Vedic Science and History - Ancient Indian's Contribution to the Modern World

About the Book Almost everyone, including scientists, religionists and philosophers, are apparently in pursuit of truth. Yet, what is truth and how do we find it? Scientists have complete confidence in the scientific process, yet, we see that the latest theories are eventually replaced by more advanced theories. Every theory, they say, is a step closer to perfection, but they never assert that they have reached perfection.

When the scientific community truly comes of age it will see that the Vedic knowledge, its seers and practitioners are their real friends and partners in the search for ultimate truth and have been so for several millennia.

This book - Vedic Science and History, gives a detailed overview of the various contributions of Indian civilization and it is our hope that this will help the reader discover and appreciate the many wondrous scientific contributions of the ancient Vedic culture of India.

Introduction Recent findings regarding ancient civilizations from multiple disciplines utilizing modern scientific methodologies are significant enough to rewrite the history of the world. It has been suggested that history should be scientifically reconstructed by correlating the research from these disciplines of science.

These findings in particular shine a spotlight on the innumerable significant contributions from technological world as well as highlighting the vast distortions and untruths taught as the factual history of India till this day in textbooks around the world.

Marco Polo has written of India as, "the richest and noblest country in the world." A significant number of famous writers and high thinkers, such as Emerson, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, and Sagan, have praised the Vedas and Vedic culture as the inspiration for many of the higher philosophical and scientific concepts the world has known. The knowledge of the Vedic literatures profoundly influenced the writings of the 19th Century authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau - so much so that they became known as 'The American Transcendentalists.' Even the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a central figure in modern philosophy, suggested that, "mankind together with all science must have originated on the roof of the world (the Himalayas)."

Voltaire, the famous French writer and philosopher, stated that, "Pythagoras went to the Ganges to learn geometry," and professor emeritus Abraham Seidenberg, acclaimed historian of mathematics, credits the early Shulba Sutras as inspiring all mathematics of the ancient world from Babylonia to Egypt to Greece. Indeed India is credited with a great many significant additions to science, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, the decimal numbering system, the introduction of zero and the concept of infinity, to name a few of them.

The binary number system, essential for computers, was originally used in Vedic verse meters a millennia ago. Also, in South Indian musicology we find a simple hashing technique, a precursor to modern search algorithms, such as that developed by Google.

Noted scientist and writer Carl Sagan stated, "Vedic Cosmology is the only one in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology." However, not all academics are so quick to praise India's significant contributions. When the British indologist Sir William Jones discovered the common roots of Sanskrit and the European languages, his Eurocentric world view and religious bias would not allow him to admit that Indo-European languages originate from Sanskrit.

It is of no surprise that early ideologists and historians credited European culture to be the origin of Vedic civilization. Yet history refuses to be kind to these scholars, as archaeological, scientific, genetic, and cultural and numerous evidence from other disciplines continues to mount against their erroneous 'Aryan Invasion Theory.' Such scientifically verified evidence, in consistent agreement with statements in Vedic literatures, also indicates a cultural continuity in Indian civilization, thought, philosophy, metaphysics and socio-religious traditions, stretching back from millennia to the present day.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages