03-23-2007, 10:38 AM
<b>2. Kaushal wrote:</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>No.  Name  Brief description</b>
<b>1. Babylonian and Greek Indologists</b>
Pythagoras Apollonius of Tyana Megasthenes
<b>2. Severus Sebokht 662 CE</b>
The first sign that the Indian numerals were moving west comes from a source which predates the rise of the Arab nations. In 662 AD Severus Sebokht, a Nestorian bishop who lived in Keneshra on the Euphrates river, wrote:- I will omit all discussion of the science of the Indians, ... , of their subtle discoveries in astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians, and of their valuable methods of calculation which surpass description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value. This passage clearly indicates that knowledge of the Indian number system was known in lands soon to become part of the Arab world as early as the seventh century. The passage itself, of course, would certainly suggest that few people in that part of the world knew anything of the system. Severus Sebokht as a Christian bishop would have been interested in calculating the date of Easter (a problem to Christian churches for many hundreds of years). This may have encouraged him to find out about the astronomy works of the Indians and in these, of course, he would find the arithmetic of the nine symbols.
<b>3. Muhammad Ben Musa aI-Khuwarizmi (circa 783 -850 ).</b>
Portrait on wood made in 1983 from a Persian illuminated manuscript for the l200th anniversary of his birth. Museum of the Ulugh Begh Observatory. Urgentsch (Kharezm). Uzbekistan (ex USSR). By calling one of its fundamental practices and theoretical activities the algorithm computer science commemorates this great Muslim scholar. Made a detailed study of Hindu mathematics and Astronomy
<b>4. Al Biruni Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni Persian: ابÙرÛØا٠بÛرÙÙÛâ , September 15, 973âDecember 13, 1048)</b>
In the 11th century, Islam came to India from Persia through the conquest by Mahmud of Ghazni. Ghaznavi brought along a number of poets, artisans and religious persons who settled down in India. But he also brought death and destruction to the lands he conquered. Even AlBiruni says of his master that everywhere Ghazni went the people scattered like the wind and that it was hard to come across learned men because they fled from the prospect of certain death. Like many a conqueror before and after him he specially targeted the Brahmanas and sent huge numbers of Indians into slavery and exile to the slave markets of Damascus, Isfahan and Samarkand.
It was the advent of Islam that terminated scholarship in the exact sciences in northern India after 1200 CE. Lahore (now in Pakistan) in the Punjab became an important centre of Persian literature, art and mysticism. Between 1206 CE and 1687 CE Muslim dynasties appeared in different parts of India. During this period, Turks, Tartars and some Arabs who had imbibed Iranian influence came to India. During the rule of the Khilji dynasty (14th century) several Persian scholars from Tabriz and Isfahan visited the royal courts in India.
During the 11th century CE, Al-Biruni, believed to be a Shia Muslim of Iranian origin born in Khwarizm in northern Iran, visited India during the Ghaznavi period. Actually al Biruni spoke Dari as his native tongue, which suggests he lived and grew up in present day Afghanistan where Dari is one of the dialects of Farsi that is widely spoken even today, and by that token can hardly be termed as somebody unfamiliar with Indic traditions even before he came to India.
He wrote his famous Kitab-ul-Hind in Persian, which involved a detailed study of Indian customs, traditions and the Indian way of life. Earlier, many Indian works on astronomy, mathematics and medicine had been translated into Arabic during the early Abbasid period, and Al-Biruni, who was also very interested in astronomy and mathematics, refers to some of these texts. Biruni was a prolific writer, and besides his mother tongue, Dari(an Iranian dialect), Persian and Arabic, he also knew Hebrew, Syriac and Sanskrit.[44]
He studied Sanskrit manuscripts to check earlier Arabic writings on India. Al Biruni composed about 20 books on India â both originals and translations, and a great number of legends based on the folklore of ancient Persia and India. He developed a special interest in the Samkhya Yoga traditions of Indian philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita. He was possibly the first foreign scholar to have seriously studied the Puranas, specially the Vishnu Purana.[45] Biruni also rendered the al-Magest of Ptolemy and Geometry of Euclid into Sanskrit.[46] However, AlBiruni, for all his scholarship is prey to the prejudices of his co-religionists and as we have mentioned in the introduction , and does not hide his contempt for the Hindu
<b>5. Saad al Andalusi (1068) Saad al-Andalusi,</b> the first historian of Science who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqut al-Umam in Arabic(Book of Categories of Nations) Translated into English by Alok Kumar in 1992
To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers (3) 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.
<b>6. Leonardo of Pisa (1202) Fibonacci</b>
âIn 1202, Leonard of Pisa (known as Fibonacci), after voyages that took him to the Near East and Northern Africa, and in particular to Bejaia (now in Algeria), wrote a tract on arithmetic entitled Liber Abaci (âa tract about the abacusâ), in which he explains the following:
Cum genitor meus a patria publicus scriba in duana bugee pro pisanis mercatoribus ad earn confluentibus preesset, me in pueritia mea ad se uenire faciens, inspecta utilitate el cornmoditate fiutura, ibi me studio abaci per aliquot dies stare uoluit et doceri. Vbi a mirabii magisterio in arte per nouem figuras Indorum introductus. . . Novem figurae Indorum hae sun!: cum his itaque novemfiguris. et turn hoc signo o. Quod arabice zephirum appellatur, scribitur qui libel numerus: âMy father was a public scribe of Bejaia, where he worked for his country in Customs, defending the interests of Pisan merchants who made their fortune there. He made me learn how to use the abacus when I was still a child because he saw how I would benefit from this in later life. In this way I learned the art of counting using the nine Indian figures... The nine Indian figures are as follows: 987654321 â Quoted from Georges Ifrah The Universal History of Numbers.
The Arabs were instrumental in transmitting this knowledge to Europe.
<b>7. Pope Honorius IV (1312)</b>
The Holy Father encouraged the learning of oriental languages in order to preach Christianity amongst the pagans. Soon after this in 1312, the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican decided that-âThe Holy Church should have an abundant number of Catholics well versed in the languages, especially in those of the infidels, so as to be able to instruct them in the sacred doctrine.â The result of this was the creation of the chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean at the Universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris and Salamanca.
A century later in 1434, the General Council of Basel returned to this theme and decreed that ââAll Bishops must sometimes each year send men well-grounded in the divine word to those parts where Jews and other infidels live, to preach and explain the truth of the Catholic faith in such a way that the infidels who hear them may come to recognize their errors. Let them compel them to hear their preaching.â 1.
Centuries later in 1870, during the First Vatican Council, Hinduism was condemned in the âfive anathemas against pantheismâ according to the Jesuit priest John Hardon in the Church-authorized book, The Catholic Catechism.
However, interests in Indology only took shape and concrete direction after the British came to India, with the advent of the discovery of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones in the 1770âs. Other names for Indology are Indic studies or Indian studies or South Asian studies. Political motivations have been always dominant in the pursuit of Indological studies right from the outset since the time of Sir William Jones, when he discovered the existence of Sanskrit. In fact the British presence in India was steadily increasing long before the Battle of Plassey in 1757 CE, but so great was the insularity of the colonial overlord that it took almost almost three hundred years for a scholar like Sir William to show up in India after Vasco da Gama landed of the coast of Goa in 1492 CE, and notice the similarities between Sanskrit and the European languages
<b>8. Roberto Di Nobili(1577-1656), Jesuit Priest</b>, posed as a Brahmana, posited a counterfeit Veda, called the Romaka Veda.
<b>9. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (December 7,1731 to January 17, 1805)</b> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil Du Perron (December 7, 1731âJanuary 17, 1805), French orientalist, brother of Louis-Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in Paris.
He stayed in India for seven years (1755-1761), where Parsi priests taught him Persian, and translated the Avesta for him (it is probably not true that he mastered the Avestan language). He edited a French translation of that Persian translation in 1771, the first printed publication of Zoroastrian texts. He also published a Latin translation of the Upanishads in 1804. He was educated for the priesthood in Paris and Utrecht, but his taste for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the East caused him to change course to devote himself entirely to them.
His diligent attendance at the Royal Library attracted the attention of the keeper of the manuscripts, the Abbé Sallier, whose influence procured for him a small salary as a student of the Oriental languages. He first lighted on some fragments of the Vendidad, a portion of the collection of texts that make up the Avesta, and formed the project of a voyage to India to discover the works of Zoroaster. With this end in view he enlisted as a private soldier, on November 2, 1754, on the Indian expedition which was about to depart from the port of L'Orient. His friends procured his discharge, and he was granted a free passage, a seat at the captain's table, and a salary, the amount of which was to be fixed by the governor of the French settlement in India.
After a passage of ten months, Anquetil landed, on August 10, 1755 at Pondicherry. Here he remained a short time to master modern Persian, and then hastened to Chandernagore to acquire Sanskrit. Just then war was declared between France and England; Chandernagore was taken, and Anquetil returned to Pondicherry overland. He found one of his brothers at Pondicherry, and embarked with him for Surat; but, with a view of exploring the country, he landed at Mah and proceeded on foot.
At Surat he procceeded, by perseverance and address in his discussions with Parsi theologians, in acquiring a sufficient knowledge of ancient Persian (Avestan, which Anquetil-Duperron mistakenly called Zend) and middle Persian languages to translate the portion of the Zoroastrian texts called the Vendidad (or Vendidad Vide) and some other works. Thence he proposed going to Benares, to study the language, antiquities, and sacred laws of the Hindus; but the capture of Pondicherry obliged him to quit India.
Returning to Europe in an English vessel, he spent some time in London and Oxford, and then set out for France. He arrived in Paris on March 14, 1762 in possession of one hundred and eighty oriental manuscripts, besides other curiosities. The Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy procured for him a pension, with the appointment of interpreter of oriental languages at the Royal Library.
In 1763 he was elected an associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and began to arrange for the publication of the materials he had collected during his eastern travels. In 1771 he published his Zend Avesta (3 vols.), containing collections from the sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, a life of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), and fragments of works ascribed to Zoroaster. In 1778 he published at Amsterdam his Legislation orientale, in which he endeavoured to prove that the nature of oriental despotism had been greatly misrepresented. His Recherches historiques et geographiques sur L'Inde appeared in 1786, and formed part of Thieffenthaler's Geography of India.
The Revolution seems to have greatly affected him. During that period he abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day. In 1798 he published L'Inde en rapport avec l'Europe (Hamburg, 2 vols.). From 1802 to 1804 he published a Latin translation (2 vols.) from the Persian of the Oupnek'hat or Upanishada. It is a curious mixture of Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. Arthur Schopenhauer declared that his knowledge of Hindu philosophy, which influenced Schopenhauer's own work to an enormous extent, was the result of reading Anquetil-Duperron's translations. See Biographie universelle; Sir William Jones, Works (vol. x, 1807); and the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (vol. iii, 1856-1857). For a list of his scattered writings see Quérard, La France littéraire. [edit]
References ⢠This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Hyacinthe_Anquetil-Duperron"
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>No.  Name  Brief description</b>
<b>1. Babylonian and Greek Indologists</b>
Pythagoras Apollonius of Tyana Megasthenes
<b>2. Severus Sebokht 662 CE</b>
The first sign that the Indian numerals were moving west comes from a source which predates the rise of the Arab nations. In 662 AD Severus Sebokht, a Nestorian bishop who lived in Keneshra on the Euphrates river, wrote:- I will omit all discussion of the science of the Indians, ... , of their subtle discoveries in astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians, and of their valuable methods of calculation which surpass description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value. This passage clearly indicates that knowledge of the Indian number system was known in lands soon to become part of the Arab world as early as the seventh century. The passage itself, of course, would certainly suggest that few people in that part of the world knew anything of the system. Severus Sebokht as a Christian bishop would have been interested in calculating the date of Easter (a problem to Christian churches for many hundreds of years). This may have encouraged him to find out about the astronomy works of the Indians and in these, of course, he would find the arithmetic of the nine symbols.
<b>3. Muhammad Ben Musa aI-Khuwarizmi (circa 783 -850 ).</b>
Portrait on wood made in 1983 from a Persian illuminated manuscript for the l200th anniversary of his birth. Museum of the Ulugh Begh Observatory. Urgentsch (Kharezm). Uzbekistan (ex USSR). By calling one of its fundamental practices and theoretical activities the algorithm computer science commemorates this great Muslim scholar. Made a detailed study of Hindu mathematics and Astronomy
<b>4. Al Biruni Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni Persian: ابÙرÛØا٠بÛرÙÙÛâ , September 15, 973âDecember 13, 1048)</b>
In the 11th century, Islam came to India from Persia through the conquest by Mahmud of Ghazni. Ghaznavi brought along a number of poets, artisans and religious persons who settled down in India. But he also brought death and destruction to the lands he conquered. Even AlBiruni says of his master that everywhere Ghazni went the people scattered like the wind and that it was hard to come across learned men because they fled from the prospect of certain death. Like many a conqueror before and after him he specially targeted the Brahmanas and sent huge numbers of Indians into slavery and exile to the slave markets of Damascus, Isfahan and Samarkand.
It was the advent of Islam that terminated scholarship in the exact sciences in northern India after 1200 CE. Lahore (now in Pakistan) in the Punjab became an important centre of Persian literature, art and mysticism. Between 1206 CE and 1687 CE Muslim dynasties appeared in different parts of India. During this period, Turks, Tartars and some Arabs who had imbibed Iranian influence came to India. During the rule of the Khilji dynasty (14th century) several Persian scholars from Tabriz and Isfahan visited the royal courts in India.
During the 11th century CE, Al-Biruni, believed to be a Shia Muslim of Iranian origin born in Khwarizm in northern Iran, visited India during the Ghaznavi period. Actually al Biruni spoke Dari as his native tongue, which suggests he lived and grew up in present day Afghanistan where Dari is one of the dialects of Farsi that is widely spoken even today, and by that token can hardly be termed as somebody unfamiliar with Indic traditions even before he came to India.
He wrote his famous Kitab-ul-Hind in Persian, which involved a detailed study of Indian customs, traditions and the Indian way of life. Earlier, many Indian works on astronomy, mathematics and medicine had been translated into Arabic during the early Abbasid period, and Al-Biruni, who was also very interested in astronomy and mathematics, refers to some of these texts. Biruni was a prolific writer, and besides his mother tongue, Dari(an Iranian dialect), Persian and Arabic, he also knew Hebrew, Syriac and Sanskrit.[44]
He studied Sanskrit manuscripts to check earlier Arabic writings on India. Al Biruni composed about 20 books on India â both originals and translations, and a great number of legends based on the folklore of ancient Persia and India. He developed a special interest in the Samkhya Yoga traditions of Indian philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita. He was possibly the first foreign scholar to have seriously studied the Puranas, specially the Vishnu Purana.[45] Biruni also rendered the al-Magest of Ptolemy and Geometry of Euclid into Sanskrit.[46] However, AlBiruni, for all his scholarship is prey to the prejudices of his co-religionists and as we have mentioned in the introduction , and does not hide his contempt for the Hindu
<b>5. Saad al Andalusi (1068) Saad al-Andalusi,</b> the first historian of Science who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqut al-Umam in Arabic(Book of Categories of Nations) Translated into English by Alok Kumar in 1992
To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers (3) 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.
<b>6. Leonardo of Pisa (1202) Fibonacci</b>
âIn 1202, Leonard of Pisa (known as Fibonacci), after voyages that took him to the Near East and Northern Africa, and in particular to Bejaia (now in Algeria), wrote a tract on arithmetic entitled Liber Abaci (âa tract about the abacusâ), in which he explains the following:
Cum genitor meus a patria publicus scriba in duana bugee pro pisanis mercatoribus ad earn confluentibus preesset, me in pueritia mea ad se uenire faciens, inspecta utilitate el cornmoditate fiutura, ibi me studio abaci per aliquot dies stare uoluit et doceri. Vbi a mirabii magisterio in arte per nouem figuras Indorum introductus. . . Novem figurae Indorum hae sun!: cum his itaque novemfiguris. et turn hoc signo o. Quod arabice zephirum appellatur, scribitur qui libel numerus: âMy father was a public scribe of Bejaia, where he worked for his country in Customs, defending the interests of Pisan merchants who made their fortune there. He made me learn how to use the abacus when I was still a child because he saw how I would benefit from this in later life. In this way I learned the art of counting using the nine Indian figures... The nine Indian figures are as follows: 987654321 â Quoted from Georges Ifrah The Universal History of Numbers.
The Arabs were instrumental in transmitting this knowledge to Europe.
<b>7. Pope Honorius IV (1312)</b>
The Holy Father encouraged the learning of oriental languages in order to preach Christianity amongst the pagans. Soon after this in 1312, the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican decided that-âThe Holy Church should have an abundant number of Catholics well versed in the languages, especially in those of the infidels, so as to be able to instruct them in the sacred doctrine.â The result of this was the creation of the chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean at the Universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris and Salamanca.
A century later in 1434, the General Council of Basel returned to this theme and decreed that ââAll Bishops must sometimes each year send men well-grounded in the divine word to those parts where Jews and other infidels live, to preach and explain the truth of the Catholic faith in such a way that the infidels who hear them may come to recognize their errors. Let them compel them to hear their preaching.â 1.
Centuries later in 1870, during the First Vatican Council, Hinduism was condemned in the âfive anathemas against pantheismâ according to the Jesuit priest John Hardon in the Church-authorized book, The Catholic Catechism.
However, interests in Indology only took shape and concrete direction after the British came to India, with the advent of the discovery of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones in the 1770âs. Other names for Indology are Indic studies or Indian studies or South Asian studies. Political motivations have been always dominant in the pursuit of Indological studies right from the outset since the time of Sir William Jones, when he discovered the existence of Sanskrit. In fact the British presence in India was steadily increasing long before the Battle of Plassey in 1757 CE, but so great was the insularity of the colonial overlord that it took almost almost three hundred years for a scholar like Sir William to show up in India after Vasco da Gama landed of the coast of Goa in 1492 CE, and notice the similarities between Sanskrit and the European languages
<b>8. Roberto Di Nobili(1577-1656), Jesuit Priest</b>, posed as a Brahmana, posited a counterfeit Veda, called the Romaka Veda.
<b>9. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (December 7,1731 to January 17, 1805)</b> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil Du Perron (December 7, 1731âJanuary 17, 1805), French orientalist, brother of Louis-Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in Paris.
He stayed in India for seven years (1755-1761), where Parsi priests taught him Persian, and translated the Avesta for him (it is probably not true that he mastered the Avestan language). He edited a French translation of that Persian translation in 1771, the first printed publication of Zoroastrian texts. He also published a Latin translation of the Upanishads in 1804. He was educated for the priesthood in Paris and Utrecht, but his taste for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the East caused him to change course to devote himself entirely to them.
His diligent attendance at the Royal Library attracted the attention of the keeper of the manuscripts, the Abbé Sallier, whose influence procured for him a small salary as a student of the Oriental languages. He first lighted on some fragments of the Vendidad, a portion of the collection of texts that make up the Avesta, and formed the project of a voyage to India to discover the works of Zoroaster. With this end in view he enlisted as a private soldier, on November 2, 1754, on the Indian expedition which was about to depart from the port of L'Orient. His friends procured his discharge, and he was granted a free passage, a seat at the captain's table, and a salary, the amount of which was to be fixed by the governor of the French settlement in India.
After a passage of ten months, Anquetil landed, on August 10, 1755 at Pondicherry. Here he remained a short time to master modern Persian, and then hastened to Chandernagore to acquire Sanskrit. Just then war was declared between France and England; Chandernagore was taken, and Anquetil returned to Pondicherry overland. He found one of his brothers at Pondicherry, and embarked with him for Surat; but, with a view of exploring the country, he landed at Mah and proceeded on foot.
At Surat he procceeded, by perseverance and address in his discussions with Parsi theologians, in acquiring a sufficient knowledge of ancient Persian (Avestan, which Anquetil-Duperron mistakenly called Zend) and middle Persian languages to translate the portion of the Zoroastrian texts called the Vendidad (or Vendidad Vide) and some other works. Thence he proposed going to Benares, to study the language, antiquities, and sacred laws of the Hindus; but the capture of Pondicherry obliged him to quit India.
Returning to Europe in an English vessel, he spent some time in London and Oxford, and then set out for France. He arrived in Paris on March 14, 1762 in possession of one hundred and eighty oriental manuscripts, besides other curiosities. The Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy procured for him a pension, with the appointment of interpreter of oriental languages at the Royal Library.
In 1763 he was elected an associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and began to arrange for the publication of the materials he had collected during his eastern travels. In 1771 he published his Zend Avesta (3 vols.), containing collections from the sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, a life of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), and fragments of works ascribed to Zoroaster. In 1778 he published at Amsterdam his Legislation orientale, in which he endeavoured to prove that the nature of oriental despotism had been greatly misrepresented. His Recherches historiques et geographiques sur L'Inde appeared in 1786, and formed part of Thieffenthaler's Geography of India.
The Revolution seems to have greatly affected him. During that period he abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day. In 1798 he published L'Inde en rapport avec l'Europe (Hamburg, 2 vols.). From 1802 to 1804 he published a Latin translation (2 vols.) from the Persian of the Oupnek'hat or Upanishada. It is a curious mixture of Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. Arthur Schopenhauer declared that his knowledge of Hindu philosophy, which influenced Schopenhauer's own work to an enormous extent, was the result of reading Anquetil-Duperron's translations. See Biographie universelle; Sir William Jones, Works (vol. x, 1807); and the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (vol. iii, 1856-1857). For a list of his scattered writings see Quérard, La France littéraire. [edit]
References ⢠This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Hyacinthe_Anquetil-Duperron"
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