations.
Consider the most famous elementary theorem in mathematics: the so-called Pythagorean theorem, which states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The Sulvasutras (collection of rules concerning measurements) of Baudhayana (600 BC) describe this identity almost 200 years before Pythagoras: "The diagonal of an oblong produces by itself both the areas which the two sides of the oblong produce separately."
Aryabhata (476-520 AD), the father of Indian mathematics and astronomy, computed pi to 3.1416, a value not equaled in Europe until Purbach (1423-61). Pi is computed to 11 digits in the Karanapaddhati work (15th century) as 3.1415926535, a value not equaled in Europe until much later. More importantly, Indian mathematicians knew algebra at least as early as the 5th century AD Known as Bijaganitam, algebra (a corruption of the Arabic word Al-Jabr) was used extensively in astronomical calculations and referred to by Aryabhata in his treatise Aryabhattiya. This science was couriered to the West by the Arabs.
Trigonometry too was known to Indian mathematicians and astronomers before their European counterparts. It was used in India from the Gupta period (3rd century AD) onwards, and the Surya-Siddhanta (4th century AD) gives a table of sines.
Indian atomic theory greatly predates Democritus (430 BC). Kashyapa (aka Kanada), in his Vaisheshika Sutra, formulated an advanced theory of atomic structure in the 6th century BC. He also stated the principle of volume displacement long before Archimedes. Pakudha Kayayana (580 BC), a contemporary of Buddha, taught atomic theory by propounding the theory that undifferentiated potential matter (tanmatra) forms the universal energy of the cosmos by forming atoms.
Brahmagupta (598-660 AD) anticipated the gravitational theory: "Things fall to the ground not because of any inherent force within but because of the pull from the earth." A century before Brahmagupta, Varahamihira claimed that objects remain on the earth's surface due to an internal attractive force and that a similar force keeps celestial bodies in their positions. In fact, the ancient Sanskrit has a word for gravity --
Gurutvakarshan.
Aryabhata also proposed the heliocentric theory a millennium before Copernicus, who is generally credited with this revolutionary idea. In poetic form, Aryabhata stated that the earth's diurnal rotation on its axis produced the daily rising and setting of planets and stars. In fact, the Sandhya Vandanam (morning prayers to the sun), dating back to the Vedic age, contains numerous references to the sun as the center of the solar system.
Long before Columbus staked his claim that the world was round, Aryabhata recognized that the earth was spherical and Brahmagupta gave a figure of 36,000 km for the earth's circumference, not far from the actual value.
And a word about the game that is so popular among us Indians -- chess. It is so old that half the world claims it. Archaeologists generally believe it arose in India, where the oldest indisputable appearance in 750 AD. The word chaturanga became transformed into the Arabic shatranj and finally chess.
We hope the foregoing non-exhaustive recital will serve to kindle pride and interest in our collective heritage.
Trying to forge links with the past without teaching about our contributions is akin to planting cut flowers. Parents must pass on knowledge about our past to our youth, much like a relay race, lest our leaders of tomorrow grow bereft of vital knowledge and become rudderless in an information-driven world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
