04-17-2006, 09:01 PM
My surprise was that there was any degree of revival at all In my site i make reference to the fact that there were 2 prerequisites for intellectual output to occur
1.Physical and emotional needs have been met and there has been a degree of material affluence in the society at large (Maslow hierarchy)
2.there must be royal patronage in the form of a retainer from a 'Chakravartin' , (the Indian ideal of KIngship) the modern equivalent of this would be a grant from the government.
My impression was that neither of these conditions were present to any appreciable extent by the time the middle ages arrived (the period in question here is 1500 -1750). However the spirit of inquiry in the human spirit can never be extinguished and even under relatively adverse conditions sanskrit scholarship must have prevailed in pockets of India. In contrast both these conditions were present in the ancient era over a geographically more dispersed area. (or at least such an induction can reasonably be made since we do not have direct economic data)
In the separate matter of precedence of Babylonian scholarship over Indian Pingree is probably a victim of his own prejudices and hence the facile conversion from assumption to attested fact.
The reasons for such a widespread presumption are not far to seek. One is the common failing amongst western scholars (even those who are not racially motivated and are relatively honest intellectually speaking) to associate intellectual effort with misplaced criteria for material well being.They were misled by the general (though not universal) tendency of the Brahmana for simple living (and not as visible high thinking ).Ergo , a person in a loin cloth, without sandles could hardly be capable of intellectual effort.IOW, while India is no exception to the Maslow hierarchy, the criteria for material well being in a warm country with abundant rivers and a regular rainfall are different from those of a cold country with a need to keep warm and where the growing season is limited.
the other major reason being the well known (at least to us) hegelian (racist)assumption that whatever intellectual effort was there , it was a drect consequence of infusion of european genes (cleverlycamouflaged as Aryan).
I am marshalling facts (and inferences) to counter these presumptions (of precedence of Babylonian astronomy and mathematics ) on a couple of grounds,
one being our bastardized chronology delineated recently in the last two centuries, by the colonial overlord (in the process he destroyed all sanskritic scholarship while at the same time spending vast sums of money on western scholars to study the same) which makes a mockery of the written record in the puranas. They get around this obvious inconsistency of selecting data they like and ignoring the rest by maintaining that those records that they dont believe may not necessarily be authentic
The other ground based on plausibility and the fact that Babylonian mathematics was more cumbersome (base 60) and did not lend itself to mental manipulation as quite as easily as the decimal system (where you can easily memorize the properties of the numbers 1 to 9) . Georges Ifrah takes this approach (he has clearly done a monumental job of scholarship), but even he cannot resist the temptation of ascribing these discoveries to the mythical Aryan..see my summation of his conclusions in my sections on FAQ on Vedic mathematics and in the Linquistics section.
Furthermore, the oral tradition perfected by the ancient Vedics was non pareil in the ancient world, a facility that persists even today amog the majority of the practicing Brahmanas (those schooled in the vedas and apara vidya).
I am rambling but you get my drift.
1.Physical and emotional needs have been met and there has been a degree of material affluence in the society at large (Maslow hierarchy)
2.there must be royal patronage in the form of a retainer from a 'Chakravartin' , (the Indian ideal of KIngship) the modern equivalent of this would be a grant from the government.
My impression was that neither of these conditions were present to any appreciable extent by the time the middle ages arrived (the period in question here is 1500 -1750). However the spirit of inquiry in the human spirit can never be extinguished and even under relatively adverse conditions sanskrit scholarship must have prevailed in pockets of India. In contrast both these conditions were present in the ancient era over a geographically more dispersed area. (or at least such an induction can reasonably be made since we do not have direct economic data)
In the separate matter of precedence of Babylonian scholarship over Indian Pingree is probably a victim of his own prejudices and hence the facile conversion from assumption to attested fact.
The reasons for such a widespread presumption are not far to seek. One is the common failing amongst western scholars (even those who are not racially motivated and are relatively honest intellectually speaking) to associate intellectual effort with misplaced criteria for material well being.They were misled by the general (though not universal) tendency of the Brahmana for simple living (and not as visible high thinking ).Ergo , a person in a loin cloth, without sandles could hardly be capable of intellectual effort.IOW, while India is no exception to the Maslow hierarchy, the criteria for material well being in a warm country with abundant rivers and a regular rainfall are different from those of a cold country with a need to keep warm and where the growing season is limited.
the other major reason being the well known (at least to us) hegelian (racist)assumption that whatever intellectual effort was there , it was a drect consequence of infusion of european genes (cleverlycamouflaged as Aryan).
I am marshalling facts (and inferences) to counter these presumptions (of precedence of Babylonian astronomy and mathematics ) on a couple of grounds,
one being our bastardized chronology delineated recently in the last two centuries, by the colonial overlord (in the process he destroyed all sanskritic scholarship while at the same time spending vast sums of money on western scholars to study the same) which makes a mockery of the written record in the puranas. They get around this obvious inconsistency of selecting data they like and ignoring the rest by maintaining that those records that they dont believe may not necessarily be authentic
The other ground based on plausibility and the fact that Babylonian mathematics was more cumbersome (base 60) and did not lend itself to mental manipulation as quite as easily as the decimal system (where you can easily memorize the properties of the numbers 1 to 9) . Georges Ifrah takes this approach (he has clearly done a monumental job of scholarship), but even he cannot resist the temptation of ascribing these discoveries to the mythical Aryan..see my summation of his conclusions in my sections on FAQ on Vedic mathematics and in the Linquistics section.
Furthermore, the oral tradition perfected by the ancient Vedics was non pareil in the ancient world, a facility that persists even today amog the majority of the practicing Brahmanas (those schooled in the vedas and apara vidya).
I am rambling but you get my drift.