Our
school books talk about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle but don't mention
Yajnavalkya, Panini and Patanjali'
Dr Subhash Kak/Interview
http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/nov/18inter.htm
'Our
school books talk about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle but don't mention
Yajnavalkya, Panini and Patanjali'
Dr
Subhash Kak is
a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge. He is also a renowned authority on ancient Indian
science and technology. Originally from Kashmir, Dr Kak has worked at IIT Delhi,
Imperial College, Bell Laboratories and the Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research. He has authored ten books and over three hundred journal articles in
areas as varied as neural networks, quantum physics, artificial intelligence,
and the philosophy and history of science. Dr Kak's websites www.lsu.edu/ee/kak
and ftp://www.lsu.edu/pub/kak provide links to some of his articles.
Rajeev
Srinivasan interviewed
him by email in connection with his research into Indian science.
You are
a practising electrical engineer who holds patents in leading-edge areas such as
neural networks. Yet, you are also a published poet and writer, as well as a
Sanskrit scholar and expert on ancient Indian science. You are a Renaissance
man, in other words. How did all this come about?
I
was interested in both writing and sciences in school but when I finished I was
leaning toward becoming a writer. My mother warned me it was no way to make a
living and she packed me off to an engineering college. I am glad for that
because before long I discovered that literary and scientific imaginations are
not all that different. For sure there is much that is tedious and mechanical in
science, but the same is true of literature as well.
My work in
ancient science developed when I tried to find an answer to the question of the
milieu in which Panini's 2500-year-old grammar, a work of most astonishing
subtlety, arose. The more I consulted the standard texts, it became clear that
the paradigm in which Indian history of science, and ancient Indian history in
general, had been examined was wrong!
What is
your background? Is this C P Snow-like conflation of science and the arts
something that happens a lot in your family?
My initial
research -- at IIT Delhi -- was on information theory. Now information is
something that we all deal with, whether we are engineers, physicists, or
businessmen; or even if we are artists or poets. We are in the midst of the
information age where knowing how to manipulate information is worth money!
Basically, I have applied the idea of information to questions in different
disciplines.
It
was lucky that I grew up in small towns of Jammu and Kashmir; we moved as my
father, a veterinarian, was frequently transferred. My father was a scholar,
with interests in a wide range of subjects -- from mythology to history to
politics. We also met other people with similar encyclopaedic interests. These
were professional people who were also connected to traditional wisdom. Perhaps
they followed the old Indian dictum that considered one properly educated only
if one was trained in the 64 arts, and sciences besides. I had good role models.
Actually, a lot
of people in the West also straddle the CP Snow-divide of the science and the
humanities. The best scientists are also competent philosophers, well-versed in
their Greco-Roman heritage. Many of them even know more of the Indian heritage
than most Indians! It is only the India of the past fifty years that has turned
its back on its own heritage and our scientists literally know nothing about our
intellectual history, excepting the distorted second-hand accounts written by
colonial historians and their Indian followers.
You
have done a good deal of research into the history of Indian science. But there
will be sceptics who ask, what good is all this? It is in the remote past -- and
today's Indian science is at best derivative and at worst grossly behind the
times. How would you respond?
There are
several reasons. First, curiosity; we should know the facts about our history.
Second, there is the puzzle that our ancestors made astonishing advances in
certain fields -- as in grammar or in consciousness studies -- where we moderns
are yet to catch up! Third, for lessons; so that we may know where we went
wrong.
You're
right that recent Indian science is derivative and worse. It is particularly
true of Indian science post-independence. But look at the first five decades of
this century; some of the greatest names were those of Indians: S Ramanujan, J C
Bose, S N Bose, C V Raman, Meghnad Saha, S Chandrasekhar, and so on. But these
were people who were confident, who thought they were as good as any; most
importantly, these people were connected to our own knowledge tradition. A study
of history will reveal to us why our own scientific renaissance of the first
five decades fizzled out in the next five.
And then there
is another reason to study ancient Indian science. One of the greatest
scientists of the 20th century, Erwin Schrodinger, was directly inspired by
Vedanta in his creation of quantum mechanics, a theory at the basis of all our
advances in chemistry, biochemistry, electronics, and computers! Is there more
in our ancient science that is yet relevant?
How do
you separate the mythology from the real science? Indians are famous for not
being observers -- it appears our forebears were content to speculate
(admittedly it was interesting speculation) rather than do exact measurements
and record them.
We
must look at ancient science with a critical mind and be sure to separate hard
science from speculation and mythology. But it is a modern myth that Indians did
not make exact measurements. This myth has been repeated so often we have
started believing in it. In the field of astronomy, it was the Frenchman Roger
Billard who showed this belief was totally wrong! We were excellent
experimentalists in medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, agriculture, and so on.
Before the Enlightenment that took place in Europe in the 17th century, we were
still ahead in most intellectual fields. The Enlightenment came as a by-product
of the turmoil set in motion by unprecedented wealth that was appropriated from
America and by a rejection of Church doctrine. India of that period did not have
favourable economic or political conditions for a similar flowering.
In your
research, where have you been most amazed? Where, in other words, were the
serendipitous and wholly unexpected 'Eureka' experiences?
My discovery
that the organization of the Rigveda was according to an astronomical plan was a
truly 'Eureka' experience. It came upon me rather suddenly, but once everything
fell into place it was clear that I had been led to it by the many direct and
indirect references in the Vedic texts. The 'Eureka' of it was the realization
that I had the key to unlock the ancient mystery of the Veda. Ritual and
mythology made sense! And it opened up a hidden chapter of Indian science with
the greatest implications for our understanding of India and the rest of the
ancient world.
You
have done a fair amount of work on the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and on the
conjecture that the Sarasvati did in fact exist, and that what has been known as
the Indus Valley Civilization in fact was on the banks of the Sarasvati River.
Can you elaborate on this? What new evidence has come to the fore?
Archaeological
digs have confirmed that the Sarasvati river flowed down to the sea, parallel to
the Sindh (Indus), before a major earthquake in about 1900 BCE robbed it of its
two tributaries, the Satluj and the Yamuna, which were captured by the Sindh and
the Ganga rivers. Since this river is praised as the greatest river of the
Rigvedic times, it is clear that the Rigveda predates 1900 BCE in the least.
There are other
scholars who say that 1900 BCE only marks the final drying up of the Sarasvati,
and it had ceased to flow to the sea around 3000 BCE. If that were to be the
case, the traditional chronology which dates the end of the Rigvedic period to
about 3000 BCE is correct.
I have
read of a number of new sites being excavated, including Lothal, Kalibangan,
Dholavira, Balu, Banavali, Bhagwanpura, Manda, Amri, Kunal.... There is even
some speculation that Lothal -- with its port and dry dock for large ocean-going
ships -- was the site of the legendary Dwaraka that was submerged after an
underwater earthquake and resulting tidal wave.
Yes, an
enormous amount of new information is coming in from the new sites. We must not
forget Mehrgarh which goes back to about 8000 BCE which was excavated in the
late 70s. The most exciting thing is that major sites of Ganweriwala and
Rakhigarhi are yet to be excavated. Could Lothal be the Dwaraka of the
Mahabharata? It is plausible, but we don't know for sure yet.
You
have also argued against the Aryan Invasion Theory. What specific evidence has
come to light recently?
There
is absolutely no evidence of a break in Indic tradition, going back 10,000
years. No break in ceramic styles, artistic expression, skeletal remains, and so
on. Now if you compare that with regions that have suffered invasion, such as
the Americas, you will see a clear break in all these things. This apart, all
the recent iconographic finds confirm that key elements of what is generally
called Classical Hinduism were present in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization
before 2500 BCE. Examples are: ritual bathing, vermilion, bangles, conch-shells
in religious ritual, a buffalo-killing goddess, abstract symbolism, the
centrality of cattle in the economy.
You
have argued that the Aryan-Dravidian divide simply doesn't exist, and that the
superficial differences between North and South India are overlaid on a unified
cultural foundation.
The concept of
an Aryan-Dravidian divide is a by-product of the racist discourse of the 19th
century. It was this racism that postulated a single language from which all
modern languages were derived. Linguists now acknowledge that there must have
existed very many language families in the past and what has survived represents
complex interactions between different peoples and languages, many of which have
left no trace. It is also being recognized that while by one reckoning Sanskrit,
Greek and Latin belong to a family; by another, Sanskrit and Tamil and Telugu
belong to another. Linguists are now talking of the concept of a linguistic area
and the whole of India is one such area.
Culturally, India shows great unity as far back as we can go. If the art
historian David Napier is right about Greece having received a major artistic
impulse from South India in the 2nd millennium BCE, we find this unity to be at
least 4000 years old. Remember also that Tamilian kings in South India and Sri
Lanka called themselves Aryan. The word Aryan in Sanskrit simply means
''cultured''. There is a famous slogan in Sanskrit saying ''Make the whole world
Aryan''. The term ''Aryan'' has nothing to do with race or language.
One of
the things you have mentioned is the Gundestrup Cauldron (Scientific
American, March 1992),
something that was unearthed in a peat bog in Denmark. Apparently it shows
strong evidence -- including goddess-images similar to Lakshmi and Hariti and a
god-image similar to Vishnu -- of cross-cultural connections between Indic
civilizations and those of far northern Europe. You have also noted the apparent
connections between Celtic/Druidic pre-Christian cultures of Europe and Hindu
practices. Is this merely circumstantial evidence or does it prove conclusively
that there was a migration of peoples westward from India, rather than eastwards
into India (the Aryan Invasion Theory)?
There
is whole host of evidence that proves that Indian ideas, if not people (that is
apart from the Gypsies), travelled from India to Europe. Indic people were
apparently present in Palestine, Turkey, Babylon in the 2nd millennium BCE. The
names of the ruling dynasties of these places and some Sanskritic inscriptions
tell us this. The father of the beautiful Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt, was a king
of the Near East named Tusharatha or Dasharatha.
The Puranas
also say an Indian tribe called the Druhyus emigrated West. Whether they
emigrated all the way to Europe, we cannot say. What is likely to have happened
is that an Indic element became the political and religious aristocracy in many
countries, all the way up to Europe. This may also explain the parallels between
Indian and European mythology.
What
are the parallels between Indian and European mythology?
We have these
parallels at many levels: in names and in the grammar of the myths. Let's begin
with names. There are two Rigvedic skygods, Varuna and Dyaus; the corresponding
Greek skygods are Ouranos and Zeus. Similar to Agni and Bhaga we have the Slavic
Ogun and Bogu. For Aryaman and Indra we have the Celtic Eremon and Andrasta;
Ribhu and Ushas are the Greek Orpheus and Eos. The list goes on and on, and the
most interesting thing is that the Vedic list is comprehensive and we see parts
of it remembered in different parts of Europe suggesting that the Vedic is the
original.
The
Vedic gods belong to three categories: the terrestrial, the atmospheric, and the
celestial, if we see them superficially, as the Indologists of the 19th century
saw them. In reality, they represent categories in the spiritual firmament: they
are shadows of the One. The Europeans also saw their mythology in similar terms
which is why when the Greeks came to India they declared that Shiva and Krishna
were like their own Dionysius and Herakles.
There are still
deeper connections, and these have been examined by the scholar Georges Dumézil
in a series of fascinating books. In Rome, the raj-brahmin dichotomy of India
was paralleled by the rex-flamen division. The injunctions to the flamen -- the
keeper of the flame -- are very similar to those to the brahmin. The gandharvas
in India had a shadowy role related to music and fecundity; in Rome this was
assigned to centaurs. Dumézil found enough parallels to fill five or six books.
Joseph Campbell also wrote about these connections in his books, as have many
others.
After the Old
Religion of Europe was extinguished, Indian myths continued to influence Europe.
From the lives of Krishna and Buddha a nascent Christianity adopted the stories
of miraculous conception and birth, the star over the birthplace, the twelve
disciples, and the various miracles. Parables such as that of the pious disciple
whose faith makes it possible to walk on water, or the story where the master
feeds his numerous disciples with a single cake or bread were borrowed. Medieval
Christianity took some Indian Jataka tales and transformed them into accounts of
Christian saints. The most famous of such instances is how a Buddha legend from
the Lalitavistara became the story of Barlaam and Josaphat!
If
there were was no Aryan Invasion, then what exactly happened to the Indus-Sarasvati
civilization? A major civilization that spread some thousands of square miles
and was apparently quite sophisticated cannot simply vanish.
It
never vanished. There was a shift of population after the economy around the
Sarasvati river collapsed due to the drying up of the river. People moved to the
east and to the northwest and to the south. There was no break in the cultural
tradition. The same ceramic styles continued. Only the level of prosperity went
down. The Vedic books also speak of a period when the rishis went to the
forests, the age of the Aranyakas. The Puranic books speak of a catastrophe in
1924 BCE.
Your
work in archaeo-astronomy suggests unambiguously that the Max Mueller chronology
of the Vedas must be rejected and that the Rig Veda must be dated not to ca.
1500 BCE, but to ca. 3000 BCE. What is the impact of this?
Well if not
3000 BCE, certainly prior to 2000 BCE. Max Mueller was absolutely wrong. What is
the impact of the new dates? It changes the history of ancient India and that of
the rest of the ancient world. It gives a centrality to India in world history.
Your
recent book with Georg Feuerstein and David Frawley, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization
(Quest Books, Indian edition to be published by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi),
suggests that in fact India was the site of the very first civilization, not
Sumer in Iraq. If this is true, then India has not only the oldest continuous
and surviving civilization, but in fact it is the birthplace of civilization.
Could you elaborate on this?
Look, India has
had cultural continuity for at least 10,000 years. Before that we had a rock-art
tradition which, according to some estimates, goes back to 40,000 BCE. Not only
are we one of the most ancient civilizations, we have found in India the record
of the earliest astronomy, geometry, mathematics, and medicine. Artistic,
philosophical and religious impulses, central to the history of mankind, arose
first in India.
You
have done considerable research on the structure of the fire altars in
Scriptural ritual (The
Astronomical Code of the Rigveda,
Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi), and you have demonstrated that there was a very
formal and mathematical basis to the construction of these. Could you explain?
Vedic
Indians were scientific. They believed in laws of nature. They represented their
astronomy in terms of the altar constructions. One problem they considered was
that of the synchronization of the lunar and the solar years: the lunar year is
about 11 days shorter than the solar year and if we add a round number of days
every few years to make up for the discrepancy, we find we cannot do it
elegantly unless we have a correction cycle of 95 years or its multiples. This
95-year cycle is described in the earliest Vedic prose books.
The altars were
to be built to slightly larger dimensions each year of the cycle to represent
the corrections. There were other symbolic constructions. Like building a square
altar (representing the sky) with the same area as a circular altar
(representing the earth), which is the problem of squaring the circle. This led
to the discovery of the earliest geometry. They were aware that the sun and the
moon were at 108 times their own diameters from the earth.
These
fire altars are at this time obsolete, right? Nobody uses them any more, or is
that not so? The only time I have heard of them before reading your work was
when I read of an impoverished Nambudiri (Kerala brahmin) family whose illam
or house was being sold, and they had fire altars in the shape of a falcon, and
the old head of the household said this 5,000-year-old tradition was dying
because they couldn't afford the rituals any more.
It is a great
pity that we are letting our cultural and civilizational treasures die right
before our eyes. We must do whatever we can to preserve and celebrate this
heritage.
You
have mentioned a connection, apparently evident in the Vedas, between internal
and external things -- for instance between the rhythms in the human body and
astronomical cycles. Could you elaborate?
A
central Vedic belief was that there are connections between the outer and the
inner. The rishis declared that it was due to these connections that we are
enabled to know the world. One dramatic aspect of these connections are the
biological cycles which run the same periods as various astronomical cycles. For
example, the Purusha Hymn of the Rigveda says that the mind is born of the moon.
Just recently, by research on volunteers, who stayed in underground caves for
months without any watches or other cues about time, it was found that the
natural cycle for the mind is 24 hours and 50 minutes. The period of the moon is
also 24 hours and 50 minutes. Our clock is reset every day by daylight!
The connections
between the outer and the inner were also represented by other symbols. The 108
sun diameters from the earth of the sun were paralleled by the 108 beads of the
rosary for a symbolic spiritual journey from the normal state to one of
illumination.
I have
read the book edited by you and Dr TRN Rao (Computing Science in Ancient India,
University of Southwestern Louisiana Press) on some surprising mathematics: pi
to many decimal places, Sayana's accurate calculation of the speed of light,
hashing algorithms, the binary number system of Sanskrit meters -- are these
mere coincidences or is there conclusive evidence of advanced mathematics?
The
binary number system, hashing, various codes, mathematical logic (Navya Nyaya),
or a formal framework that is equivalent to programming all arose in ancient
India. This is all well known and it is acknowledged by scholars all over the
world. I shouldn't forget to tell you that a most advanced calculus, math and
astronomy arose in Kerala several centuries before Newton.
In
particular, I am amazed, as a layman, by the evidence that Sayana, circa 1300
CE, who was prime minister at the court of the Vijayanagar Emperor Bukka I,
calculated the speed of light to be 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha, which does
come to 186,536 miles per second.
Truly
mind-boggling! The speed of light was first measured in the West only in the
late 17th century. So how could the Indians have known it? If you are a sceptic,
then you will say it is a coincidence that somehow dropped out of the
assumptions regarding the solar system. If you are a believer in the powers of
the mind, you would say that it is possible to intuit (in terms of categories
that you have experienced before) outer knowledge. This latter view is the old
Indian knowledge paradigm. If it were generally accepted it would mean an
evolution in science much greater than the revolution of modern physics.
It is
also well-known that the Vedic or Puranic idea of the age of the universe is
some 8 billion years, which is of the order of magnitude of what has been
estimated by modern astrophysicists. Is this also a mere coincidence?
Again, either a
coincidence, or the rishis were capable of supernormal wisdom. Don't forget that
the Indian texts also speak about things that no other civilization thought of
until this century. I am speaking of air and space travel, embryo
transplantation, multiple births from the same embryo, weapons of mass
destruction (all in the Mahabharata), travel through domains where time is
slowed, other galaxies and universes, potentials very much like quantum
potential (Puranas). If nothing else, we must salute the rishis for the most
astonishing and uncanny imagination.
You
also suggest that that the modern computer science term for context-free
languages, the Backus-Naur Form, should more accurately be called the Panini-Backus
Form, since Sanskrit grammarian Panini invented the notion of completely and
unambiguously defined grammars (and devised one such for Sanskrit) as early as
about 500 BCE.
Oh yes, all
this is well established and well known, as also the Indian development of
mathematical logic.
How has
the reaction been in scholarly circles to some of these discoveries and
conjectures of yours, which do turn conventional wisdom on its head? In India,
you are aware, some of your views would have you branded as
"reactionary", "Hindu fundamentalist", etc.
My
work has been received most enthusiastically in scholarly circles both in the
West and India. I have written several scores of scholarly articles and reviews
and am in the process of writing major essays for leading encyclopaedias. School
texts in California and other American states have been rewritten. Likewise, new
college texts in the US speak of these new findings. We are talking here of hard
scientific facts, they can neither be "fundamentalist'' nor
"reactionary''. But I am aware that some ignorant ideologues in India may
actually pin pejorative labels on this work. This only creates opportunities to
bring facts to the attention of such people. I am ever hopeful of converting
more and more people!
How has
your work in the history of science affected your research in computing science?
Surprisingly,
it has strengthened my technical work. It has provided me a focus and a
perspective. It has also given me the courage to work on fundamental problems.
What do
you attribute this to? Is this because it is a matter of self-image? Indians
have always been self-effacing, and perhaps not believing in themselves much?
Self-image is a
central factor in our development. We eventually become what we want to become.
We need faith in ourselves. That is why a cultural focus is so crucial. I think
our current self-effacement is a result of the negative stereotyping we have
experienced for generations. Our school books talk about Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle -- and rightly so -- but they don't mention Yajnavalkya, Panini and
Patanjali, which is a grave omission. Our grand boulevards in Delhi and other
cities are named after Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, but there are no memorials
to Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Madhava and Nilakantha!
Is
self-image, then, sufficient reason for us to explore the past?
It
could be a sufficient reason for some. For others, it is one of the many
impulses that guides them in their personal journeys.
Is
there something that your Web readers can do to take some of this research
forward? Any references or other suggestions?
There is so
much to be done to spread the knowledge of Indian history. For at least 50
years, Indian intellectual life was stifled by a Stalinist attitude. And before
that, for two centuries, colonialist historians appropriated Indian past for
their own purposes. What they left for us was a mutilated version of our past.
We are barely emerging from that hell. We need more people to actively carry
forward this research. We also need institutions -- private foundations, perhaps
--that ensure that our historiography will remain vital, critical and devoted to
truth.
Any
messages from you for your diasporic readers?
Pay attention
to Indian and world history, there is much to be learned from the past. Also go
to the springwells of Indian tradition, you'll find great treasure. Indian ideas
provided central themes to the American transcendentalists in the early 19th
century which led to American culture as we know it. I believe even more vital
Indian ideas will transform world culture in the coming decades, and if you
choose to be the interpreters of these ideas to the modern world you would have
participated in the most wondrous drama of our times!
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