Rajiv Malhotra was mentioned in post #50. I am pasting a section from his Sulekha article <i>How 'Gandhara' became 'Kandahar'</i>
http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4383
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Islamic Scholarship on India</b>
The Arabic, Turkish, and Persian invaders brought their historians to document their conquests of India as great achievements. Many of these historians ended up loving India and wrote excellent accounts of life in India, including about the Gandhara and Sindh regions. Their translations of Indian texts were later retranslated into European languages and hence many of the European Renaissance inputs from Islam were actually Indian contributions traveling via Islam.
Many Muslim scholars showed great respect for Indian society. For instance:
(According to Joseph McCabe, the 'islamic' scholars were secular and many showed atheistic tendencies. That would explain why they showed any respect for Indian society.)
âThe Arabic literature identifies numerous ministers, revenue officers, accountants, et cetera, in seventh- and eighth-century Sind as 'brahmans' and these were generally confirmed in their posts by the conquerors. Where these brahmans came from we do not know, but their presence was regarded as beneficial. Many cities had been founded by them and Sind had become 'prosperous and populous' under their guidance.â16
âOf caste divisions very little mention is made. The stereotype social division is in professional classes rather than a ritualized caste-hierarchy: 'priests, warriors, agriculturists, artisans, merchants'.â17
Of all these Muslim scholars, Alberuni left the most detailed accounts of India's civilization. In the introduction to his translation of Alberuni's famous book, Indica, the Arabic scholar Edward Sachau summarizes how India was the source of considerable Arabic culture:18
âThe foundations of Arabic literature was laid between AD 750 and 850. It is only the tradition relating to their religion and prophet and poetry that is peculiar to the Arabs; everything else is of foreign descent⦠Greece, Persia, and India were taxed to help the sterility of the Arab mind⦠What India has contributed reached Baghdad by two different roads. Part has come directly in translations from the Sanskrit, part has traveled through Eran, having originally been translated from Sanskrit (Pali? Prakrit?) into Persian, and farther from Persian into Arabic. In this way, e.g. the fables of Kalila and Dimna have been communicated to the Arabs, and book on medicine, probably the famous Caraka.â
âAs Sindh was under the actual rule of Khalif Mansur (AD 753 - 774), there came embassies from that part of India to Baghdad, and among them scholars, who brought along with them two books, the Brahamsiddhanta to Brahamgupta (Sirhind), and his Khandkhdyaka (Arkanda). With the help of these pandits, Alfazari, perhaps also Yakub ibn Tarik, translated them. Both works have been largely used, and have exercised a great influence. It was on this occasion that the Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy. They learned from Brahamgupta earlier than from Ptolemy."
âAnother influx of Hindu learning took place under Harun, AD 786 - 808. The ministerial family Barmak, then at the zenith of their power, had come with the ruling dynasty from Balkh, where an ancestor of theirs had been an official in the Buddhistic temple Naubehar, i.e. nava vihara = the new temple (or monastery). The name Barmak is said to be of Indian descent, meaning paramaka i.e. the superior (abbot of the vihara).â
âInduced by family traditions, they sent scholars to India, there to study medicine and pharmacology. Besides, they engaged Hindu scholars to come to Baghdad, made them the chief physicians of their hospitals, and ordered them to translate from Sanskrit into Arabic books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, and other subjects. Still in later centuries Muslim scholars sometimes traveled for the same purposes as the emissaries of the Barmak, e.g. Almuwakkuf not long before Alberuni's timeâ¦â
âMany Arab authors took up the subjects communicated to them by the Hindus and worked them out in original compositions, commentaries and extracts. A favorite subject of theirs was Indian mathematics, the knowledge of which became far spread by the publications of Alkindi and many others."
Alberuni leaves no doubt as to the origin of the so-called Arabic system of numbers:
âThe numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs⦠The Arabs, too, stop with the thousand, which is certainly the most correct and the most natural thing to do... Those, however, who go beyond the thousand in their numeral system are the Hindus, at least in their arithmetical technical terms, which have been either freely invented or derived according to certain etymologies, whilst in others both methods are blended together. They extend the names of the orders of numbers until the 18th order for religious reasons, the mathematicians being assisted by the grammarians with all kinds of etymologies.â
In Islamic Spain, European scholars acknowledged India very positively, as evidenced by an important and rare 11th century book on world science commissioned by the ruler of Spain19. Its author, Said al-Andalusi focused on India as a major center for science, mathematics and culture. Some excerpts:
âThe 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 the branches of knowledge.â
âThe Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions.â
âTo their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances [chemistry].â
âTheir kings are known for their good moral principles, their wise decisions, and their perfect methods of exercising authority.â
âWhat has reached us from the work of the Indians in music is the book⦠[that] contains the fundamentals of modes and the basics in the construction of melodies.â
âThat which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking and the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols and secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played and its pieces are being maneuvered, there appear the beauty of structure and the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions and noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies and points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers. And in this, there is considerable gain and useful profit.â
Even as late as the 12th century C.E., al-Idrîsî (1100-1166), a geographer and scholar from Spain and Sicily, included the Gandhara region, including Kabul, with India20. The region was famous for the export of its three local products: indigo, cotton, and iron.21<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->16 Wink p.150
17 Wink p.151
18 Alberuni (AD 973 - 1048), a Muslim scholar, mathematician and master of Greek and Hindu system astrology, wrote twenty books. In his seminal work, "Indica" (c. 1030 AD) he wrote (âAlberuni's Indiaâ, by Edward Sachau. Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1993. (Reprint). First published 1910 -- translated in 1880s.)
19 In the eleventh-century, an important manuscript titled âThe Categories of Nationsâ was authored in Arabic by Said al-Andalusi, who was a prolific author and in the powerful position of a judge for the king in Muslim Spain. A translation and annotation of this was done S.I. Salem and Alok Kumar and published by University of Texas Press: âScience in the Medieval Worldâ. This is the first English translation of this eleventh-century manuscript. Quotes are from Chapter V: âScience in Indiaâ.
20 Ahmad, S. Maqbul, Indian and the Neighbouring Territories in the Kitâb Nuzhat al-Mushtâq Fi` Khtirâq al-`Ãfâq of Al-Sharîf al-Idrîsî, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1960. p. 58.
21 Ahmad. p. 67.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Rajiv Malhotra's article also has three or so sections on the genocide of the Hindus in Ancient India (from Afghanistan in the west to the rest in the east).
I came across numerous forums where ignorant islamics took credit for numbers and told the gullible about the glorious islamic civilisation/glorious golden age of islam. Islam reduced Arabic into the pathetic and rigid version of the koran (hailed as sophisticated poetry). By the way, poetry is actually forbidden in islam. So the muslims who wrote poetry and became famous for it, were able to do so in spite of their religion, not because of it.
http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4383
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Islamic Scholarship on India</b>
The Arabic, Turkish, and Persian invaders brought their historians to document their conquests of India as great achievements. Many of these historians ended up loving India and wrote excellent accounts of life in India, including about the Gandhara and Sindh regions. Their translations of Indian texts were later retranslated into European languages and hence many of the European Renaissance inputs from Islam were actually Indian contributions traveling via Islam.
Many Muslim scholars showed great respect for Indian society. For instance:
(According to Joseph McCabe, the 'islamic' scholars were secular and many showed atheistic tendencies. That would explain why they showed any respect for Indian society.)
âThe Arabic literature identifies numerous ministers, revenue officers, accountants, et cetera, in seventh- and eighth-century Sind as 'brahmans' and these were generally confirmed in their posts by the conquerors. Where these brahmans came from we do not know, but their presence was regarded as beneficial. Many cities had been founded by them and Sind had become 'prosperous and populous' under their guidance.â16
âOf caste divisions very little mention is made. The stereotype social division is in professional classes rather than a ritualized caste-hierarchy: 'priests, warriors, agriculturists, artisans, merchants'.â17
Of all these Muslim scholars, Alberuni left the most detailed accounts of India's civilization. In the introduction to his translation of Alberuni's famous book, Indica, the Arabic scholar Edward Sachau summarizes how India was the source of considerable Arabic culture:18
âThe foundations of Arabic literature was laid between AD 750 and 850. It is only the tradition relating to their religion and prophet and poetry that is peculiar to the Arabs; everything else is of foreign descent⦠Greece, Persia, and India were taxed to help the sterility of the Arab mind⦠What India has contributed reached Baghdad by two different roads. Part has come directly in translations from the Sanskrit, part has traveled through Eran, having originally been translated from Sanskrit (Pali? Prakrit?) into Persian, and farther from Persian into Arabic. In this way, e.g. the fables of Kalila and Dimna have been communicated to the Arabs, and book on medicine, probably the famous Caraka.â
âAs Sindh was under the actual rule of Khalif Mansur (AD 753 - 774), there came embassies from that part of India to Baghdad, and among them scholars, who brought along with them two books, the Brahamsiddhanta to Brahamgupta (Sirhind), and his Khandkhdyaka (Arkanda). With the help of these pandits, Alfazari, perhaps also Yakub ibn Tarik, translated them. Both works have been largely used, and have exercised a great influence. It was on this occasion that the Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy. They learned from Brahamgupta earlier than from Ptolemy."
âAnother influx of Hindu learning took place under Harun, AD 786 - 808. The ministerial family Barmak, then at the zenith of their power, had come with the ruling dynasty from Balkh, where an ancestor of theirs had been an official in the Buddhistic temple Naubehar, i.e. nava vihara = the new temple (or monastery). The name Barmak is said to be of Indian descent, meaning paramaka i.e. the superior (abbot of the vihara).â
âInduced by family traditions, they sent scholars to India, there to study medicine and pharmacology. Besides, they engaged Hindu scholars to come to Baghdad, made them the chief physicians of their hospitals, and ordered them to translate from Sanskrit into Arabic books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, and other subjects. Still in later centuries Muslim scholars sometimes traveled for the same purposes as the emissaries of the Barmak, e.g. Almuwakkuf not long before Alberuni's timeâ¦â
âMany Arab authors took up the subjects communicated to them by the Hindus and worked them out in original compositions, commentaries and extracts. A favorite subject of theirs was Indian mathematics, the knowledge of which became far spread by the publications of Alkindi and many others."
Alberuni leaves no doubt as to the origin of the so-called Arabic system of numbers:
âThe numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs⦠The Arabs, too, stop with the thousand, which is certainly the most correct and the most natural thing to do... Those, however, who go beyond the thousand in their numeral system are the Hindus, at least in their arithmetical technical terms, which have been either freely invented or derived according to certain etymologies, whilst in others both methods are blended together. They extend the names of the orders of numbers until the 18th order for religious reasons, the mathematicians being assisted by the grammarians with all kinds of etymologies.â
In Islamic Spain, European scholars acknowledged India very positively, as evidenced by an important and rare 11th century book on world science commissioned by the ruler of Spain19. Its author, Said al-Andalusi focused on India as a major center for science, mathematics and culture. Some excerpts:
âThe 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 the branches of knowledge.â
âThe Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions.â
âTo their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances [chemistry].â
âTheir kings are known for their good moral principles, their wise decisions, and their perfect methods of exercising authority.â
âWhat has reached us from the work of the Indians in music is the book⦠[that] contains the fundamentals of modes and the basics in the construction of melodies.â
âThat which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking and the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols and secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played and its pieces are being maneuvered, there appear the beauty of structure and the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions and noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies and points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers. And in this, there is considerable gain and useful profit.â
Even as late as the 12th century C.E., al-Idrîsî (1100-1166), a geographer and scholar from Spain and Sicily, included the Gandhara region, including Kabul, with India20. The region was famous for the export of its three local products: indigo, cotton, and iron.21<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->16 Wink p.150
17 Wink p.151
18 Alberuni (AD 973 - 1048), a Muslim scholar, mathematician and master of Greek and Hindu system astrology, wrote twenty books. In his seminal work, "Indica" (c. 1030 AD) he wrote (âAlberuni's Indiaâ, by Edward Sachau. Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1993. (Reprint). First published 1910 -- translated in 1880s.)
19 In the eleventh-century, an important manuscript titled âThe Categories of Nationsâ was authored in Arabic by Said al-Andalusi, who was a prolific author and in the powerful position of a judge for the king in Muslim Spain. A translation and annotation of this was done S.I. Salem and Alok Kumar and published by University of Texas Press: âScience in the Medieval Worldâ. This is the first English translation of this eleventh-century manuscript. Quotes are from Chapter V: âScience in Indiaâ.
20 Ahmad, S. Maqbul, Indian and the Neighbouring Territories in the Kitâb Nuzhat al-Mushtâq Fi` Khtirâq al-`Ãfâq of Al-Sharîf al-Idrîsî, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1960. p. 58.
21 Ahmad. p. 67.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Rajiv Malhotra's article also has three or so sections on the genocide of the Hindus in Ancient India (from Afghanistan in the west to the rest in the east).
I came across numerous forums where ignorant islamics took credit for numbers and told the gullible about the glorious islamic civilisation/glorious golden age of islam. Islam reduced Arabic into the pathetic and rigid version of the koran (hailed as sophisticated poetry). By the way, poetry is actually forbidden in islam. So the muslims who wrote poetry and became famous for it, were able to do so in spite of their religion, not because of it.