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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.

[SLIDE NO. 31]

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:

[SLIDE NO.32 ]

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.

[SLIDE NO.33 ]

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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