01-07-2006, 07:14 AM
The Origin of Mathematics
by V. Lakshmikantham and S. Leela. University Press of America, Inc., Lanham, MD. Hardcover. 92 pages. www.univpress.com.
Long before the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Mayans, and the Sumerians began civiliz-ing their worlds, mathematics had flourished in India. Does this thesis seem incredible? No, this is not a rhetorical proclamation of some overzealous Indian chauvinists. Two India-born American university professors, V. Lakshmikantham and S. Leela, have documented extensive new data on ancient Indian mathematics and on the bankruptcy of the theory of Aryan invasion of India from the northern-central plains in Asia.
Along with their own meticulous research of original Sanskrit texts and related vernacular literature, the authors draw upon the works of a few European scholars. With the publication of this amazing monograph on Indian mathematics, the cloud of ignorance and deliberate misrepresentation of the many achievements in ancient India is beginning to lift. The authors remind us that the history taught even in Indian schools, colleges, and universities, is still filled with distortions that originated with the founding of the Indian Historical Society (IHS) in the late 18th-century Calcutta, overwhelmed by the prevailing colonial mentality.
These fabrications, passed on as the modern historiography for India, were officially inaugurated with the willful mix-up of Chandragupta Maurya (reigned 1534â1500 B.C.) and Chandragupta (327â320 B.C.) of the Gupta dynasty, by making the former a coeval of Alexander the Great, and by erasing the latterâs reference altogether. Thanks to the inventive and resourceful William Jones of the IHS, the entire chronology of events was summarily shortened by more than 1,200 years. Consequently, the times of ancient astronomers and mathematicians had to be moved into the Christian era. Another ambitious and influential Indologist, Max Mueller, concocted the age of the Rig Veda to be 1200 B.C., with the stipulation it was written by nomadic Aryans (riding on horseback, presumably with a mobile library). Actually, the Rig Veda was compiled well before 3000 B.C. Contrary to popular belief, Gautam Buddha lived during 1887â1807 B.C., and the short but remarkable lifeâs mission of Adi Shankaracharya was accomplished between 509 and 477 B.C. The first known mathematician and astronomer from India, Aryabhatta, was born in 2765 B.C., and the Sulvasutras, heralding the discipline of geometric algebra, were completed before his birth. But in the occidental âscholarship,â Aryabhattaâs year of birth was changed to 476 C.E. with the misreading of his epoch-making Aryabhatteeum. These were not accidental errors, but were the result of a carefully planned alteration of manuscript copies. Notice that the four Vedas preceded the Sulvasutras. Note also none of the Vedangas, the Upangas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads could possibly have been written later than the second millennium B.C. So much for the objectivity claimed by and attributed to a few Western historians, which has been mindlessly emulated and replicated by a majority of Indian academicians even after the British had ceased to be the rulers of India.
by V. Lakshmikantham and S. Leela. University Press of America, Inc., Lanham, MD. Hardcover. 92 pages. www.univpress.com.
Long before the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Mayans, and the Sumerians began civiliz-ing their worlds, mathematics had flourished in India. Does this thesis seem incredible? No, this is not a rhetorical proclamation of some overzealous Indian chauvinists. Two India-born American university professors, V. Lakshmikantham and S. Leela, have documented extensive new data on ancient Indian mathematics and on the bankruptcy of the theory of Aryan invasion of India from the northern-central plains in Asia.
Along with their own meticulous research of original Sanskrit texts and related vernacular literature, the authors draw upon the works of a few European scholars. With the publication of this amazing monograph on Indian mathematics, the cloud of ignorance and deliberate misrepresentation of the many achievements in ancient India is beginning to lift. The authors remind us that the history taught even in Indian schools, colleges, and universities, is still filled with distortions that originated with the founding of the Indian Historical Society (IHS) in the late 18th-century Calcutta, overwhelmed by the prevailing colonial mentality.
These fabrications, passed on as the modern historiography for India, were officially inaugurated with the willful mix-up of Chandragupta Maurya (reigned 1534â1500 B.C.) and Chandragupta (327â320 B.C.) of the Gupta dynasty, by making the former a coeval of Alexander the Great, and by erasing the latterâs reference altogether. Thanks to the inventive and resourceful William Jones of the IHS, the entire chronology of events was summarily shortened by more than 1,200 years. Consequently, the times of ancient astronomers and mathematicians had to be moved into the Christian era. Another ambitious and influential Indologist, Max Mueller, concocted the age of the Rig Veda to be 1200 B.C., with the stipulation it was written by nomadic Aryans (riding on horseback, presumably with a mobile library). Actually, the Rig Veda was compiled well before 3000 B.C. Contrary to popular belief, Gautam Buddha lived during 1887â1807 B.C., and the short but remarkable lifeâs mission of Adi Shankaracharya was accomplished between 509 and 477 B.C. The first known mathematician and astronomer from India, Aryabhatta, was born in 2765 B.C., and the Sulvasutras, heralding the discipline of geometric algebra, were completed before his birth. But in the occidental âscholarship,â Aryabhattaâs year of birth was changed to 476 C.E. with the misreading of his epoch-making Aryabhatteeum. These were not accidental errors, but were the result of a carefully planned alteration of manuscript copies. Notice that the four Vedas preceded the Sulvasutras. Note also none of the Vedangas, the Upangas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads could possibly have been written later than the second millennium B.C. So much for the objectivity claimed by and attributed to a few Western historians, which has been mindlessly emulated and replicated by a majority of Indian academicians even after the British had ceased to be the rulers of India.