SCIENCE IN ANCIENT FOUNDATIONS INDIA: OF KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION

Ancient India made significant contributions to the field of science. They developed advanced knowledge in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and metallurgy. Their discoveries and inventions laid the foundation for modern scientific advancements.

- 

TDG NETWORK NEW DELHI Ancient India was not only a land of spiritual inquiry and philosophical speculation but also a cradle of scientific innovation. Far from being an isolated culture of rituals and metaphysics, India's early civilization nurtured a deep engagement with empirical knowledge, logic, and the workings of the universe. Its contributions in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, metallurgy, and cognitive science laid the intellectual groundwork for many modern disciplines.

While the Western narrative often credits Greece and Rome as the origin points of science, recent findings in archaeology, Vedic scholarship, and historical texts have revealed that ancient Indian science, embedded in the Vedas and developed through millennia, was far more advanced and influential than previously acknowledged.

THE VEDIC ERA: SCIENCE BEGINS WITH THE SACRED India's earliest known literature-the Vedas-are repositories of profound scientific knowledge. The Rigveda, composed before 2000 BCE, presents a tripartite worldview of earth, atmosphere, and sky, aligning natural phenomena with elemental deities. Far from being merely religious, the Vedas and their appendices (the Vedangas) explored diverse scientific disciplines:

Kalpa (ritual and geometry) Shiksha (phonetics) Chhandas (metrics and mathematics) Nirukta (etymology) ● Vyakarana (grammar and logic) Jyotisha (astronomy and calendrics) These texts reflect a systematic effort to understand the universe in terms both outer and inner, laying the philosophical foundation of Indian science.