Science and Reason

Science and Reason: A historical journey in science and its methods

Here is a story as recounted by Meghnad Saha, one of the pioneers of modern astrophysics. The episode took place in his village in the late 1930s. His father's friend met Saha and asked, “I hear that you have become very famous for your science, may I know what it is all about?” Saha described to him his work on thermal ionization equilibrium in stars and its relation to stellar spectra. The gentleman listened and then said, “But that is all given in the Vedas.” Taken aback, Saha further described the 20^th century revolutions in science related to atomic structure, relativity etc. The gentleman persisted: “All these are given in the Vedas.” Saha narrated again how knowledge had developed through a tortuous path -- the Copernican revolution of 16^th -17^th century Europe, contributions by Galileo, Kepler and Newton, etc. He also talked about the contributions of ancient Indian mathematics. He explained how, important as these contributions were, they could not have led to the revolution that we saw in the Copernican era. But the gentleman remained adamant and persisted that all of modern science was already available in the Vedas.

Saha wrote that he then read the Vedas to check the contention that all the findings of modern science was described in the Vedas. He, however, found no reference to them in these ancient literary books.

Here is another story. Another great scientist, Satyendra Nath Bose, narrates that after the World War I when the British built a jail in Hijli (near the location of the present day IIT Kharagpur) it was found that the site did not have a source of water. Engineers were sent to find underground sources but failed. It was rumoured that a local ‘dowser (traditional ‘water seeker’), using just a forked branch of a tree as a tool,  walked  about in the jail compound and located a source. Bose argued however that this story could not be true. He argued: “I know of Eötvös's balance and the accuracy with which it can measure the value of “g”, i.e. acceleration due to gravity. From this value of “g”, I know that the presence of oil, gas, various minerals, around a place can be found. I can understand that, on the basis of the laws of Physics. But I am also aware of the level of precision that such an instrument would demand and hence have doubts about the claims of the dowser. He further writes: “Later too, when I was a member of the Rajya Sabha, we discussed the question of exploration of underground water in Rajasthan. At that time, Delhi was agog with stories about a “Paniwallah Maharaj” who could do the job by some mysterious tricks. This Paniwallah Maharaj's services were sought. His explorations did not succeed and hence after such massive publicity.

These episodes, serve as practical issues for addressing the question of science and reason. In the first case, on being told that Copernican and Newtonian ideas of the solar system and modern ideas of stellar spectroscopy were already present in the Vedas, Saha entertained doubts. But he asserted that they were not there in the Vedas only after checking the text. In the second case, Bose had doubts about the ability of the traditional dowser because he was aware that laws of nature being universal, it would be humanly impossible to find underground sources of water by a simple device like the branch of a tree.

Methodology of science:

Science begins by questioning everything. Scientific methodology involves a level of scepticism; it is a process that seeks to arrive at conclusions about natural phenomenon by continuously raising doubts around observed events. There is a method by which this scepticism is resolved. An important lesson can be learnt if we look at a school level chemistry note book. The page is divided into three columns, experiment, observation and inference. The meanings are obvious. But the idea is to record (a) for one's own self as also (b) for the sake of others so that the experiment can be repeated, observations checked and the inference can be reasoned out, while entertaining the scepticism. These are some of the basic steps in modern science. Science, while being sceptical, accepts “universality” of scientific laws. Thus, in essence, science depends on (1) evidence and facts (2) evidence and reasoning (3) everything claiming scientific validity is put to question and test (4) anything that refuses to be put to test cannot claim to be scientifically validated.

But these were not the accepted steps, five hundred years ago. In that era, it was believed that knowledge could be obtained by the mental process of reasoning out. In the present day practice of science, exclusive reliance on mental processes are involved only in some stages of scientific work, but not all. It is first done when planning the experiment, i.e. in deciding what is to be done and in the last stage and then in the final step, inferences have to be drawn from the observations. In between the mental process goes hand in hand with doing and observing. Thus, science involves this interplay between mental reasoning and  real-life experimentation.

These processes can be long and inferences may not be automatic, at times inconclusive. In science imagination too plays a big role but it science does not progress exclusively through imagination and has to subject itself to verifiable or refutable experimental tests. This is illustrated with a few historical examples, taken from the development of science during the Copernican renaissance.

Science as a process

About our solar system, Kepler's ellipse, Copernican revolution and Newton.

We are told of Kepler's three laws on planetary motion, in our school text books. Kepler did not know about them, he found them . Our books are written in a way as if these laws came, all at the same time. The actual story is different. It took Kepler ten years to discover them and they were found one by one. The story is as follows.

Kepler was born in 1571 and went to Prague in 1600 to become an observational assistant to the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. Tycho  died the following year and Kepler tried hard for nearly eight years to match Tycho's observations of planetary orbits to the Copernican scheme of circular paths, with the sun as the centre. He did not succeed but he persisted with the idea of circular orbits. That was because, like most people Kepler too assigned a “divine” symmetric scheme to circles and thus thought that heavenly bodies ought to follow circular paths. While the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter and Saturn fitted with Copernicus's scheme, Kepler could not fit such a circular path to the  orbit of Mars. He could put four of Tycho's Martian data points on a circle but two data points were seen to lie outside it. Only a little outside: close to a circle but not quite. Knowing that Tycho Brahe was fastidious with accuracy, Kepler could not ignore these two outlying points as being Tycho's observational errors. He got a clue from an unexpected observation. It is here that this combination of “doing and reasoning” leads us to the goal.

The idea of an elliptic orbit came to Kepler in 1604-1605, but he perfected it in 1609.  The year 1609, proved to be a momentous year in the history of science. In that year, Galileo Galilei, used a telescope for the first time for astronomical observations. This is often recorded with well justified fanfare. But one other momentous event goes unnoticed. In the same year, from Tycho's data, Kepler found that, if one considered elliptic orbits planets move slower when they are farther from the sun and faster when they are closer. With this, not only could he fit the orbit but another remarkable discovery was made by him. He found that if we join the two points P1 and P2 in the orbit of a planet and measure the shaded area “Area 1” and the time “t” taken by the planet to travel from P1 to P2, then the Areal Velocity (a/t) remains a constant for all parts of the orbit. This was a momentous discovery, to be exploited by Newton later. To anticipate what Newton would show later, these two laws proved gravitation's force to be attractive, everywhere and always points towards the sun and for this reason “angular momentum” is a conserved quantity, giving (a/t) to be a constant everywhere in planetary orbits.

Criticisms and advance:

Scepticism is a part of science. Kepler's idea of elliptic orbits was not accepted. It was ignored by Galileo and Descartes. But if Tycho's observations were to be matched, in no way could the elliptic model be abandoned. Even Kepler, the strong believer of “divine symmetry” had to give up that notion. His own work compelled him to do so. But by this time Kepler was also preoccupied with another idea, not thought about earlier. He had found that if planets are farther from the sun, they take longer time to revolve round the sun. Was there any relation between the time of revolution (T) and the planet's average distance (L) from the sun? After ten years' struggle, Kepler found the relation to be : T² is proportional to L³. In this way, mathematics becomes the language of natural science.

How important these laws were would be proved a few years later. In the contemporary world of astrophysics, all satellites of planets are also seen to follow Kepler's laws, including artificial satellites like the Mangalyaan.

With orbit calculations important astronomical events could now be predicted. One such event to be predicted was the transit of Mercury across the sun. It was first observed by Pierre Ghassendi on 7^th November, 1631 in Paris. We have observed one such on 9^th May 2016 and the next one would occur on 11^th November 2019 and on 13^th November 2032.

Another important event would be the transit of Venus. In 1627, Kepler predicted that a transit of Venus would take place in 1631 but Jeremy Horrocks and William Crabtree with their very accurate calculations following Kepler's laws found that ANOTHER transit would occur on 4^th December 1639 - an issue that Kepler had missed. They observed this transit with telescopes. But they went a step further, they showed that this event could be used to measure the earth-sun distance, which no one had done before. They found the distance to be 99 million kilometers, a distance that no one could ever conceive of! At the suggestions of Edmund Halley, the Venus transits of 1761 and 1769 were observed from different parts on earth and the corrected value for the earth-sun distance (called Astronomical Unit) was found to be 150 million kilometers, which is very close to what we accept now. This is now one of the length scales with which astronomers measure distances.

Culmination of the Copernican revolution

Copernicus' ideas about heliocentric solar system (where planets move around the sun) appeared in 1543 and refuted the view till then of Ptolmey and others that the earth was the ecentre of the universe (the geocentric model). But the Copernican revolution took about 225 years to complete. This culmination is said to happen with the publication of Newton's “Principia” in 1687 and the return of the Halley's comet the way Halley had predicted, on the basis of Newton's laws. By studying the period and path of the 1531, 1607 and 1682 comets, Halley inferred that they were one and the same comet and would “ therefore, with some confidence predict its return in the year 1758. If this prediction is fulfilled, there is no doubt that other comets will return.” And it did.  

This revolution laid down the basis of classical mechanics, i.e. a whole host of mechanical motion, could be understood with only three laws. If you take out any one of the laws, the structure becomes incomplete and there is no fourth law.

Let us see what we can derive from them. Any modern day text book of astronomy will tell us that the sun weighs 1.91×10³⁰ kgs. The question is: how did we know that? It is known from (a) Kepler's laws, based on Newton's mechanics and gravitation (b) knowledge of earth-sun distance, (c) period of revolution of earth. All these were known by Newton's time, but Newton still did not know the mass of the sun because he did not know the value of one constant that Newton's gravitational law needed. That was the value of the universal gravitational constant, “G” (note the emphasis universal). Its value cannot be found from any amount of thinking. It has to be found from real experiments. Newton had declared the gravitational laws to be universal. So it could be found on earth too and that value should apply everywhere. This experiment was done by Cavendish in 1798. The value of “G” is very accurately known today. These days, Cavendish's experiment is repeated by students in M.Sc. level. From this value of ‘G’, we can determine the mass of the sun. That sets the mass scale for many objects in our universe. Further, knowing this value of ‘G’ and the local value of ‘g’ , i.e. the acceleration due to gravity at any point on earth, one can also predict about the existence of various minerals and oil and natural gas resources in the area. This technique is routinely used in geophysical explorations, which S.N. Bose had spoken about.

The Copernican revolution is said to have come to its completion with Newton's discovery of the laws of motion and the laws of universal gravitation. His most profound contribution was in bringing in the concept of universality to science. Newtonian mechanics would find its validity in a whole host of situations, for the next two hundred years. In the late nineteenth century, we would find that it fails in certain cases. There were observed phenomenon that Newtonian physics could not solve. It had to be replaced by the modern theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Newtonian science was replaced but NOT rejected. Newtonian science could explain observed phenomenon that we had knowledge about in his time. As new phenomenons were observed which could not be explained by Newtonian science, a new framework was developed with the 20^th century revolution in physics.

Nature of scientific knowledge:

The history that we narrated above shows that human knowledge is in a process of evolution. Science begins with the premise that the “system” exists and knowledge is tentative. Science itself sets the boundaries within which it can claim to be correctly explain and predict natural events. The boundaries expand, giving rise to a more complete understanding.

Science is thus not a revelation of permanent truth. The truth is accepted after verification by several individuals and groups since science tries to find the “truth that is universally valid, subject to the knowledge available in a particular era. It knows that more refined truth can be discovered in future as new knowledge accumulates. Thus, what is considered to be “true” in a given era, becomes “partial truth” in a future epoch. Thus, Newton's laws in mechanics were considered to be true for about two hundred years until, its limits of validity were found in the late nineteenth century.

Does it then mean that science had been erroneously assigning a false validity to Newtonian understanding, for two hundred years? No, that is not true.  Whatever Newton had assigned are still found to be correct, but only when objects move with velocities (v) that are much less than the velocity of light (c) , or when motions take place in regions larger than atomic dimensions (a typical atomic dimension is 10 billionth of a centimetre). Such physical systems could not be conceived of in Newton's times. Neither atoms were known nor was the value of speed of light, though Galileo had contemplated that speed of light was finite and could be measured by astronomical observations.

With the advent of industrial revolution, in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Europe, a new field, till then considered to be “dirty” appeared in the realm of science, i.e. chemistry and hand in hand arose two new professions, those of the chemist and of the engineer. These fields brought instrument-makers, blacksmiths, metal-workers, coal-miners into the “academia.” They would find means to manufacture dyes for the textile industry, tools for weaving machines, new kind of iron ploughs for agriculture and make efficient engines that would give better energy output with lesser fuel combustion. But while making these they were interested in quantification too, since without quantification these could not be achieved. These experiences made the chemist and combustion engineer look deeply into the constitution of matter itself. What emerged from there was the modern atomic theory of Dalton (in 1800) - far different, refined and more complete, from what the ancient Greeks had developed. The atomic theory was able to explain chemical properties of substances and the physical properties of gases (Boyle's law, Charles Law, Avogadro hypothesis etc.). In the process, they could establish a connection between heat and motion of atoms and molecules in substances.

This was a great leap. We had now reached a situation where immaterial of the object's motion as a whole, its parts (i.e. atoms and molecules within it) were always moving randomly with respect to each other and the vigour of this random motion would determine as to how hot the body was! This was deduced from theory, but new experimental techniques (from Doppler broadening of spectral lines) proved the theoretical predictions to be correct.

Dalton’s atomic theory was based on the understanding that the smallest unit of matter is the atom. This view received a jolt in 1897 with the discovery of the electron as a universal constituent of matter. So, the supposedly indestructible and indivisible atom, could be broken into parts: inside the atom, this negatively charged electron would have to keep the company of a positively charged central core in the atom itself. For this, it has to revolve round the positively charged core, in Keplerian orbits, since otherwise the electron would fall into the core due to attraction of opposite charges and both would vanish!

Since the time when the English physician William Gilbert (in 1600) had discovered electric charge, electricity had occupied the attention of many a scientist, but now it was to be accommodated in atomic theories. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the works by Oersted, Ampere, Faraday, Henry, Maxwell and many others, completed the conceptual foundation of electricity and magnetism. It was found that electricity and magnetism were interconnected: moving charges create magnetic effects and moving magnets would produce electric disturbances. These two always go hand-in-hand producing electromagnetic waves, that can move even through empty space (sound cannot) with the speed of light: c=300,000 kms per second (this was found independently by Foucault and Fizeau in mid nineteenth century, through laboratory experiments). It was further shown that light is an electromagnetic radiation, whose wavelength (λ and thus frequency ν, with ν= c/λ) determines the colour of light, but for all colours the speed in vacuum is the same, i.e. c = 300,000 kms/sec. Not only that, it has this unique value, no matter whether the speed of light is measured by an observer, who moves with any uniform speed in any arbitrary direction. This dictated that the old ideas of relativity, first given by Galileo, on which the entire Newtonian mechanics rests had to undergo qualitative change but would continue to maintain that laws of motion were universal irrespective of uniformly moving observers. This gave rise to Einstein's special theory of relativity, which made mass, time and length to be decided by the speed of motion of the observer. It also showed that mass(m) and energy(E) are related by a formula, E = mc², so that they are inter-convertible, as would be seen in nuclear reactions, to be discovered in the 1920's. This new theory also set a limit to the highest velocity that matter can have, that limit being c. 

 But that was not enough, a question rose: on the basis of electromagnetism, one must understand as to why heated objects turn red and then blue and finally white when they are heated more and more. It turned out that this could not be understood on the basis of nineteenth century science and one had to understand that radiation always comes out or is absorbed in energy parcels ε=hν=hc/λ. According to Newtonian ideas, energy could be transferred in any tiny amount, no matter how small. But now, we find that there was a limit as to how tiny one could make it, for nothing could be smaller than the energy quantum  ε=hν=hc/λ. This quantum character of energy transfer was found to operate in motion of electrons in atomic orbits too. According to Newtonian ideas , energy and momentum transfer could be as tiny as we wish. But discoveries in the atomic world showed that energy and momenta and sizes of atomic orbits could not be made arbitrary but had to follow certain quantum conditions, dictated by “h”, which also made things consistent with the colours of radiation that atoms emit or absorb.

All these predictions from twentieth century revolution in physics have been verified experimentally and the stage for quantitative theoretical predictions had been made ready by the nineteenth century mathematicians. When speeds are much less than the speed of light or orbits are much bigger than the atomic dimensions, results based on Newtonian science continue to hold. This can be seen, for example while dealing with situations like tides in ocean or about structure of galaxies. We must also remember that the fundamental assumptions of 20^th century Physics can be challenged in the future if and when we discover new phenomenon that it cannot explain. Science only claims that all the laws of nature are knowable but does not make predictions as to when or if ever we will know all of them.

Science and superstitions: Case of Kepler:

 It has been said, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune” (Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III). This applies to nations and to science too. At the time of the European renaissance, people took the tide at its flood, breaking the barriers of a millennium of stagnation.  But it was built up on knowledge, collected and documented over centuries, by people belonging to different societies and from different times. As Newton said: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

The process has a long history. Most of the time it remains unknown and unseen as human beings struggle to live on this earth. This struggle forces us to deal with nature on the one hand and on the other to evolve the way we relate to fellow human beings as a society. In modern parlance, the first part is referred to as natural science, encompassing the living and the non living, while the second deals with social relations and is called social science.

It was through this process of struggle that early humans came to know about sunrise and sunset, tides on the seas, seasonal floods and this knowledge helped them in agriculture, e.g. to decide about the time of sowing. The calendar was provided by the night sky and the pattern of stars (with our naked eye, on a clear new moon night, away from the glare of urban lights we can see about 4000 stars), as they change with the change of seasons. This was also one of the factors that led to the development of astronomy, being driven not purely by curiosity but also by the demands of an emerging agricultural society. Thus, if the stars could predict the seasons on earth that are so crucial to our life on earth, it was neither illogical nor irrational at that time to ascribe, that our fate was decided by the stars. It was in this way that astronomy and astrology got linked to each other and the priestly class, which knew about the movement of stars got powerful as it was understood that if they knew the happenings in heaven they would also be in the know of things on earth.

It came to be believed that some astronomical events carry bad omens., e.g. eclipses, comets and meteors. It was said that “The heavens blaze forth the death of princes” (Julius Caesar: Act I, Scene II), and in this way the fortune teller gained importance. In many cases the astrologer and the astronomer were the same person. The classic case was that of Johannes Kepler, who used to earn his living by astrology. And much of the money that he earned was used in defending his mother, who was charged with witchcraft. But when it came to the discovery of the laws of planetary motion, the same Kepler did not rely on any of these claimed ‘supernatural’ gifts but purely on analysis of Tycho Brahe's data. Carl Sagan has thus commented that Kepler was the last astrologer amongst astronomers.

Scientific progress and inter-relations between societies:

Early science owes its origin in agricultural societies that flourished in the Nile valley, in Mesopotamia , in ancient India and China. Their knowledge was transferred to the Greeks, who took a fundamental step of classification and of building theories based on mental constructs. In this, fundamental contributions came from the Pythagorean and Aristotelian schools. The idea of systematizing knowledge on the basis of logical sequence gave us Euclid's geometry while the Aristotelian school gave the idea of classifying the living world in terms of similarities between flora and fauna.

This work was done by the nobility, who ruled the slave society in Greece. Slave labour allowed them the leisure, to think. They discovered ordered patterns in whatever they saw, from the sky, to flora and fauna and to the organization of Greek society, between slave owners, slaves, men, women and prisoners. This exclusively mental process led to mysticism. For example, they ended up in giving mystical properties to certain numbers and geometrical figures. These attempts at theorizing, i.e. putting the things in order and keeping them in their right place had a profound effect. It could help one to see inter-connections between disconnected things. But it also, in the end, had a deleterious effect, since this exercise in ancient Greece was divorced from practice. Thus, discovering order became an obsession and they strove to find one, even where none would exist. The nobility was disconnected not only from physical world and physical labour but also from those, on whose physical labour the nobility lived. A society, nourished by  slave labour had very little need for innovation. The nobility exploited slave labour and got whatever their lives demanded while the life of the slave was expendable.

Greek science thus soon reached its saturation and decayed into obscurity. This has also happened with science in ancient India, where the caste system, based on heredity did not allow innovation. Even after the collapse of science in ancient India and Greece, their knowledge base was kept alive by science from Arabia, Persia, Central Asia – often referred to as Islamic science. They learnt their science from from all sources: astronomy, mathematics, paper making, use of gunpowder from the Chinese, arithmetic and algebra, surgery from the India, geometry and anatomy from the Greeks. They themselves excelled in optics, mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. Whatever they learnt, they recorded them in their books. It was on this foundation that Italian renaissance stood and gave Newton the chance to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Non uniformity of developments

While European renaissance ushered in a revolution in physical sciences the real revolution in biology had to wait for two hundred and fifty years, until the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. There was every chance that it could have preceded the revolution in physics. Thoughts about the living world had two aims, firstly in medicine and secondly in flora and fauna. About six hundred years after Hipocratus (b. 630 BC), experiments in anatomy were done by Galen (b. 130 AD). He dissected animals, mainly monkeys. This was a real empirical work but it was followed by a wrong theory. Galen and his followers advanced a notion that the same anatomical structures must be found in humans too.  This wrong idea was taken to be inviolable, until Vesalius in 1543 published the famous treatise on human anatomy (On the Fabric of the Human Body), with copious and reasonably accurate sketches, based on his real life observations obtained with dissection of human cadaver. About seventy years later, William Harvey, a student of the same Padova university, where Vesalius had studied, proved that our heart is a pumping machine, that circulates blood and heart has valves that separates impure blood from pure ones while impure blood was purified by the lungs (On the motion of heart and blood, published in 1628). Though these were revolutionary results they did not give rise to revolution in biology, for it looks that biological sciences still lacked a revolutionary theory partly because it lacked rich empirical data that astronomy had provided the physicist and also because the works of Vesalius and Harvey satisfied the immediate needs. Further, diversity and complexity of the biological world often acted as a barrier for unification, an obstacle that astronomy did not have.

 Things, however, changed with Darwin when he developed a theory called the theory of natural selection which was based on evidence. In the next hundred and fifty years we would not only examine the question of Origin of Species (published in 1859) but end up investigating the origin of life, from non living molecules! By the  time that Darwin arrived,  microscopy (pioneered by Robert Hooke, his Micrographia was published in 1665 and he coined the term, cell), had given enough information about organs and organisms; works by Francesco Redi(1668) disproved Aristotelian ( 384 BC- 322 BC) theory of spontaneous generation of life and all these had collectively given biology a footing, on which it could stand. However, the impetus for a theory came from what geologists were debating, that everything has its history and so has the earth and earth's history can be determined. One would then ask: could such a question be asked for biological species that live on earth, how did they transform with the earth's transformation? In addition, there was another question: if the population of humans grow in the way it was, would it be possible to maintain peace, if humans end up fighting each other to get their share of earth's resources? How these concerns and Darwin's meticulous observations of flora fauna and geological formations in different parts of the world led to the theory of natural selection is an interesting story that should be read separately.

Science often produces surprises and these lead people to rethink and revise views and one such example in physics has direct link with Darwin's work. This relates to Lord Kelvin, a famous physicist of the nineteenth century. He was a confirmed anti evolutionist. As a physicist, he was interested in heat conduction and tried to estimate the age of the earth from Fourier's heat conduction theory. It was known that as we go below the surface of the earth (data from mines) the temperature rises by 1ºF for every 50 ft. Kelvin assumed that the earth has a hot solid metallic core, with which it was born and it still exists in the same state in the earth's core.  So its temperature cannot exceed 8000ºF, the melting point of solid rocks. Kelvin himself measured the thermal conductivity of earth and then asked the question: how long did it take for the surface to cool to the present temperature? Then knowing that the radius of the earth was 6371 kms (first found extremely accurately by Erastothenes, 276 BC- 194 BC, and later by Al Biruni, 973 AD- 1048 AD) on the basis of Fourier's theory of heat conduction, Kelvin, in 1862, i.e. three years after the publication of Origin of Species, calculated that the earth must have been cooling since hundred million years and this is the minimum age that he could get. It was much less than what evolutionists were claiming but much larger than 6500 years that what the Bible claimed.  Kelvin was not happy with his finding. But being a scientist of unimpeachable reputation he had given precedence to his results, fighting his own dogmatism but later abandoned it when more accurate estimates came. Modern investigations tell us that the earth is 4 ±0.5 billion years old, that is more than four thousand times older than predicted by Kelvin. Then, where was the error in Kelvin's calculations? The error was in the fundamental assumption. The fact is that earth's temperature gradient is maintained by energy from radioactive decay of minerals– a fact, not known in Kelvin's time, (radioactivity was discovered in 1898 by Henri Bequerel, Pierre and Marie Curie). Knowledge of radioactive decay nowadays helps us in many historical and archaeological work, through Carbon- 14 dating and has become a standard tool (William Libby got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960, for discovering this method). The technique is now made extremely accurate so that by looking at the composition of ice at different depths of icebergs at the poles, and measuring the relative proportions oxygen isotopes (O-16, O-18), we have succeeded in getting further confirmation of global warming.

Science and superstition:

Science always sets limits to what it can explain. It does not follow a prescriptive role. This allows spiritualists to not only downplay the power of science but also to impose the authority of ‘messiahs' who know answers to all questions for all times to come: answers,  which science has not yet succeeded in giving.

The point to be noted is that by setting its own boundaries science also provides some space for speculations on the basis of unverifiable exercises, e.g. astrology. We know that the universal truth is that all living beings have to die. That is true, but science cannot tell, who will die when. But people want to be immortal. “Kim ashcharyam atapparam (what can be more surprising than this)?”asks Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata: a completely logical observation. However, this is not the logic that satisfies most of us. Even those who believe in another world and in rebirth, do not know as to what is life look like in the ‘other’ world or what would happen in the ‘next’ life here, when they are born again. It is this uncertainty that makes people seek a better one here, in this life itself i.e. in “life before death”, irrespective of what happens to “life after death”. And people tend to seek a guaranteed assurance for that. Astrology and spiritualism promise these but are based on completely untestable premises. Needless to say, they give promise but fail to provide the guarantee.

But there can be an alternative approach -- to understand worldly events from their worldly causes. Here too there may be different aims, e.g. (1) to interpret the world or (2) to change it. As PSM activists we need to do both – to look at every day experience as a way of interpreting the world, and to look for ways in which we can change what we think needs changing.

Heritage of Science & Technology in Ancient India

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

An attack on critical thinking, on a scientific attitude and way of reasoning, is today an integral part of the attack by Hindutva forces and the present ruling dispensation.

The Indian Constitution, in Article 51 A (h) states that it is part of the fundamental duties of citizens to “...develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.” In stark contrast, a Statement by 107 leading scientists in the country, issued in the aftermath of the astonishingly obscurantist happenings at a Seminar on the sidelines of the Indian Science Congress in January 2015 (about which we shall hear more later), pointed out that: “...what we are witnessing instead, is the active promotion of irrational and sectarian thought by important functionaries of the government.”

This is what is at stake.

Mythology as Fact                 Fantastic and unscientific claims were made at this Seminar on “Ancient Indian Sciences through Sanskrit,” a side-event held for the first time at the 102nd Indian Science Congress in 2015.   “Ancient knives so sharp they could slit a hair in two.” Rishis and Munis of “Vedic times,”  “at least 7,000 years ago,” could extract “24-carat gold from cow dung.” Ancient seers of that period could make aircraft and 40-engined spacefaring rockets “that could undertake interplanetary travel!”

Dinanath Batra, who runs the Shiksha Bachao Andolan (Save Education Movement) and is an office-bearer of the Sangh Parivar offshoot Vidya Bharati, has authored a book “Tejomay Bharat” which has now been included in the Gujarat school syllabus with an introduction by then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Among other incredible claims, the book says: “America wants to take the credit for invention of stem cell research, but the truth is that India’s Dr.Balkrishna Ganpat Matapurkar has already got a patent for regenerating body parts… You would be surprised to know that this research is not new and that Dr.Matapurkar was inspired by the Mahabharata” (pp 92-93). Apparently, the birth of 100 Kauravas from one egg of Gandhari was an example of stem cell research in ancient India. Similarly, Sanjay describing the Mahabharata War remotely to Dhritarashtra proved the existence of television in those times. And “transplanting” an elephant’s head on to the human body of Lord Ganesha in Indian mythology was an instance of plastic surgery! Mythology becomes reality! And no scientific evidence or reasoning is required, in fact is inimical to the search for historical veracity!

The Batra view of science was again endorsed by the PM, Shri Narendra Modi, in a speech delivered while opening a new wing of Reliance Hospital in Mumbai in 2015, when he claimed that plastic surgery, organ transplants and IVF technologies were all available in ancient India.

One approach to all these claims is to laugh them away. But this underestimates the impact that such claims may have on the popular imagination, especially in less educated sections of the population or even among those more educated sections who happily embrace obscurantist ideas even if they know them to be incorrect and like to aggressively assert their Hindutva leanings.

Criticism Attacked                A storm of criticism in the media and from scientists in India and abroad to these and other claims at the Science Congress symposium, objected to unscientific statements, mixing of history and mythology, and assertions being made without proper evidence, the cornerstone of the scientific method and of the Indian Science Congress itself. Anyone who thought the criticism would have embarrassed Hindutva proponents was quickly proved wrong.

Emphasizing that these were not stray comments by “fringe elements,” a string of unapologetic and combative comments followed from Union Government Ministers and leading lights of various Sangh Parivar organizations, directly or indirectly defending the views expressed at the symposium, or making additional assertions along the same lines, revealing a determined effort to reinforce what was evidently a well-planned and concerted ideological campaign.

Former Minister in the Vajpayee-led NDA government and then Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Mr.Ram Naik, in his valedictory address to the Congress, felt the need to stress that ancient India had made huge strides in sciences like medicine, astronomy, mathematics and astrology (emphasis added), and that he “pitied those who are ashamed of our history,” which none of the critics had said they were. Former BJP President and Home Minister Rajnath Singh said after the Congress that local pundits or astrologists should be consulted rather than NASA scientists for astronomical predictions on eclipses and such!  

This chorus rejecting the criticism of unscientific claims show that these different claims and assertions together amount to a cohesive Hindutva narrative on science in ancient India. It is also perhaps a signal of future ideological campaigns of considerable significance for contemporary intellectual and political discourse in India, especially if they are backed by State power.

The very use of the prestigious and internationally renowned Indian Science Congress occasion also showed that, contrary to the forward-looking development-oriented outlook that the present government proclaims, the wider socio-political movement it represents does not mind causing immense damage to genuine knowledge creation and to major scientific institutions in India in pursuit of their ideological agenda.

Dangers of the obscurantist narrative                     To take this narrative more seriously, one should recognize that there are five main elements to it, each of which has its own significance. 

First, there is insistence that the Vedic-Sanskritic Hindu traditions have the maximum antiquity. Dates usually cited for such ancient knowledge are often 7,000 to 8,000 years ago with some outlandish claims for 20,000 years ago taking us virtually to the stone-age! Basic idea being asserted is that ancient Hindu civilization and the knowledge it threw up are the oldest in the world, its contributions to science and technology came before similar contributions by any other civilization, hence ancient Hindu civilization is the greatest in the world.

The exclusive attention paid to Sanskrit texts completely ignores writings in Pali and Prakrit in ancient India, thus excluding epistemological and methodological streams from Jaina and Buddhist traditions. The Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, under the Ministry of Human Resources Development, says in its home page that “Sanskrit… provides the theoretical foundation of ancient sciences.” No need to study science, just study Sanskrit! Overlapping time periods involved would also challenge the “oldest” tag being applied to the Vedic-Hindu traditions. Reputed mathematics scholars and historians (for instance S.G.Dani, “Ancient Indian mathematics: a conspectus,” and “Mathematics in India: 500 BCE-1800 CE” by Kim Plokfer, Princeton University Press, 2009) have argued that this would mean leaving out of consideration important knowledge and mathematical traditions since Jaina and Buddhist scholarship had several concerns that were significantly different from those of the Vedic Brahmins, such as a lack of interest in, if not antipathy towards, ritual performances which were major promptings for so much of Vedic mathematics.

Secondly, no concrete verifiable evidence is cited for these claims, such as archeological evidence, carbon-dating, linguistic analysis etc. Instead, support is usually taken of vague suppositions and mythologies. In the final analysis, it is asserted that the mythologies themselves are in fact history and need no further proof, faith being the ultimate proof. In effect, they are arguing: You don’t need evidence because we say it was like this. Remember the debate on the history of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya? It is our faith that Rama was born at this very spot, therefore it MUST be so. Are the Hindutva forces heading in the same direction regarding science in ancient India? Is scientific or historical evidence considered irrelevant in the face of belief?

Third, the Hindutva narrative totally ignores the extensive interactions and exchanges of knowledge between cultures and civilizations over many centuries, and pretends that the Indian sub-continent was some kind of isolated entity where ancient Vedic-Sanskritic scholars by themselves created this knowledge and, if at all, generously shared this knowledge with the outside world. There is no acknowledgement of the borrowing of ideas between cultures through interactions of traders, merchants, scholars and other travellers while, actually, the same are openly and explicitly acknowledged in scholarly and travel writings in the different cultures involved. This narrative therefore denies a fundamental aspect of science and knowledge creation, namely its universal character and the contribution by all cultures and civilizations to this accumulated body of knowledge which we today call science.

Fourth, there is the familiar project to galvanize “Hindu pride,” overcome past “humiliations” in the form of conquests or subjugation by outsiders of different faiths, and re-build confidence for the future, by projecting Vedic Hinduism as the most ancient, advanced and knowledgeable of all civilizations. But it should be realized that this endeavour itself is not a new one, in fact it harks back more than a century and a half to the early stages of the national movement in India against colonialism. These early efforts by intellectuals in India, and by several abroad, aimed to uncover and translate into European languages ancient Indian, mostly Sanskrit, texts in philosophy, metaphysics and the sciences so as to showcase the greatness of Indian civilization so as to counter the colonial effort to belittle the Indian civilization and justify rule by the “superior” British. Rediscovering ancient Indian knowledge and capabilities had an important role in the struggle against colonialism.

Fifth, the Hindutva narrative claims that only they have “discovered” these valuable, great and ancient contributions by the Vedic-Sanskritic culture, identified as synonymous with the Indian civilization. They also claim that those who have a different or opposing view, especially those who acknowledge contributions by other cultures and who do not automatically give ancient Hindu knowledge “first place” in all discoveries or inventions, are guilty of downgrading Hindu i.e. ancient Indian contributions, and are therefore all westernized “Macaulay putra,” i.e. westernized intellectuals who have swallowed the Western outlook, or are Nehruvian or Marxist.

This strand of the narrative that contributions of ancient India to science were totally suppressed or unknown until Hindutva proponents “discovered” them is bizarre. In fact, extensive work has been done by scholars both in India and abroad on science in ancient India. This work, especially from the second half of the 20^th century onwards, has been based on carefully evaluated evidence from multiple sources, including texts in Sanskrit and other classical Indian languages, both in original and in translations in Arabic, Latin or other languages. The assiduous research reflected in the exhaustive work of D.D.Kosambi, D.P.Chattopadhyaya, J.D.Bernal, Joseph Needham (incidentally all Marxist scholars) and well known and need no repetition here.

If the Hindutva goal were simply to highlight achievements in ancient India, there is no shortage of real, pioneering knowledge creation, such as the orbital motion of the planets relative to the sun, the inclination of the earth’s axis, the place value system, early estimations of the value of pi (π), the decimal system including the zero, algebra and different aspects of trigonometry and early forms of calculus, advances in medicine, metallurgy and so on. When all these exist and can be proudly proclaimed, regardless of childish “me-first” games which do not further the understanding of either history or science, what is the need to assert fictitious or imaginary claims? Such fantastic claims only serve to devalue real achievements. Far from adding to the glory of Indian civilization, Hindutva advocates are embarrassing the nation and doing a huge disservice to its great contributions to science in ancient times and to the work Indian scientists are doing today.  

Finally, it must be said that the battle underway is not just science versus mythology, false claims against historical fact, but a battle for academic and intellectual rigour, for the method of science and of historiography, and ultimately for a scientific attitude and critical questioning, as against blind acceptance of authority whoever that may be. That last is the authoritarian road, which leads to a very bleak future, however glorious our past has been.

In different Sections below, we take up specific Case Studies of ancient Indian contributions to science and technology. These examples not only showcase the real advances made in ancient India, but will also bring out the give-and-take between different civilizations that resulted in these contributions. The Case Studies would also examine the limitations of these discoveries or other ancient knowledge contributions, and reasons for the same. Science is, after all, a continuous endeavour of updating, correction and renewal, and could neither have reached its peak in some mythical golden age, nor has an “ultimate Truth” in some determinate future time.

SECTION 2: THE PYTHAGORAS THEOREM & MATHEMATICS

All of us perhaps recall the Pythagoras theorem from our school days. In its most well-known version, it states that in a right angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Sets of numbers that satisfy this relationship, for example 3, 4, 5 which relate to each other such that 3²+4²=5², are called Pythagorean triples.

Dr.Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for S&T and a surgeon by training, made a fantastic claim at the 102nd Indian Science Congress held in Mumbai, that the theorem should be actually called as Baudhayana Theorem, because it had been established in the Sulba Sutras long before Pythagoras. Indeed, historians of science have long argued that what goes by the name of Pythagoras theorem was perhaps was already extant knowledge and not really discovered by him. The Minister’s claim not only betrayed a lack of knowledge, but also a lack of appreciation of how to deal with the subtleties of the history of science.

Reacting to the Minister’s fantastic claim, Professor Dr.Manjul Bhargava, winner of the prestigious Fields Medal and Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, put the issue in perspective. He stated that the Pythagoras theorem “should either be an Egyptian theorem if you look at the standard of just having an idea about it, an Indian theorem if you are looking for a complete statement of it, or a Chinese theorem if you are looking for the proof of it”.

Although there is no statement of theorem anywhere, one finds evidence of Pythagorean triples as far back as 2,500 BC in Egypt, when number combinations such as 3, 4, 5 and 5, 12, 13, were noted in structures there. These ratios satisfy the theorem but could have easily been arrived at by trial and error or coincidence.

The earliest known systematic listing of Pythagorean triples satisfying a² + b² = c² is found in the 1,800 BC “Plimpton tablets” used for teaching scribes  in Mesopotamia, or the modern-day Arab world, pre-dating both the Sulba Sutra and Pythagoras. While there is still no unambiguous written statement of the theorem in these tablets, triples with very large numbers given in the tablets suggest a good understanding of the idea. Mesopotamia and Egypt routinely exchanged goods, knowledge and texts. Egypt, either independently, or from Mesopotamia, also knew about Pythagoras theorem. It is also known that Pythagoras spent a considerable part of his early life in Egypt and learned  a good part of his mathematics from the Egyptians.

The Sulba-sutras tell us how to make different kinds of altars or vedis for religious purposes. There are four important Sulba-sutras, that of Baudhayana (c. 800 BCE), Manava (c. 750 BCE), Apastamba (c. 600 BCE) and Katyayana (c. 200 BCE). The Sulba-sutras are a part of Vedanga Jyotisha, and are therefore a part of Brahminical rituals. Sulba-sutras of Baudhayana explicitly states the Pythagorean theorem, that if you have a right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse is the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides. This seems to be the first recorded instance, but does not establish that is where the idea originated.  

If one uses the rigour that mathematicians use, i.e. that one needs not only a statement, but also proof, then one has to note that whereas the Sulba-sutras do contain proofs in some special cases and contain numerical proofs in general, it is the Chinese mathematical text that has the first recorded rigorous proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Baudhayana provides a proof for isosceles right-angled triangles (with two sides of equal length), while Apastamba gives a numerical proof of the more general statement, true for any right-angled triangle.

As stated earlier, the Chinese too knew about the Pythagoras theorem, known in China as the kou-ku theorem. Zhou Bi Suan Jing's Chinese manuscript dated sometime between 1046 BC and 256 BC contains a rigorous mathematical proof. It is conceivable that the statement of the theorem went from India to China, but the complete, rigorous proof seems to have been arrived at in China. The Chinese had also developed another proof of the Pythagoras theorem, in a visual form.

The claim to fame of Pythagoras is that he was supposedly the first to provide a formal proof of the theorem. However, neither the Euro-centric claim of Pythagoras providing the first proof, nor the Indo-centric view of India being the original home of the Pythagoras theorem, are completely true.

Each of the culture areas that we have discussed shows their unique contributions. They all learn from each other and openly acknowledge what they have learned from other scholars. The attempt to seek credit for only one specific culture area is the consequence of trying to create a national or racial claim to a historical “first.” The West attempted its racist history of science by claiming that only Greek mathematics is true mathematics as it had a concept of proof. They reject all evidence of the deep debt that Greek mathematics and science has to Egypt. It is the same impulse that inverts this racist interpretation of history to argue that India “discovered” the Pythagoras theorem and gave it to the Greeks.

These different layers of information suggest that the question of who discovered the theorem is not a well-defined one and perhaps not even interesting. The Pythagoras theorem shows how the history of science and mathematics is not one of who did what first, but to see the broad sweep of development and what have been the contributions of each cultural area. The idea perhaps had multiple origins in various cultures and travelled from culture to culture, each time embellished and perfected over time. Thus assigning credit it to one individual or culture is absurd.

3. AERONAUTICS AND ROCKETRY: MYTH AND REALITY

In the medieval period, major advances were made in Indian technology but these advances are somehow ignored by the Hindutva school of thought which seems to focus exclusively on the ancient period. The interaction with Central and West Asia brought into India many new aspects of architecture like the ability to make true arches and domes, the popular use of paper, stitched clothes,  metal inlays, the Persian wheel for deep well irrigation, and new type of looms for weaving cotton.

One major advance made in India was in rocketry.

Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan were pioneers in advancing rocketry. They used such rockets effectively against the British in the Anglo-Mysore wars.

Prof.Roddam Narasimha, one of the doyens of Indian aeronautics, in a paper in 1985, (Rockets in Mysore and Britain, 1750-1850 A.D., National Aeronautical Laboratory, 1985) discussed Tipu and Hyder Ali's contributions to the development of rocketry. Abdul Kalam, who according to the current Culture Minister, Mahesh Sharma, was a “nationalist” “despite being a Muslim,” accorded high praise in his autobiography to Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali for their contributions to rocketry.

Prof.Narasimha discusses the discovery of gunpowder and early rockets in China in the 11th century, and how they travelled to other parts of the world including India. These early rockets fell into relative disuse after the invention of the cannon in the 13th century.

Prof.Narasimha analysed Tipu and Hyder Ali's major contributions to rocketry. He noted that they used metal casing for the rockets, instead of the then prevalent bamboo and paper casings. With such metal casings, rockets could travel up to 2 km, a huge increase in their range. These rockets also had a much greater carrying capacity. They also used sword blades tied to the rockets, to stabilise their flight, much in the way we use a long stick in Diwali “rockets.” Such swords also served as weapons when they landed among the enemy soldiers.

Tipu had built a huge number of rockets and used massed rocket attacks in his battles against the British. In Tipu's 1780 battle in Pollilur (2nd Anglo-Mysore War), such rocket attacks played a decisive role in the defeat of the British.

After Tipu's defeat in the 4th Anglo Mysore War, the British carried away a large number of unused rockets to England, where William Congreve subjected them to scientific study. It was Congreve's research – reverse engineering as we would call it today -- and further development that lead to the use of rockets by the British against the French in the Napoleonic wars, and later against the Americans.

As opposed to the actual contributions in aeronautics and rocketry, we have the incredible claims of the Hindutva lobby. In the symposium at the 102nd Indian Science Congress, 2015, a paper on ancient Indian aviation technology was presented by two speakers, one of whom was Captain Anand J. Bodas, a retired pilot. He told the audience and the press such gems as that, in Vedic or ancient Indian times “at least 7000 years ago,” an aeroplane travelled “through the air from one country to another, from one continent to another continent, from one planet to another planet ... and could move left, right, as well as backwards." To those who questioned his claims based on contemporary aeronautics, he retorted: "modern science is unscientific."  

Bodas's claims are based on Vymanika Shastra, a work written in Sanskrit by one Subbaraya Shastry. Shastry lived from 1866 to 1940. He had claimed that the ancient sage Bharadwaja appeared to him while he was in a “psychic trance” and dictated the entire text to him! The only “evidence” of the antiquity claimed by Shastry was the period that sage Bharadwaja must have lived in!

The text, Vaimanika Shāstra, was extensively studied by a team of five professors from the aeronautical and mechanical engineering departments of Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and including Sanskrit scholars. Their conclusions are telling. Vaimanika Shastra was not an ancient text, but was written in modern Sanskrit in the early 20th century, not in Vedic Sanskrit. They also concluded that it was bad science, and nothing that was built as it described in the above text, with drawings, could ever have flown.

In contrast, the study by the IISc team Roddam's study shows us how history of science is to be treated. Not the vainglory of a mythical past with aeroplanes that can go forwards and backwards and fly in space between planets, but meticulous research and analysis of what it really was. The IISc team showed how the text contains no description or displays no knowledge of any elementary aeronautical principles. They also showed that building of aircraft and spacefaring rockets also required knowledge of, and manufacturing techniques relating to, advanced materials, different components, fuels etc. Vaimanika Shastra contained no mention of any of these, and no archaeological excavation or ancient text pointed to any such thing. Inventions do not suddenly appear out of thin air, but have antecedents, earlier work done by others, and processes by which earlier advances fed into to the larger body of aeronautic knowledge, and are part of what we are doing even today.

Science and technology advances by being open to both the external world and the knowledge of other disciplines. By treating myth as history, we do a great disservice to the actual advances we made in the past. The sterile worship of the past can only kill science and technology in the country.

4. THE CURIOUS CASE OF ARYABHATA: RESPECTED AND REVILED

Earth is spherical in nature, it rotates about its axis, resulting in day and night, eclipses are just a play of shadows, with the Moon's shadow falling on Earth resulting in solar eclipse and Earth’s shadow falling on the Moon resulting in lunar eclipse. These are some of the seminal pronouncements of Aryabhata (476–550 CE), arguably India’s greatest ancient mathematician and astronomer. Aryabhata is also credited with numerous mathematical discoveries or innovations such as the place value system (with numbers written in units, tens, hundreds etc), the zero (as a place marker), value of pi (π) to a high degree of accuracy and so on. However, in this Section, we shall restrict ourselves to Aryabhata’s work on astronomy.

Aryabhata is today a revered figure in India, whose first satellite was named after him. Yet in his time, and for many centuries thereafter, Aryabhata’s astronomical work and his model of the solar system were ridiculed and his ideas were deliberatively mis-interpreted. While scientific dispute and doubt are usual and should be respected and appreciated, those who mocked him at that time not only disputed his theories often without evidence, but castigated him for going against Vedic postulates and Puranic claims.

           

Spherical Earth                     In ancient times, led by their common sense, people across different cultures believed that the earth was basically flat, with some cultures like the Chinese believing it was rectangular and others that it was round like a flat disc or coin.  Satapatha Brahman (6.1.2.29) too said the Earth is four-cornered. In classical Tamil Sangam literature (c.300 BCE - 300 CE), the Earth was viewed as a land surrounded by oceans, again a concept common across many cultures. Philosophers in ancient Greece too adhered to some version of a flat earth. 

Admittedly, there is a single reference to Earth as “Bhoogola”, i.e., the “sphere that is earth”, in the Bhagavata. Some use such cherry-picked words to make tall claims that the Puranas unambiguously assert the spherical nature of the Earth. However a careful reading of the Bhagavata shows that nowhere is Earth described as a sphere, on the contrary, Earth is described as circular and flat.

            The idea of a spherical Earth appears in classical Greek philosophy with Pythagoras postulating the Earth as a sphere c. 600 BCE and Aristotle providing empirical evidence of a spherical Earth around 330 BCE. Aristotle, of course, viewed the sphere as the perfect shape, and the divine cosmology demanded that this perfection be embodied in all heavenly bodies.

            It is not known if these ideas were known to or influenced astronomers in India at that time. However, the ideas of Ptolemy (c.100-170 ACE) to describe the motion of the sun, moon, planets and other heavenly bodies, certainly seem to have been known by the time of Aryabhata who also used Ptolemaic epicycles (a pattern of movement which served to explain difference between observation and calculations based on pure circular motions).

However, the predominant Puranic view, as also of Buddhist and Jaina scholars, during that period was that of a flat Earth with a central land mass surrounded by oceans, and a cosmos comprising air, the sun and moon, and the various planets and stars.  The Puranic view placed the abode of the Gods, Mount Meru, at the centre with the Moon on the top and the Sun whirling around Meru “like the circumference of a potters wheel.” The pole star of Dhruva was viewed as the pivot or axis of the whole planetary system, with all the planets and stars connected to it by respective bands or chords of air called pravaha. Day and night are caused by sunlight or shadow of the tall Mount Meru as the sun goes around it, and eclipses were caused by the well-known mythical cosmic serpents Rahu and Ketu.

Motion of Earth        Aryabhaṭa departed sharply from the Puranic cosmology. His model was still geocentric, in which the Sun, Moon and the planets each move in epicycles, which in turn revolve around the Earth, similar to Paitamahasiddhanta (c. CE 425) which used two epicycles, a smaller manda (slow) and a larger sighra (fast), with Earth at the centre to describe the motions of the heavenly bodies.

Aryabhata posited the Earth as spherical. The Moon is placed nearest to Earth, followed by Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and then the nakshatras or stars.

With this basic model, Aryabhaṭa boldly proposed, among others:

(1) the diurnal rotation of the Earth around its own axis (rather than the apparent rotation of the Sun around Earth)

(2) a corresponding theory of gravity to explain why objects are not thrown out as the Earth spins

(3) the variability of the concept of “up'' and “down'' depending on where one is located on the globe, and

(4) explanation of lunar and solar eclipses as, respectively, Earth's shadow on the Moon and the Moon coming between the Earth and the Sun.

Importantly, Aryabhata insisted that only observation and experience constituted a basis for theorization or explanation, for instance of eclipses, not pre-conceived ideas or supernatural powers. Siddhantic astronomy, of which Aryabhaṭa was one of the founding figures, therefore departed from established cosmology with quasi-religious suppositions.

Aryabhaṭa showed that the Earth rotated about its axis once a day resulting in day and night, and generating the apparent east-to-west motion of the Sun. Aryabhaṭa remarked that for a person in a moving boat, the banks and objects such as trees on the bank would appear to move in the opposite direction, and similarly, when the Earth rotates from west to east, the Sun and the stars seem to move from east to west.

Aryabhaṭa further argued that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight. He noted that the lunar eclipse occurs only on the full moon, i.e. when the Moon is 180 degrees away from the Sun. The eclipse, he reasoned, was then caused by the shadow of the Earth falling on the Moon. Similarly, a solar eclipse occurs only on the new moon day, when the Moon is in the same direction as the Sun. When the Moon comes between the Earth and the Sun, it casts its shadow on the surface of the Earth resulting in a solar eclipse. Aryabhata discusses at length the size and extent of the Earth's shadow and then provides the calculations explaining the size of the eclipsed portion. Aryabhaṭa also provided computational methods for predicting astronomical phenomena like eclipses. Later Indian astronomers improved on the calculations, but Aryabhaṭa's methods still remained the basis.  

However, Aryabhaṭa was attacked by many later astronomers such as Brahmagupta (c. 628 CE) and Varahamihira (505-587 CE). Varahamihira objected to Aryabhata’s conception of the earth’s rotation on its own axis, raising questions as to why birds and bees were not flung backwards. Brahmagupta wondered why objects did not fall, and others questioned why arrows did not draft towards the west etc. Indeed, almost the same objections were to greet Galileo’s helio-centric theory!   

As years went by Aryabhaṭa was also treated as a “rishi” or great sage who had obtained his startling insights not through scientific investigations and observations but by divine revelation. Nevertheless, the effort was to somehow reconcile Aryabhaṭa’s notions conform with Puranic concepts such as of a flat, stationary Earth. Even his sutras were modified, from stating “pranenaiti kalam bhur” to “pranenaiti kalam bham,” the former word implying the Earth’s rotation while the latter implied the sun and stars revolving around the Earth each day!

Aryabhata’s eclipse theory came in for even sharper criticism. If the eclipses are mere shadow play, then what is the need for Brahmins to perform ablutions during an eclipse?  If indeed the duration of eclipses can be predicted before they happened, then what is the point of appeasing Rahu-Ketu with offerings and worship to release the imprisoned Sun or Moon during an eclipse?

Varahamihira, the author of the famous astronomical treatise Pancasiddhantika, was cautious and tried to reconcile the Puranic myths with the scientific knowledge expounded by Aryabhata. He agreed with Aryabhata’s explanation of eclipses, but argued the mythical Rahu or Ketu is also present near the eclipsed Sun or Moon, and it is necessary to perform traditional rites as expounded in the Puranas and scriptures. Brahmagupta went one step further in his Brahmasphuta-Siddhanta and vehemently asserted that as per the Vedas, “the word of God”, that eclipses are caused by Rahu and Ketu

Thus, under the pressure of orthodoxy, ancient Indian astronomers and philosophers often felt obliged to agree with myths in spite of knowing scientific explantions for phenomena.

Rise of Orthodoxy                 So, even though India could boast of so many giants of astronomy and mathematics, Aryabhata was derided and even ridiculed, including by such accomplished scholars as Varahamihira and Brahmagupta? Researchers say that the demise of this great astronomical tradition in India is linked to the rise of orthodoxy during the 7th and 8th centuries.

The Gupta period during which Aryabhata lived, was characterized by assimilation, tolerance and broadmindedness. Universities like Nalanda, Nagarjunakonda, and Vikramasila, had been founded and were patronised. Historians point out that this period was the height of Buddhist and Hindu architecture. It was a period of openness to global ideas, and characterised by magnificent achievements in religious-philosophical debates among Jains, Buddhists and Sanatis. However, all these came to an end when religious orthodoxy took hold of social life subsequent to the Gupta period. In particular, the Manu Smriti, which had a strict injunction against heretical thinking, became influential. Rules of rigid caste hierarchy, untouchability and women’s subordination, all became stricter and religiously sanctioned. All knowledge and science became more secret, secluded, hidden and concealed, and every new thought and invention was opposed. Even Ayurvedic vaidyas were considered ‘polluted’ and downgraded in the caste hierarchy. Astronomers or so-called jyotirvids were denounced and declared ‘polluted’. Manu Smriti condemned and prohibited scholars from being called to yagnas, mahadanas and shraadhas. Further, the Brahmins changed the meaning of the word jyotirvidya, which to Aryabhata and to others of his time, meant simply the study of the movements of the stars, now came to mean the ‘study’ of the supposed effects of stars on human beings.

The sufferings of Galileo and Bruno at the hands of faith-based orthodoxy are well known. Orthodoxy and fundamentalism have always been an impediment to the growth of science and knowledge. Closer to home, one of the greatest ancient Indian astronomers, Aryabhaṭa had to meet a similar fate at the hands of Vedic orthodoxy foregrounding revelations and faith over reason and evidence.

Contemporary developments that similarly foreground faith over evidence and reason would once again take us to the dark ages. 

5. IRON & STEEL: METALLURGY

The use of metals, and the development of knowledge and skills about their extraction, purification, alloys and working to make products, has been one of the definitive achievements marking a qualitative shift in the advancement of human societies.

Only gold and, to a lesser extend, silver and copper are found naturally more or less in their pure form requiring little effort to extract. But these metals were too soft to find practical application as tools or weapons, in comparison to the hard stone implements used widely at that time, they were mainly for ornamentation especially for temples, kings and the aristocracy. Gold and silver ornaments have been found in Mohen-jo-daro (c. 3000 BCE), in Mesopotamia (in the region known today as Iraq) and Egypt around 2500 BCE. Copper, when heated then allowed to cool in air (i.e. annealed) could be beaten into different shapes better and Gold could be melted and poured into moulds (a process called casting) such as the famous death mask of the Egyptial Pharaoh Tutankhamun ca. 1300 BCE. Pottery furnaces with reasonably high temperatures were soon put to use for extracting copper from its ores, mainly the carbonate ore malachite.

Over time, copper and the more rare tin were combined to make bronze which has a low melting point, therefore enabling casting by which a wide variety of products could be made such as vessels, containers, weapons and tools. Yet due to the scarcity of copper and tin, as well as the relatively remote places where they were found and hence the high cost of transportation, bronze was expensive. Its products were therefore used mostly by the aristocracy, wealthy merchants and the like, mostly in the large cities that were characteristic of the period that we now known as the “bronze age.”

Of all the metals that made major changes in the way of life, Iron was the foremost. Although iron extracted from fragments of meteorites containing iron (available freely on the surface, but in small quantities) was known to early human societies, its rarity made its use scarce.  Around 1500BCE or so, iron seems to have become available in relatively large quantities through smelting (process of producing a metal from its ore by using a reducing agent such as coal or charcoal to remove other materials leaving the metal behind), making its appearance in different parts of the world, and paving the way for a major transformation of human societies and civilizations. As Iron and steel become available in larger quantities and in less cost more soldiers could be equipped with superior weapons and body-protecting armour, forests could be cleared with the axe, and agriculture could be improved substantially using iron instead of wooden ploughshares.

The widespread use of iron was one of the major factors for the end of the Bronze Age and its large river-valley, city-centred economies, and marked the beginning of the agriculture-based economies of the next two millennia and more. When and where exactly iron emerged on a large scale is not yet known with any exactness, so any culture’s claim of having accomplished this first has little foundation and has little bearing on the shaping of the history of metallurgy, or science and technology in general.

Science and Technique, Scholar and Artisan                     In science, for example in Astronomy as we have seen in earlier Sections, scholars themselves recorded their own observations, calculations, hypotheses and critiques of other scholars’ theories, and these writings often found their way across continents and civilizations, either in original or in translation or as transmitted through visiting scholars, where other scholars read them and incorporated the ideas they liked into their own work. Itinerant scholars travelled to other civilizations, met with other scholars, some even spending considerable time there for study and interaction with local scholars.

Very few records show that Indian scholars travelled abroad or extensively, but there are ample records to show that Chinese, Arab, Persian, Central Asian and Greco-Roman scholars visited India, were quite conversant with Sanskrit and also spend time at institutions of learning. Evidence also shows that Indian scholars were familiar with the work of Greek, Persian and Arab scholars whose ideas are echoed in their Indian counterparts’ work. Knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and philosophy spread throughout the ancient world in this manner and witnessed much exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas. Scholars tried out the methods of other those from different civilizations, compared results and observations, and add such knowledge to their own, thus contributing to the spread and growth of the body of knowledge which was later to transform into modern science.

In the matter of technique (the term technology, although generally used quite loosely, is probably better applied to the modern period when generalized principles are of science are applied and incorporated into technique), however, the context and processes involved in cultural exchanges were quite different. Practitioners themselves would most likely have been artisans and skilled workers who, despite differences between civilizations, would generally not have been literate or at least may not have been able to write, describe and record their practices in universally comprehensible terms. Equally important, artisans who may otherwise have been highly skilled and knowledgeable in their own crafts, would not have had the concepts or language with which to communicate to others. Communication of these generalized concepts would have to wait for the development of modern science so as to be properly articulated in the manner of modern manuals, which carry descriptions within a common framework of universally recognized concepts and principles.

Further, artisans themselves perhaps also did not travel much to other lands, as it was usually merchants who would carry their wares for sale in other centres within or outside the country. Scholars who visited artisans in their own settings observed their work, even described them with as much detail as they could muster, but once again lacked the intimate knowledge, concepts and universally familiar terminologies to be able to absorb or communicate these ideas and practices in a replicable manner.

In short, unlike in astronomy or mathematics, in technology the practitioner and the scholar were two different people, indeed two different classes of people: the artisan and the scholar, the patrician and the plebian, perhaps the educated and the non-educated, and in India the higher and the lower caste.

Another fact that is not adequately acknowledged, or at least discussed, is that artisans and other skilled practitioners were quite secretive about their knowledge, operated in almost closed kinship, clan or other groupings, and were reluctant to divulge the intricacies of their crafts.

All these factors relating to technique, were among of the major reasons why some civilizations retained a virtual monopoly over the production and trade of certain categories of products and materials, including metals, for many centuries. Contrary to the claims of some “nationalist” historians, these unique contributions of particular cultures or civilizations are not only because of the genius of that culture but because, wherever such unique contributions were made, and they were made in various regions of the world as we shall see, it was the difficulties noted above that stood in the way of inter-cultural exchange of techniques of making materials and artefacts. The world would need to wait for the modern scientific and industrial revolution to be able to bring together science and technique, which could thereafter justifiably be called technology, which henceforth incorporated scientific principles and could be further developed based on them.               

Among the various areas of metallurgy, among the most renowned of India’s contributions are the techniques of making iron and steel. The Rig Veda contains several references to metals as a category (ayas), but does not seem to refer specifically to iron. It also refers to the dasyus or non Aryan-speaking peoples as having ayas, which is also of course confirmed by pre-Aryan archeological finds.

Iron-making in ancient India                       What is known with a fair degree of certainty, and verified through supporting evidence from different disciplines, is that Indian iron and steel making, especially in South India, was among the earliest in the world, and seems to have been firmly established by the second millennium BCE. Other early finds are from West-Central India and the Deccan. In other parts of the world, iron making was dominant in the Hittite kingdom around 1500 BCE, in what is now Turkey and embracing parts of Syria and Iraq,  and spread into Greece and the Mediterranean region by 1000 BCE or a bit later. Whereas there is evidence of very early smelting of iron from Central Asia and the Caucuses region, notably the prolific tribes-people of Chalybes in Anatolia (modern Georgia), who were perhaps the first to make tempered steel, the balance of evidence suggests that Indian iron-making may have been earlier.

More important than who came first, however, is the renowned quality of the iron, steel and their products made in ancient and medieval India, the techniques developed and used to make them, and the vast quantities of these traded to all parts of the world till well into the colonial era. 

During that period, Iron was extracted from its ores in the solid form because temperatures required to melt the metal could not be reached. Simple clay furnaces with hand-operated bellows as blowers were used, reducing the ore by adding charcoal. This resulted in production of “blooms,” so-called by the flower-like eruptions of iron and slag, from which pure iron (termed wrought iron) was beaten out. This low-carbon (0.1-0.2% C) wrought iron could be worked well by heating it and beating the metal when still hot into the desired shape. This method of iron smelting would have taken considerable trial and error to figure out, but then it was quite simple to replicate. No wonder this technique was in vogue almost throughout the world.

This technique is still practiced by several tribal groups in different parts of the country, notably in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand by the Asura and Agaria tribes.

One exception of even more advanced technique stood out, namely the early invention of the blast furnace in China to make cast iron as early as the 5th century BCE. Cast iron, meaning the pouring of molten or liquid iron into moulds to make products, was unknown elsewhere else in the world for several centuries because sufficient blast of air could not be provided. But the Chinese, with their experience of high-temperature furnaces for ceramics clearly had managed to devise equipment that could achieve this. Indeed, it took till the 14th century for cast iron to be appreciated in Britain and another couple of centuries for it to be made there and in other parts of Europe, albeit with different techniques and at industrial scales with major impact on India and China.

Cast iron has a fairly high carbon content of 2-4% and, while hard, is quite brittle and difficult to work. Its main advantage was that it has a relatively low melting point of around 1100°C. Probably for these reasons, even though it was so widely made and used in China, it remained for many centuries a product used mostly by farmers and common folk including soldiers, for agriculture, cooking vessels and of course weaponry. By the early years of the first millennium CE, it was used extensively in China to make tools, weapons, vessels and utensils.

Both the Chinese cast iron and the Indian solid reduction smelting process were distinct in that they required more reducing conditions than usual and gave the iron thus made special qualities,

Unique and prized Indian iron                    Indian iron had many characteristics that made it quite unique and highly valued the world over. Everyone of course talks about the famous Iron Pillar of the Gupta period ca. 300 ACE during the reign of Chandragupta II “Vikramaditya” whose reign is commemorated in Pali on the pillar, standing over 7m tall and weighing about 6 tons. The pillar is installed in the Qutab Minar complex in Delhi and, despite standing fully exposed to the weather all these centuries, has not rusted at all. So let us too use this iconic artifact to understand the characteristics of ancient Indian iron and what made it stand out.

`The most significant feature of the pillar is the quantity of phosphorous (P) in its material, considerably higher than found in modern iron which would not contain such high proportion of P since it could lead to brittleness and cracking during hot working. It was earlier believed that this was due to inclusion of slag, the glassy waste material left over after the process of extracting the metal from the ore. Lime was not added those days (unlike in modern blast furnaces) which would have reduced the P deposits in ancient iron made by the solid reduction process described above, hence the higher amount of P. However, by comparison with the iron used in other artifacts of the same period, it is now understood that the additional Phosphorous in the iron pillar was deliberately added, probably by choosing particular types of wood, in order to get the desired effect.  Many other large iron objects of that period, including building elements, show that weather- or corrosion-resistance was deliberately sought and achieved by Iron smiths of that time.

These and other special characteristics clearly demonstrate the deep knowledge and mastery of technique that made Indian iron and steel so special and valued till well into the colonial period in the 18th century ACE.

The benefits of carburizing iron, or adding additional carbon, were also well known in India. By the end of the first millennium ACE, iron had been classified into three different categories depending on carbon content, not measured of course, but based on physical properties. The Rasaratna samucchaya c. 900-1200 ACE classes iron into wrought iron (Kanta Loha), carbon steel (Tikshna Loha), and cast iron (Munda Loha), and further sub-divides these into sub-categories defined by the kinds of products they are suitable for.

            Indian cast iron was exported in large quantities to South East Asia, Persia, the Arab countries and to Britain and continental Europe till well into the 18th Century.

            Indian smiths preferred to use the forge-welding method of making large objects such as cannon or the iron pillar since this enabled them to use good steel, rather than the method of casting that was gaining ground in Europe by the 17th century. Relatively large discs or ingots were heated and joined to each other by hammering to form larger pieces and so on till the complete object was made. The Iron Pillar at the Qutab Minar still bears distinct marks that reveal the different places where such forge-welding was done. Limitations of scale as well as the huge quantities of charcoal required as compared to castings were among the factors that led to the decline of such techniques in India.

World-famous Wootz Steel               Even more famous than the iron-making was the renowned Indian high-carbon steel made by what the Europeans would later call crucible technique. This steel became known in Arabic as fulad and to Europeans as wootz steel, probably a corrupted form of the Tamil urukku (melted or molten) or the Kannada ukku with the same meaning. 

            Wrought iron was mixed in a crucible along with charcoal and glass, and heated till they combined and a relatively high-carbon steel was produced. The steel was then worked and given appropriate heat treatment such as heating and then cooling in air (annealing), or rapidly cooling it by immediately dipping it in different liquids to give it specific properties (quenching) or heating it again after quenching to particular temperatures so as to reduce its brittleness and give it more toughness (tempering), and so on.

Indian artisans knew and practiced numerous such heat treatment techniques and produced a wide variety of specialized iron, steels and products. Indian steel was made in vast quantities and exported by traders and merchants throughout Asia, the Middle-East and later Europe.

Wootz steel seemed to have been made in India perhaps in the second half of the first millennium BCE although it seemed to have come to the attention of the Arabs, Greeks, Romans and others a few centuries later. The famous Turkish-Greek historian Herodotus noted that Indian soldiers used iron or steel arrowheads in the battle of Thermopylae c.500 BCE. So famous was the Indian wootz, that when Alexander the Great came to India in the course of his conquests, he was gifted not gold or silver but 30 pounds of wootz steel! 

The renowned philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Varahamihira in his Khadagalakshanam (sword-making) c. 500 CE, gives detailed descriptions of the forging of sharp-edged swords.  He also notes various methods of quenching, such as in sheep’s blood, mare’s milk, oil and ghee. Various manufacturing and heat treatment methods relating to different kinds of products are recorded by scholars in Sanskrit or Pali texts in different periods over the centuries well into the medieval period indicating the depth of knowledge and sophistication of the blacksmiths of those times. The renowned scholar of Ayurveda and pioneer of surgical techniques, Susruta (ca.500-600 BCE) used a variety of steel implements and tools that are described in the Susruta Samhita, which is now believed to be a compilation spanning several centuries well into the first millennium CE. The Arthashastra, again a multi-author compilation over the period 300BCE-200CE, similarly details a variety of steel weapons and armour including chain-mail armour.

It appears that these skills and techniques resulted in products of unparalleled excellence for well over 1500 years. The Arab traveler and writer Idrisi wrote sometime in the 12th Century ACE that Indians excel in the manufacture of iron and what was known as Indian steel: “It is not possible to find anything that surpasses the edge of Indian steel (al hadid al-Hindi).” The technique of sword-making and imparting it strength without brittleness and an extremely sharp edge which did not lose its sharpness easily made Indian swords famous across continents.

The Europeans came to know these as Damascene swords or swords from Damascus because that is where they encountered them. One commentator during the Crusades marvels at how “one blow of a Damascus sword would cleave a European helmet without turning the edge or cut through a silk handkerchief drawn across it.” Another traveler described the characteristic wavy pattern of these delicately forged and tempered blades as “having a water pattern whose wavy streaks are glistening like a pond on whose surface the wind is gliding.”

Studies have shown that Wootz steel was high-carbon steel with 1-2% carbon which exhibits super-plastic properties, that is, where the object can change its external shape substantially without having to undergo internal physico-chemical changes.

Such tempered steel, whether made in India, China or Japan, even though made in fairly large quantities, was at the same time quite rare and was used mainly for swords and other weaponry, besides some artisanal tools. In earlier times, high quality steel swords were so uncommon that magical powers were often ascribed to them.

Indian iron, steel and swords were exported in large quantities even upto the late 18th century. There seems to have been large volumes of exports from major ports, so much so that these traders constituted a separate category by themselves. Although exports from the northern regions declined after the 11th and 12th centuries due to the frequent wars, change of rulers and consequent instability in that region at the time. It is recorded that the Dutch made huge profits from the import of Indian swords even till the 17th century. Indian iron too was rated very highly in Europe and large quantities were imported into Britain to make bridges and other construction even in the early 19th century. 

Secret skills                Clearly, all these materials, techniques and products would have required special skills and sophisticated techniques. In ancient and medieval India, metal working artisans specialized in particular metals or operations, and were formed into guilds or associations which also came to be characterized by hereditary caste and kinship relationships. Traders too were organized into guilds according to the wares they dealt with, praastarika being metal traders.

            Since the main buyers of metal goods were the rulers and their armies, rich folk, traders and other artisans, it appears that artisans were concentrated in towns and cities rather than in the more remote areas where ores were found and where, presumably, those artisans who extracted the metals from their ores still operated. It has been noted that during the period known as the “second urbanization” (6th to 3rd century BCE), towns and cities including ports of course were full of metal-working and other artisans.

            Eighteen different guilds (sreni, puga) of artisans have been noted, with guilds being led by a headman (pramukha) or elder (jyeshthaka) or leader (sreshtin). Panini’s  Ashtadhyayi mentions different types of artisanal groups functioning around the 4th century BCE, those who catered to ordinary people, again divided into two types, those who stayed at home and those who roamed about in search of work, and those who worked for royalty or the court (rajashilpi).           Numerous other documentary sources refer to two types of iron smiths, those who made wrought iron and those who made steel and weapons.

            This is not unique to India. In fact, almost all societies where metal working became an extensive and organized activity showed that artisan tribes, clans or other communities formed closed guilds or associations which closely guarded their techniques, skills and knowledge.

            As discussed in an earlier section, despite all the inter-civilizational exchanges and trade, therefore, knowledge and skills were not freely transmitted. Artisans zealously protected their knowledge and passed them on only within the family or other in-group. This is among the major reasons why this vast and sophisticated knowledge and highly-honed skills of iron and steel-making died out a few centuries after large-scale iron smelting and casting became known in Europe.

The ancient Indian techniques of iron and steel making were no longer viable and could not compete with the European industrial forms of production, even though the quality of iron and steel made in India remained superior for at least a couple of centuries till the industrial revolution and capitalism took solid root in Europe and squeezed out the renowned traditional Indian iron and steel-making techniques and knowledge.

6. INDIAN RHINOPLASTY: COSMETIC SURGERY

Cowasjee, a bullock-cart driver, in the employment of English troops, along with four other native sepoys was captured by Tipu Sultan during the Carnatic Wars. Taken prisoner, Cowasjee and other four sepoys’ noses were mutilated and their hand cut-off, as was the custom in those days. In fact not only the humiliated prisoners of wars, but for many alleged offences, such as adultery, witchcraft etc the shastras prescribed mutilation of nose as a punishment.

After a year without a nose, he and four of his colleagues submitted themselves to treatment by a lower caste bricklayer, who had a reputation for nose repairs. The operations were witnessed by Thomas Cruso and James Findlay, surgeons at the British Residency in Poona. They perhaps prepared a description of what they saw and diagrams of the procedure.

Cowasjee's and other four sepoys’ noses were reconstructed with a flap of skin rotated down from the forehead, a template of thin wax having been used to determine the size of the flap.

The amazed Englishmen wrote about the ingenious rhinoplasty, plastic surgery performed on the nose by an ordinary bricklayer, in the Madras Gazette of 5th August 1794, describing in detail the procedure used in the restoration.  Gentleman's Magazine in London picked up this news item and printed it on October 1794.

Until that time, nasal reconstruction in Europe was performed by a procedure attributed to an Italian professor of medicine from Bologna, Gaspar Tagliaccozzi druing 1597.  Tagliaccozzi first made two parallel incisions in the upper arm to partially cut away the skin. Then linen gauze is inserted under the skin flap and the rhinoplasty patient was kept on bed rest for 14 days. Once the skin flap adjusted to its reduced blood supply, the next stage of surgery was performed. In this second phase of rhinoplasty, the part of the skin flap closer to the face was cut free leaving the base attached near the elbow. The free edge was attached to the patient’s face, and the patient’s arm and shoulder then had to be immobilized in a leather vest with multiple straps.

The rhinoplasty patient had to remain with his or her arms tied to his face for three weeks. By that time the skin flap from the arm is grafted on to the face, skin at the arm was cut free and the new nose trimmed and shaped. Although the procedure resulted in a new reconstructed nose, as the arm was tied to the face and kept immobilised, results in a frozen shoulder.

In contrast the in Cowasjee's case, as described in the magazine, initially a wax nose pattern was made. The pattern was reversed, flattened and traced on patient’s forehead. The cuts were made along the traced line and the forehead skin flap was rotated 180 degrees and attached to the nose leaving a narrow bridge of skin intact between Cowasjee’s eyebrows. After about 25 days, the skin bridge was divided and the patient was kept on bed rest for four to five days. The donor site on the forehead was allowed to heal on its own, leaving a mirror image of a nose on the forehead.

Sushruta Samhita                  This collection by Sushruta vividly described numerous operations in various fields of surgery with significant contributions to Plastic Surgery. In addition to Rhinoplasty, Sushruta Samhita discuss various surgical procedures to correct pedicle flap, repair of ear lobe defects ,repair of traumatic and congenital clefts of the lip as well as classification of burns ,description of sharp (20 types) and blunt (101 types)instruments, practice of mock operations, cadveric dissection ,use of wine to dull the pain of surgical incisions, code of ethics and so on. The nose in Indian society has remained a symbol of dignity and respect throughout antiquity. In ancient times, amputation of nose was frequently done as a punishment for criminals, war prisoners or people indulged in adultery.

Rhinoplasty described in Sushruta Samhita is as follows: “The portion of the nose to be covered should be first measured with a leaf. Then a piece of skin of the required size should be dissected from the living skin of the cheek, and turned back to cover the nose, keeping a small pedicle attached to the cheek. The part of the nose to which the skin is to be attached should be made raw by cutting the nasal stump with a knife. The physician then should place the skin on the nose and stitch the two parts swiftly, keeping the skin properly elevated by inserting two tubes of eranda (the castor-oil plant) in the position of the nostrils, so that the new nose gets proper shape. The skin thus properly adjusted, it should then be sprinkled with a powder of liquorice, red sandal-wood and barberry plant. Finally, it should be covered with cotton, and clean sesame oil should be constantly applied. When the skin has united and granulated, if the nose is too short or too long, the middle of the flap should be divided and an endeavor made to enlarge or shorten it.”

The Sanskrit text of 'Sushruta Samhita' was later translated in Arabic by Ibn Abi Usaybia (1203-1269 AD). As the historical pages started opening up, the knowledge of Rhinoplasty spread from India to Arabia and Persia and from there to Egypt. The classical cheek flap Rhinoplasty of Sushruta was later modified by using a rotation flap from the adjacent forehead.  The Indian Method of Rhinoplasty was practised by bricklayers near Poona, Kanghairas of Kangra and so on and each group of people kept the technique as secret for centuries.

The report of this amazing nasal reconstruction operation performed in India, then a British colony published in a non-medical GK magazine attracted the attention of a British medical surgeon,  Dr JC Carpue. The report described the procedure as follows: “The surgeons belonging to the country cut the skin of the forehead above the eyebrows, and made it fall down over the wounds on the nose. Then, giving a twist so that a live flesh might meet the other live surface, by healing applications, they fashioned for them other imperfect noses. There is left above, between the eyebrows, a small hole, caused by the twist given to the skin to bring the two live surfaces together. In a short time the wounds heal up, some obstacle being placed beneath to allow of respiration. I saw many persons with such noses, and they were not so disfigured as they would have been without any nose at all.” Recognising the immense potential the Indian method, as it was subsequently called, had for rhinoplasty procedures, reducing the down time and also avoidance of the frozen shoulders, Carpue waited for an opportune moment to test it on a patient.  Dr Carpue successfully performed the first Rhinoplasty operation using the Indian method on October 23, 1814. Encouraged by the reports of Dr  Carpue Indian technique gained popularity amongst British and European surgeons. By 1897, at least 152 rhinoplasties had been performed in Europe.

Interestingly, whereas most Europeans seeking rhinoplasty had lost their noses in duels or battles, the Indian operation had been developed more than 2000 years earlier when the punishment for adultery was cutting off the offender’s nose.

The resurgence of Indian method began in the 1700s when British surgeons working for the East India Company saw the work done by Indian surgeons. What became known as the Indian rhinoplasty very quickly became the operation of choice for nasal reconstruction in Europe and America, in spite of the usual chauvinistic attitudes of European doctors. Later, with the dissemination and refinement of the technique it became an established procedure worldwide. Building upon the early rhinoplasty procedures described by Sushrutha, modern plastic surgeons today use modern aesthetic techniques and modernized version of the Indian surgical operation for nasal reconstruction.