The facts are spot on. The conclusions are a bit off though.
Ancient Indian civilization was pretty advanced in theoretical mathematics and was able to calculate the expansion of sines and cosines before Taylor’s theorems. It also had an understanding of sines cosines etc.
The main area where it fell behind was the engineering aspect of theorems. Other than few civil engineering marvels, Indians never discovered things like antikythera mechanism or aqueducts like ancient romans. This could partially be blamed on education being limited to few people as a direct side effect of caste system. The few who worked as smiths were not versed in theorems. Those who worked on theorems were never versed in engineering. They also did not cross pollinate that well. All owing to failure of education system of country. A curse it still suffers from tbh.
As for Sanskrit it was never the language of masses. Pali or Prakrit would have been the language of masses during time of Al biruni. Sanskrit is an elegant language but was again limited in access to few by the caste system.
1. Indian advances in Mathematics are several centuries in the future from the period under discussion. And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it.
2. Pali wasn’t a “language of masses” either. It was a trade language of Western India that became the literary language of the sthaviravadi Buddhists. Other sects used Sanskrit or other Prakrits. Shakyamunis mother tongue was Magadhi yet another Prakrit.
3. Sanskrit was the most prestigious language though at this point it didn’t have the monopoly it would later have. No it wasn’t a mass language either but more people had access to it than you might think.
An observation:
Europeans owe quite a bit to interaction with the Indians though patriots might not want to admit it.
The Indian numeric system (often called Arabic in Europe) and the consept of zero (invented in India) enabled both the science revolution and the establishment of modern banks and corporations first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe.
I'm interested in the inventing of zero, so I searched it:
> The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago.
> The symbol changed over time as positional notation (for which zero was crucial), made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks.
> Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West.
1. What is the period under discussion? It seems to jump around. From 12 century BC to Al Biruni's time.
2. > And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it.
Yes, it is hand wavy statement without specifying the period of interaction. This is as bad as the "patriots" (who are non existent except as bogeymen in this thread, lol. Maybe this makes sense if you are a Greek patriot. )
I always assumed it is not rude to ask for academic references. (I am even scared to ask for references here lol.)
Eurocentrism is a real thing but I did try to search for any refs.
The period I am referring to is from Alexander’s invasion of India to the height of the Roman Empire.
That the siddhantas are influenced by Greek is obvious to anyone who has examined them. E.g. one is called Romaka Siddhanta. Another, Paulisha Siddhanta is a literal translation of Paulus of Alexandrias’ commentary on the Syntaxis of Ptolemy.
The considerable advances Indians made in mathematics in e.g. Ganesh Daivajna or Nilakantha Somayaji etc. are comparatively later say 13th to 16th century.
There’s an unfortunate tendency amongst some people to get all defensive about the idea that things may not have been invented in India but why? Yes we borrowed from the Greeks but we took their system and made it better. That’s reason enough for pride.
Nowadays I read Sanskrit original sources only so I’m not entirely up to date with the academic literature I’m afraid.
There was no invasion of India by Alexander. He barely crossed modern day Pakistan and parts of Punjab before heading back. Magadha was still untouched and so where all southern kingdoms. India is not Delhi and adjacent areas of Delhi which speak Hindi.
As for rest of your comment, I don’t know enough to comment on it. On cursory reading it seems you are right and thank you for this information.
>India is not Delhi and adjacent areas of Delhi which speak Hindi.
Don't have to be the whole of India. Just to be part of it. That's like saying someone who went to a tour of New England didn't visited the United States, because "New England is not the US".
This could partially be blamed on education being limited to few people as a direct side effect of caste system -> But the data seems to indicate otherwise at least from surveys around 1800.
From Dharampal "Beautiful Tree"
> It is, however, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar
data which presents a kind of revelation. The data reveals the
background of the teachers and the taught. It presents a picture
which is in sharp contrast to the various scholarly pronounce-
ments of the past 100 years or more, in which it had been
assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent
decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born amongst the
Hindoos, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling
elite. The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not
quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindoos, in the districts
of the Madras Presidency (and dramatically so in the Tamil-
speaking areas) as well as the two districts of Bihar. It was the
groups termed Soodras, and the castes considered below them
who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing
schools in practically each of these areas.
> In most areas, the Brahmin scholars formed a very small
proportion of those studying in schools. Higher learning,
however, being more in the nature of professional specialisation,
seems in the main to have been limited to the Brahmins. This
was especially true regarding the disciplines of Theology,
Metaphysics, Ethics, and to a large extent of the study of Law.
But the disciplines of Astronomy and Medical Science seem to
have been studied by scholars from a variety of backgrounds
and castes. This is very evident from the Malabar data: out of
808 studying Astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins; and of the 194
studying Medicine, only 31 were Brahmins. Incidentally, in
Rajahmundry, five of the scholars in the institution of higher
learning were Soodras. According to other Madras Presidency
surveys, of those practising Medicine and Surgery, it was found
that such persons belonged to a variety of castes. Amongst them,
the barbers, according to British medical men, were the best in
Surgery.
Both your comment and the parent comment seems biased and in a way parallels jingoistic comments overhyping Indian achievements (but in the opposite direction).
Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian engineering was behind others?
There are other Indian achievements that have no parallels elsewhere in a similar time. But you can't overgeneralize from them in the other direction either:
These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including the Indus River Valley civilization itself. Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures. At some point people starting creating permanent structures, and they are architectural marvels of course, but those achievements do not seem to co-ordinate with the vedic mathematics in the same way that Greek, Egyptian, and Roman mathematics co-ordinate with Greek, Egyptian, and Roman engineering marvels.
> that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures
What are you talking about? Almost the entirety of the Mahābhārata deals with politics, intrigue, war- and state-craft, amongst others. The Rāmāyaṇa discusses an equally complex civilisation. By around ~500 BCE, Northern India had coalesced into large, hierarchical, and complex civilisations and city-states, which conducted war, trade, and diplomacy both within and outside the Indian subcontinent. The Kalinga war was conducted in ~260 BCE, and Alexander the Great halted his advance in India about half a century prior.
There's something about Indian history that is deeply, deeply divisive like almost no other civilisation's history is. On one side, there's the full-on jingoistic and ultranationalistic stuff like the out-of-India theory, that ancient Indian mathematicians and scientists built a civilisation rivalling the 21st century, that Sanskrit is the 'mother of all languages', and that it is a 'programming language' (yes, it has a highly regular, formal, and almost context-free grammar that allows it to be easily parsed like few other natural languages can, but that's it).
On the other hand, there's dismissive, 'Orientalist', and sometimes outright racist views. Yours is a good example of the dismissiveness and Christo-centric/Western-exceptionalism thought process that was the zeitgeist amongst many Western scholars until well into the 20th century. I daresay it is precisely in reaction to this sort of paternalistic dismissiveness that the above-mentioned jingoism sprouted in the first place.
> Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures.
Do you have examples of stories to support this point? I ask because the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, at least, are deeply concerned with cities, city life, and the politics of cities, and nomadic life within them is a salient point only insofar as its main characters are in exile from the cities they wish to return to.
> These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including
That has zero relevance to the statement about Al Biruni unless he magically travelled back in time and was stuck in some x-00 BC and couldn't see newer developments in India.
Also strange is the fact that around Al Biruni's time Hindu numerals were adopted by Arabs (and that we all use now). Maybe he did go back in time!
> Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures
What? No, the Mahabharata has elaborate descriptions of palaces, cities. Even Ramayana mentions palace. And nomads, usually, don't have palaces or cities lol.
> Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people
As others have pointed out they really don't. The Rig Veda does seem to describe a society somewhat closer to what you're talking about, but that's from a much earlier date
Whether or not you accept “Aryan migration” it would have occurred at least 1000 years or more before the period under discussion so I don’t see the relevance.
> Indians never discovered things like antikythera mechanism
As a point of conjecture few/nobody would have thought the Greeks made something as complex as the Antikytheria mechanism unless it was discovered and studied extensively for a century. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if something of similar quality from Asia would be discovered or is in the study process already.
> As a point of conjecture few/nobody would have thought the Greeks made something as complex as the Antikytheria mechanism unless it was discovered and studied extensively for a century.
Well.. nobody except those who were willing to believe Cicero wasn't spinning a science fiction yarn when he described a very similar device and attributed it to Archimedes. But to your point, it seems like people didn't take it seriously until one was found. It makes you wonder what other things have been written of but not taken seriously because they sound too fantastic.
What we know about history is inevitably constrained by the evidence we find.
As for fantastic descriptions, what would future archaeologists think of scifi novels? Should they accept them as factual?
When I browse used bookstores, I often find novels stuffed into the history section. They aren't there maliciously, it's just that the titles on the books sound like plausible history books. Sometimes it's even harder to distinguish a novel from an actual account, though modern fiction seems to put "a novel" somewhere on the cover in small print.
Much of what we think we know from history is known to us only because somebody claimed it in writing, and it seems plausible enough so we have no particular reason to believe they made it up. As far as I'm aware we haven't dug up any ancient Greek polybolos ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos) But they were described in ancient writings and the premise seems plausible, so we believe such polybolos existed and put it into our modern history books. The Antikythera mechanism evidently failed the implicit plausibility test, so we didn't believe it until we found one. Or maybe the written mentions of it simply failed to attract much notice so the plausibility was never given much thought in the first place.
Almost all founders are upper castes. Upper castes completely dominate most positions of power, from bureaucracy and judiciary to politics and entrepreneurship.
Indians will defend this by pointing out how Modi belongs to an "other backward castes" (OBC) category, conveniently skipping over the fact that this category was created as a political tool to gather votes and most OBCs face none of the discrimination the truly backward, lowest castes face (I also belong to OBC category fyi).
India's minorities, lower castes, and tribes - more than a third of the population - is heavily underrepresented in any position of power. In rural areas, caste discrimination is prevalent enough that lower caste people regularly get lynched for marrying someone from the upper caste.
I'm generally baffled and frustrated by the Indian unwillingness to acknowledge their privilege. It's turned into a meme at this point where everyone calls themselves middle class, from the finance minister, to Satya Nadella (whose father was the most powerful bureaucrat in his state of birth).
The president of India belongs to a Scheduled Tribe. If optics is what you are concerned about.
Some occupations like Law employ such a tiny percentage of the population, that Caste becomes too coarse grained to be the only dimension of analysis for the basis of privilege.
You probably will have a better chance of breaking into the top echelons of this industry by living in the right gated society in Delhi that puts you into contact with these entrenched folks rather than being the right caste in some remote Indian Village.
To look at a broader scale of occupational distribution, SC/ST folks have 23% affirmative action Quotas in Govt/State universities like IITs, IIMs and Medical Colleges. Is the issue that they are unable to compete in the Industry post college?
Caste based affirmative action quota is 52% with overall affirmative action quota at 63%.
Do you think more affirmative action is necessary to fix the problem?
At this point it just looks like "
The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves".
You could also say no matter how large a portion you cut out of a pizza, you will never feed a hundred people if one pizza is all you have.
A huge % of reserved seats go empty, simply because there aren't enough candidates.
That should tell you where the problem is: most don't even make it all the way to higher education.
You have to first fix primary and secondary education. But to fix that, you have to first fix rural society where caste hierarchies are still dominant.
> A huge % of reserved seats go empty, simply because there aren't enough candidates.
This is an interesting point. A huge focus of Indian politics is lobbying groups from various lower caste communities asking for _more_ reservation. The fact that this point never reaches discussion, that the Indian schooling system is failing its students never makes airwaves gives me the feeling that Lower caste community leaders and politicians are _not_ interested in fixing the problem if it loses them their captive vote banks.
Rural India has serious problem in class and caste. Depressing state of things overall.
But I would note that you could have chosen a better example. This incident does not have any caste slur or anything to indicate that this was rooted in caste. Government teachers and employees power-tripping in their little fiefdoms is a common story across caste boundaries. I personally know of examples of upper caste folks facing violence in schools. One had their front teeth smashed by their teacher by "accident", but you can guess the type of environment where these accidents happen. This will also never make headlines since there is no caste angle to push.
Caste is a problem in Rural and to a smaller extent in Urban India. But you will also have to admit that our media and related political interests are hell bent on fanning the flames. The caste angle is brought into every petty bit of violence. So much that it becomes hard to believe even what may be genuine cases.
The American version of this would be race being highlighted if the victim is Black/Indigenous/Hispanic. A common reddit trope is if the victim's race isn't mentioned then they're white. If the perpetrator's race isn't mentioned then they aren't White/White-adjacent.
Scholarships spanning the whole length of education rather than reservations may be a better mechanism for improving opportunity in my opinion. It would also let you know if your scheme is working since with reservation, you just let potentially unprepared students through without fixing other prior systemic issues.
As for Sanskrit it was never the language of masses. Pali or Prakrit would have been the language of masses during time of Al biruni. Sanskrit is an elegant language but was again limited in access to few by the caste system.