Kosla Vepa PhD

A synopsis of activities during the last decade A brief Bio of non Profit activities under the Indic Studies Foundation Books Published By, Kosla Vepa Publications of General Interest Events organized and presentations made Synopsis of my latest book Excerpts from the book Preservation of the heritage issues Quotable Quotes Encomiums

Kosla Vepa is a native of Andhra Pradesh state in India and has had the good fortune to have been brought up and have had his education in various parts of India including, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. He matriculated from Andhra University in 1955. Among the schools which he has attended are St. Xaviers College, Mumbai, Karnatak University (Hubli campus), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His highest degree is a Ph.D in the area of Engineering Mechanics. His professional and technical interests include successful research and development engineering experience in the Information technology, aero-engine and energy industries across the globe. Currently Dr. Vepa has significant interests in a wide variety of subjects including ontological principles in science and philosophy, Ancient Indian history, Vedas and Vedanta, Mathematical Sciences in India during antiquity, the growth and evolution of civilizations to name a few. His major activity is to further the aims and objectives of the Indic Studies Foundation, stated in the link below When he finds time he pursues his hobbies of photography and astronomy, Dr. Vepa resides in the San Francisco Bay Area

Books published by us
Series on distortions in Indian History
Volume I Astronomical Dating of Events & Select Vignettes from Indian history Edited by Kosla Vepa PhD, ISBN 978-1-4357-1120-4 Available from Amazon and Lulu.com Volume II The Colonial Paradigm of Indian History, Available at Lulu.com, papers presented at the WAVES Conference in Orlando, Florida Volume III The Pernicious Effects of the Misinterpreted Greek Synchronism, Available at lulu.com (monograph).This is a landmark contribution which effectively demolishes the so called Greek synchronism Volume IV The Reality of Knowledge Transmission, Available at Lulu.com Volume V The Origins of Astronomy, the Calendar and Time, ISBN 978-0-557-61097-6, Available from Amazon and Lulu.com
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Volume VI The South Asia File, ISBN 978-0-615-21391-0, Available from Amazon.com and Lulu.com Volume VII The Dhrmik Traditions Volume VIII Selected Essays from ICIH 2009. Volume IX Souvenir Volume of ICIH 2009 (while supplies last) Volume X Philosophy and Motivations for ICIH 2009 Published by Indic studies Foundation 948 Happy Valley Rd, Pleasanton, CA, 94566 Copyright 2010 by Indic Studies Foundation

PUBLICATIONS AND ESSAYS OF GENERAL INTEREST

Indic Studies Foundation Book Astronomical Dating of Events & Select Vignettes from Indian history The Societal Stockholm Syndrome India and the Great Game Whats in a name Debate on the origin of the Vedics India and US Missile defense Indo-US relations (circa 1999) A prolegomena to A History of the Indic Civilization Vedic Mathematicians in ancient India PartI Vedic Mathematicians in ancient India PartII Vedic Mathematicians in ancient India PartIII The South Asia File (monograph be published) Book The Dhaarmik Traditions (monograph to be published) Book Indology and Indologists a study of people and their motives Ancient Indic contributions to the Exact Sciences manuscript in preparation PhD Thesis The Indic Mathematical tradition, The Hindu Renaissance, Vol.IV no. IV, pp 19-24 Paper presented at the HEC 2006 in Los Angeles, Ca , Nov.2006 Source Book (Anthology) of Mathematics and Astronomy from Indic Antiquity (under construction) More at websites www.indicstudies.us , www.vepa.us/dir00 , www.kaushal42.blogspot.com , scribd.us/vepa

 Events organized & presentations made by Kosla Vepa and the ISF
2005a The south Asia file, presentation at Milpitas, CA , January 26, 2005 2006a The Indic Mathematical Tradition, HEC ,Los Angeles. This lecture is a highly popular one that I gave at several locations including The TANA Annual Convention , University of Himachal Pradesh, Simla, ISERVE, Hyderabad, Sanatana Dharma Hindu Unity Day, Dallas2007a , Pleasanton Public library. Astronomical dating and Select Vignettes from Indian history. Proceedings of the special session on the Distortions in Indian History, Dallas, Tx. 2008a Colonial Paradigm of Indian History , 6th WAVES conference, Orlando, Florida 2009a ICIH 2009 International conference on Indian history, Souvenir Issue has abstracts of 3 of the important papers 2009b The Indic Intellectual tradition, Invited lecture at Himachal university, Shimla 2009c The Great power rivalry over India, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai, January, 2009 2010a The origins of astronomy Eurocentric description of the development of the sciences, Hindu Unity Day of Sanatana Foundation . 2010b Montreal, CSPHM, Canadian Society of Philosophy and History of Mathematics. 2010c The Transmission of knowledge in the computational sciences during the ancient and medieval era , WAVES Conference , Trinidad and Tobago 2011a Preservation of Indian heritage in the sciences from antiquity, Delhi 2011b Challenges to the study of the sciences in India during antiquity, Visakhapatnam, India.

Synopsis of my latest book The Origins of Astronomy, the Calendar and Time
The writing of this book has been a highly satisfying experience for me. In so doing, I have learnt a lot about the Ancient Indic and his way of life. And yet we are still in the infancy of trying to decipher the Ancient Indic past and we have much to learn. I will first make some remarks on why I wrote this book. But before I do so I wish to share with the reader how my interest gravitated to this subject. It was during the late 60s and early 70 are that I went back to graduate school after a 5 year stint in industry in India, West Germany and Canada. My employment at the time I went back to School was not in jeopardy and I had completed a highly productive period where I had developed the first finite element computer code to evaluate the structural integrity of rotors used in aero engines. This was in 1967 when such codes were not available commercially and in fact the theory behind the method was only imperfectly understood by a small group of practitioners. The subject fell under the general rubric of Engineering Mechanics. The reason I went back to school was that I felt I had to augment my knowledge in the field of mechanics. During my Graduate Studies at Waterloo in Canada I came in contact with leading practitioners in the field of Engineering Mechanics. I developed an interest in the history of mechanics starting from Greece to Leonhard Euler and the development of Variational methods that would utilize the Principles of Conservation. In fact I give a brief account of the history of mechanics, especially the Global principles which are used to determine the equations, in my thesis. I read a lot about the history of mechanics, and one book that made a deep impression on me was Essays in the History of Rational Mechanics by Clifford Truesdell. From that point onwards I have maintained an abiding interest in the history of Mechanics and Mathematics1, since many of the practitioners in the field of mechanics were also first rate Mathematicians, a state of affairs that lasted virtually till the time of Hnri Poincar, arguably the last of the great mathematical savants of Europe, who was knowledgeable in a broad range of topics in the field of Mathematics.

As I was researching the history of mathematics, it dawned on me that a lot of the numerical techniques used in Engineering had their antecedents in the work of ancient Indic mathematicians. Until then I was focusing on Greek mathematics. But apart from the work of pseudo Euclid (who used little or no Algebra) and the work on conic sections by Apollonius, I did not find the Greek effort particularly rich in algorithms. It took many years for me to realize that most of the Algebra, Analytical geometry and Trigonometry, we deal with in High school and even at an undergraduate level, did not have its roots in the Occident. My desire to learn more about the Indic contribution continued to be hampered by lack of adequate texts on history of ancient Mathematics in the English language. While the situation was slightly better in French and German, the trail was very cold by the time you went back beyond 1400 CE and could not pick up any of the threads in the work of the Greeks. I came to the realization that there was very little extant of the Greek work in mathematics and this is even more true in the case of Astronomy. No European text could explain in a satisfactory manner why there was no progress in the sciences in Europe between the beginning of the common era and 1400 CE other than saying that the Church played a big part in structuring the content and extent of education. What is particularly galling is that the Occidental admits that all Greek work was lost to Europe, but he credits the Indic with getting their hands on the Greek work, even though these works were presumably lost at a very early time. It seems even more likely that whatever Greek texts that existed at that time became rapidly obsolete and were no longer reproduced because there was no longer any need for them. The stonewalling of the Indic contribution has strong parallels in the effort to emasculate the Indic tradition, and it is only after I read extensively in the Indology literature , did I realize that the whole pattern of denigration of the Indic past was a concerted effort to reduce the Indic civilization to an also ran category. The main reason for writing this book is that the real story of the Indic contribution to Astronomy has yet to be told. Few books give a coherent account of the Indic odyssey as it unfolds from the mists of antiquity to the pioneering work of Astrophysicist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar on the nature of the universe. If they do mention it at all, it is merely to say that they borrowed everything from Western historians of Mathematics (e.g. Toomer, Van der Waerden, Otto Neugebauer or David Pingree) as their authoritative source. Rarely will they mention a Primary source in Sanskrit, because they are not familiar with the literature in Sanskrit and they do not trust the Indians to tell the true story. They prefer to get the story from an Occidental who may not have read a single book in its Sanskrit original rather than get it from JIndian sources2 . The net result is a book filled with clichs where the content is already degraded from multiple levels of interpretation and inadvertent filtering of the original source.
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 Typical of recent books is one by Glen Van Brummelen on the Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth. This book is better than most since it mentions India and devotes a full chapter to India. But it makes the obligatory bow to the notion that India is a secondary source of developments when he titles the very first section in this chapter Transmission from Babylon and Greece. There is absolutely no evidence given of this vaunted transmission and yet we are asked to accept this statement unquestioningly. He then goes on to say that much of the origin is controversial and is marred by national pride. This is indeed a strange remark to make. It is accepted that the English should have pride in the achievements of Sir Isaac Newton but this would hardly be regarded as an issue in evaluating the work of Newton. Then he goes on to say that There seems little doubt that the spark for Trigonometry came from importing of some Pre-Ptolemaic version of Greek mathematical astronomy. The casual manner with which he makes this categorical assertion, and which denies the Indic civilization the originality of its contribution in Trigonometry is stunning in its certitude and hubris. He then goes on to cite Pingree as a starting point. This remnds me of an Indian Proverb that translates In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King. There is one final point to be made. Nowhere does he mention that there is an equal likelihood (and in my opinion a far greater one that it was the Greeks who learnt Mathematics and Geometry from the Indics). I amplify on the possibilities of this in the chapter on transmissions. The refusal to entertain such a possibility is a telling commentary on the lack of objectivity and Iwould go so far as to say that there is not even an attempt at such objectivity. I regard this book to be primarily a pedagogical text, despite the fact that I have glossed over important derivations I believe like the Bhyakras of yore in proper understanding of what we already know. The choice of material to include in the book always presents a dilemma. The scope of Ancient Indic Mathematics and Astronomy is so large that it would need several volumes to provide an exhaustive encyclopedic coverage. The alarming increase in the size of the book forced me to make difficult choices. However, we are planning a sequel to this text which will contain many of the missing topics as well as amplify on the main principles of the astronomy of the solar system as practiced by the ancients. The chapter headings are as follows; PROLOGUE, THE PARABLE OF THE LOST COIN CHAPTER I THE CELESTIAL SPHERE - INTRODUCTION TO CALENDRICAL ASTRONOMY CHAPTER II THE NAKATRA SYSTEM THE VEDIC LUNAR MANSIONS (MANZIL) CHAPTER III A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF INDIAN ASTRONOMY CHAPTER IV JAINA ASTRONOMY AND THE SIDDHNTIC ERA CHAPTER V THE KERALA ASTRONOMERS CHAPTER VI THE INDIAN NATIONAL CALENDAR (INC) CHAPTER VII ARCHEO-ASTRONOMY AND ASTRO-CHRONOLOGY CHAPTER VIII THE ASTRONOMY OF THE ANCIENTS
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CHAPTER IX THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION CHAPTER X A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON CALENDARS OF THE WORLD CHAPTER XI SELECTED SAVANTS CHAPTER XII EPILOGUE The time line for this study is a rather large one dating from the compositions of the Veda (6000 BCE), through the Stra period, the Pre-siddhntic period, the Jaina contributions up to the Siddhntic era, and finally ending with the Keplerian Newtonian formulations (17th century CE). I would like to think that the book would be of interest to a wide range of people. It should be of interest to the layman, as it provides a lot of reference material on History and the Calendar. It could serve as a textbook in a course on the history of Astronomy. It would serve as an excellent introduction for amateur astronomers and last but not least it could serve as a reference for graduate level research. THE CHALLENGE AND THE OPPORTUNITY The Indic civilization is under attack today both from within and without. So thorough has been the effort at devaluing this civilization, that large sections of the Indic populace do not feel a sense of ownership in the civilization and do not identify their evolution as being congruent with the continued viability of the civilization. The English language has made deep inroads into the subcontinent and its usage in India is irreversible. As envisaged by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the English educated Indic looks at Indic traditions from the viewpoint of an occidental. As we discuss the situation in Astronomy and the measurement of time in this book, it is clear that the reasons are manifold, but a growing ignorance of the Indic past is definitely high on the short list of the main causes. But with every challenge there comes an opportunity. The pervasiveness of English in higher Indian education presents an opportunity. The window into the achievements of the Occident that the English language has given us, provides us with a second wind, another chance to do comparative studies of the ancient Indic episteme vis a vis that of Greece and Babylon and show that the eternal verities and the Epistemes that the our ancestors have bequeathed to the modern Indic, are not just a flash in the pan, but part of an enduring tradition. In order to overcome this challenge, there are difficult tasks to perform; The first is to realize that a synthesis of Epistemes is possible, and an ongoing synthesis is indeed necessary for survival. The second is to define and articulate the goals, objectives and form of the synthesis The third is to successfully execute the synthesis. I propose that a major part of what I define as the Synthesis involves the mastery of the various streams of the Global episteme. The conventional wisdom in the Occident is that
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the Greek Episteme is regarded as pre-eminent. The mastery of different epistemes is not so easy, and would involve the learning of multiple languages (classical) such as Latin and Greek in addition to Sanskrit. I maintain that the Indic is in a unique position to do so , because his proficiency in English, so long as he does not abandon their legacy in Saskta This would allow Indians to make a case that the vaunted prowess of the Ancient Greek Epistemes is in fact a chimera and occurs centuries after their incidence in Indian manuscripts and even after the lapse of considerable time there is lack of epistemic continuity in the West. As we assert in the book, and there are several such cases described in the work by CK Raju, such a lack of epistemic continuity heralds a period where no further progress takes place, which is exactly what happened in Europe after Ptolemy. Could it be that the reason why we do not find a plethora of Ancient Greek texts in the computational sciences, prior to the beginning of the common era, invoking Ockhams Razor, is that they were superseded by better ones and fell into disuse because they were outdated and inaccurate. Once the linguistic mastery is achieved, one can focus on the synthesis of the 2 or more approaches. Such an effort would facilitate the synthesis of various Epistemes and Technologies such as Ayurveda and the Biological sciences. This is a task that courageous and inquisitive Occidentalists such as Jean Filliozat had begun but it is imperative that the Indic take the lead in this, so that he can define the direction and the metrics of such a synthesis. Part of the reason I wrote this book is to influence all my readers, regardless of their ethnicity, ideology, or geography to adopt a more global perspective on matters relating to History and philosophy of the sciences. Under such a perspective, few would feel compelled to defend or attack a viewpoint if the extent of the antiquity was the sole issue at stake. But the yearning for a competitive antiquity is not restricted to those of a particular ethnicity. It appears to be a predominant factor when a more aggressive and authoritarian civilization subjugates a people with a more advanced episteme. Time and again, this pattern of behavior has been the norm, where the aggressor has adopted the Episteme of the subjugated people, after devoting a massive effort to absorb the knowledge, and once he is fairly confident that he has been successful in this endeavor, he will turn around and assert precisely the opposite, that in fact it is the subjugated civilization that has borrowed the episteme and the resulting knowledge. Antiquity affects many factors that have a bearing on the sense of uniqueness that a people have of their own identity and a sense that continuity and longevity of a civilization bestows a modicum of a sense of wellbeing. A loss of epistemic continuity that is now being experienced in the Indian subcontinent has long term consequences for the manner in which the Indians will look upon themselves. Civilization is a fragile thing, if I may paraphrase Will Durant, the great historian who compiled the monumental Story of Civilization over a thirty year period, and it does not take much to obliterate a civilization. All it takes is an utterly ruthless individual who by the force of his personality, ideas and incredible energy, can compel a sufficiently large populace to do
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his bidding and you may rest assured that such an Individual will rise again. So how will the Indics handle such a situation in the future? Well for one thing, defeat under such circumstances is not an option and surely, the Indics will not get a third chance, when the patient was in comatose condition after the last 2 rounds. A decay of a civilization can also occur through sheer apathy and ignorance, when large sections of the populace remain happily oblivious of the past in a massive exhibition of epistemic amnesia. This is all the more sad when it occurs as a consequence of public policy adopted by the democratic representatives of an elected government and legislature. This book is not about the glories of a bygone era, where one bemoans the ephemeral nature of an enlightened past. It is a recounting of the irreversible nature of the changes that take place when a civilization is subjugated. Its traditions are ridiculed. Its history is rewritten, its language is driven into oblivion and any attempt to combat this assault albeit in a non-violent and scholarly manner marks the individual as a fundamentalist. The calendar, astronomy, and the story of time combine to make a fascinating chapter in the story of the Homo Sapiens, but it is the larger Civilizational canvas that I hope the reader will focus on. What do I take away from the writing of this book? My faith in the universality of the human spirit. If there is one thing above all that I treasure from this experience is that the love of science and mathematics does not recognize man made geographies, boundaries, ethnic classifications, language, social strata or economics. It is for this reason I find that the current Eurocentric emphasis which persists among authors even to this day to be a anathema and to be of a particularly egregious nature with which I have little sympathy and have no tolerance whatsoever.

Excerpts from the epilog

Ancient Indic Mathematical Astronomy had a unique character. The use of epicycles as well as eccentric circles were known to the Indics before the Greeks and are mentioned in the Srya Siddhnta, a text that is considered by informed Indic historians to be a literary document contemporaneous with the era prior to the common era.

We have given reasons why we believe that David Pingree (as well as his Guru Otto Neugebauer) was grossly in error when he made the oft-repeated assertion that India borrowed much from Greece. Obviously one must exercise due diligence and study the vast Indic literature before making such a priori judgments, judgments that David Pingree has been making since his introduction to the subject during the period when he wrote his PhD thesis on Greek transmission of Astronomy to India.

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We feel he is wrong both from a chronological standpoint as well as from epistemological standpoint. There is epistemological continuity in the approaches that the Indics used going back several millennia till the advent of the Colonial era. It is only after the mandatory imposition of English that such an epistemological continuity was broken. Currently the Indic is in the process of synthesizing the ancient episteme with the Occidental systems of knowledge that he has imbibed along with the English language and once he reaches equilibrium in this transition there is no reason why he may not continue to advance the state of the art as he once did.

While we have compared the Indic achievements to those in Greece, this was not to suggest that the Greeks contribution was insignificant, especially in the axiomatic approach to mathematics. The fact remains that the only extant documentation on Greek astronomy dates to a time that is significantly later than the Golden age of Greece. We take issue mainly with the current day Historians of Mathematics in the Occident whose main interest appears to be in claiming priority of invention in a retrospective manner in every field of human endeavor, and their unwillingness to concede priority to the ancient Indic even in those cases where there is no documentary evidence of the Greek effort. Trigonometry is a case in point. Their views are so full of clichs, that the final result is almost fatally flawed and banal to the point where it competes strenuously with the superficial views of India which I lump under the lumpen category of the Cows, Caste and Curry caricaturization of India, that is peddled as being representative of India. Unfortunately such superficial assessments abound among even the top rungs of journalists and public leaders in the occident. When such assumptions color their judgment, it is impossible to take the rest of the work seriously.

We have devoted an entire chapter to Astronomical dating, since we feel that the precession of the equinoxes provides a very reliable clock with a period of approximately 25,800 years. Such a large period is particularly fortuitous since this is in the same order of magnitude as the entire length of recorded history that spans about 10 millennia. We have run planetarium software for the entire matrix of 27*4 = 108 equinoctial/solstitial events for one complete precessional cycle that can be used as a reference, when the reader comes across such an event or observation to determine the date of the event. These calculations simulate the effects of the drift of the aphelion that takes about 120,000 years to complete one cycle. It is a simple matter to interpolate the dates of other events such as the equidistant locations on the sidereal zodiac (13.33, 26.67, 40 etc.).

While transmission of ideas and knowledge is a continuous process, we believe that there have been 4 periods in recorded history that can be characterized as periods of more than average transmission activity.

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1. The first wave of transmission during which there appears to have been a period where migration took place after the Dasarajna War (mentioned in the g Veda) where there was migration of Druhyus and other clans. The Kassites appear mysteriously in Babylon worshipping Hindu deities. The Ionians could very well be the culmination of the resulting Yavana migration.

2. The second transmission took place indirectly via Iran from Jundishapur, where Indic astronomy was well known when Alexander looted ancient Persia and had the loot of books shipped to Alexandria. 3. The third period of intense transmission occurred when an individual named Ganaka or Kanaka, presented himself to the Khalif al Mansur in Baghdad as an expert in computational astronomy. I include Al-Khwarismis work in this category. 4. The transmission that took place from 1500 onwards is the one that is most hidden from scrutiny, despite the fact that it is the most recent one, but we have cited at least 4 instances in the book of such a transmission and there are undoubtedly many more.
We have catalogued several instances where the Occidental has either ignored the Indic contribution or consciously belittled it. We have given the example of George Thibaut and George Kantor ignoring the prior antiquity of the Sulva Sutra despite the fact that they were aware of the Sulva Sutras and had in fact created an English version of the same. We have used the word Occidental on several occasions in this book. We feel that such a gross generalization of people living in such a vast area is nevertheless very appropriate, since it is by choice that the Western savant has chosen to be largely monolithic in his views on India, especially when it comes to topics that indicate a high degree of antiquity.

In those instances where the evidence was overwhelming that the Indics were responsible for a paradigm shift, leading to a greater capability such as for instance the impact of the decimal place value system on mathematical astronomy, he has for the most part, refused to acknowledge that the Indics had an advantage. He refuses to acknowledge that Europe was lagging behind in several fields including Mathematics and that it is only during the start of the colonial era that Europe decisively shot ahead.

The epistemic continuity of a civilization

The epistemic heritage of a civilization plays a key role in the history of the people. There are many questions to answer. What role does knowledge (Gyna) play in the ethos of the civilization? Does the civilization value knowledge for its own sake or does the knowledge need to have a utility in order for us to be motivated to pursue it? We have tried to belabor the point 13

that the ancient Indic has been responsible for bequeathing to India a unique epistemic heritage, the core values of which were universally appreciated. We have also made the point that the current perception of mediocrity of this civilization is only of recent vintage. There can be little doubt that the body politic of India is undergoing a massive epistemic rupture as we speak, a rupture that began when the colonial Overlord decided consciously to devalue the heritage of the Indian people. Before the Indian decides that there is very little to preserve from the past, he or she should inform himself of the true facts regarding the past. He should internalize the value of epistemic continuity in a civilization by studying the correlation between successful civilizations and the epistemic continuity in their history. Only then can he make an informed choice. India does not have a history is the popular refrain amongst Indologists west of the Bosphorus. In reality Indian calendars were far more accurate for most of recorded history and Indian records were superior compared to anything that Greece had in 2000 BCE or even as late as the Roman era. For example the Greeks did not have an Ahargaa system and had to do considerable guessing when there were gaps in the record. They reckoned their calendars in terms of the regnal period of the Archon of Athens. In fact it was only after the Julian day count was instituted by Justus Scaliger in 1582, was it possible to get an accurate day count from a day in the distant past. This explains why it is almost impossible to quote an accurate date of birth in the Occident, till a couple of centuries ago, unless you belonged to the Nobility or the Royalty. We trust that future generations of Indologists will not make such an asinine claim anymore. We have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the occidental claim to priority of Greek Science and Astronomy has absolutely no basis in fact and is accompanied by statements such as those of Pingree, that we quoted earlier History shows that essentially all of the methods and many of the parameters of Indian astronomy, prior and subsequent to the fifth century CE, were derived from Mesopotamia and Greece; it also is apparent that the planetary models of the Brahmagupta, ryaPaka, and Ardhartrika Paka are of Greek origin. So categorical is the assertion that most Indics faced with such certitude would tend not to question such emphaticity. This would be a major tactical error. If I may be permitted to paraphrase Bertrand Russells1 admonition; the method of simply assuming results, once one is persuaded that they are true, rather than trying to prove them, (as in the case of Greek priority over the Indics), has all the (accoutrements and )advantages of thievery over honest toil.

The legacy of the Ancient HINDU

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We are in agreement that the Copernican revolution ( a misnomer in more ways than one) was a major event in the history of the human species and caused a veritable explosion in the sciences, not because It was a major departure from the prevailing orthodoxy of looking at the problem in a purely geometric manner, but because it paved the way for a completely new paradigm the idea of conservative force field under which all celestial bodies would be constrained to move. Again, Copernicus, who was understandably circumspect about his work, need not have been unduly concerned for the simple reason that he did not stray too far from his predecessors and the Ptolemaic tradition, since he retained the 2 assumptions that had been the greatest obstacle to further progress in the Occident . They were

The retention of circular orbits as a fundament of their whole approach, even faced with data that clearly indicated otherwise. This is the Aristotelian Principle that no western astronomer could shake himself loose from because the Church was adamant that this principle was divinely ordained. Notice that the Indics remained characteristically nonchalant about circular orbits and nowhere do they make the assumption that circularity of the orbit is a necessary condition . In fact it is the judicious non recognition of the circularity hypothesis by the Indics (in fact I would go so far as to call it a circularity dogma (in as much as such a principle formed the core of the teachings of Aristotle) that had invited the scorn of successive historians(starting from Neugebauer and David Pingree in the occident) as being too crude. The second great mistake that he retained from Ptolemaic astronomy was the retention of uniform angular velocity postulate.

First let me make the disclaimer that the inherent assumption in treating these as independent assumptions, is one if it was made by a current day PHD candidate, would be considered to be a howler of such immense proportions that he would not be allowed to proceed on to his PhD . The reason why Copernicus failed in his approach, as did all the Occidental astronomers till Kepler , was this inability to see that once you made the assumption of circular orbits, you were doomed to remain in the gulag of uniform angular velocity. So that for religious reasons , Ptolemy was constrained to define an Equant which plays no useful role in his theory, other than as a fig leaf that he was worshipping at the altar of uniform angular velocity. We have ample evidence that the Indics realized that uniform angular velocity is an intrinsic property of circular orbits and that one cannot specify that property independently and expect it to remain a constant , once one has decided to abandon the circular orbit . In fact they allowed the radius of the deferent to vary in order to fine tune their models. My suspicion is that the Greeks, who were not sophisticated in Algebra, were incapable of including this

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refinement into their model, which is why we never see this in the prescriptive geometrically constructed Greek model. After I wrote the Origins, I was more than ever convinced that the revolution that ensued owed more than ever to the many astronomers that graced the Indian subcontinent, and should properly be termed the Aryabhata Nilakanta evolution , in honor of all of all the Indian astronomers who painstakingly ferreted out the secrets of the solar system.

Again as in the case of Analysis and the Calculus, we agree with Richard Courant that it make little sense to say that one individual was responsible for the evolution to a model where the physics was the key, but we can say that certain individuals like Sir Isaac Newton, the Great Swiss family of Bernoullis, Leonhard Euler , who regarded himself as belonging to the Bernoulli parampara and the wonderful work done by the bevy of French mathematical astronomers ( Joseph Louis Lagrange, Jean le Rond DAlambert, Pierre Simon de Laplace, Augustine Cauchy , Simeon Dennis Poisson) made major contributions to the new science of Mechanics. And so our story of the origins of Astronomy ends here at the point where Mechanics matures into a subject of study in its own right. This is where I had began my quest into the understanding of our universe four decades ago. Much water has flown through the Ganges, the Seine, the Elbe, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi ,during those decades but my love of Mechanics and Mathematics has never waned and my desire to see that proper recognition be given to those practitioners in the past who were brushed aside has kept me focused on telling this story, especially when nobody else came forward to do so. In the end , the Indics lost the battle for supremacy in the Sciences to the Europeans. It is our contention that he lost it in the Seventeenth century of the common era unlike the Occidental who argues vehemently that he never had such a supremacy. There is no shame in losing, if you have put up a good fight. It is not as if the products that he developed are forgotten. It would be hard to belittle the Indic contribution provided one is aware of the huge cornucopia of treasures and a legacy of thinking rationally about problems and habits of thought that will endure long after the Pyramids decay into dust. He has taught us how to count, how to convert an angular measure into a linear one, he was the preeminent master of the infinite series and on how to use analysis in the service of mankind, how to systematically solve a problem so that each step could be executed precisely as he would have wanted it implemented even after the lapse of a

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thousand years. Most importantly he cautioned us not to get too cocky with our mathematical models and assume they were divinely inspired , and by implication that we should be ready to discard our models once their usefulness had worn of . It is a matter of great pride for the Indians, the governing authority in India never resorted to the underhanded approach of the west whether it was in dealing with matters of real estate, war or the purloining of intellectual property, nor did they indulge in the savagery and butchery of the West which was replete with egregious acts such as the Inquisition , the genocide of the natives of Meso America , the pogroms of eastern Europe, and the massive pogroms instituted by the colonial authority in Gangetic Valley after the 1857 Anglo Indian war and finally the wars initiated by the European and mostly fought between themselves were the most bloody wars in human history. If the Occidental had applied the same criteria in 1857 as in the Nuremburg trails after World War II , the conduct of the British officers in 1857 would have been found to be beyond the pale of civilized conduct and these sorry specimens of humanity , such as the infamous Colonel Neill, who was subsequently promoted for this very same conduct to Brigadier Neill, would have been summarily found guilty and hanged from the nearest tree, a practice used ubiquitously by Judge Jeffries during the Cromwellian era. Such was the nature of of the bestiality he meted out indiscriminately to countless Indian civilians whose only crime was that they had a dark skin and were not of British Nationality. Lastly, it is a legacy of the eclectic character of ancient Hindu thought that valued all life forms and that no Indian was beheaded or even threatened to be beheaded on the pretext that his scientific findings violated prevailing traditions and beliefs.

We are confident that the reader who approaches this book with an open mind will be convinced that the book provides a fresh but what we believe to be an accurate perspective on the History of the computational sciences in Ancient India and its pioneering spirit in the ancient

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Quotable quotes from the book The OrigIns of Astronomy, the calendar and time,
A CRITIQUE OF THE CONVENTIONAL WESTERN NARRATIVE

nr. page 1 15.

quote Preface As I was researching the history of mathematics, it dawned on me that a lot of the numerical techniques used in Engineering had their antecedents in the work of ancient Indic mathematicians. Until then I was focusing on Greek mathematics. But apart from the work of pseudo Euclid (who used little or no Algebra) and the work on conic sections by Apollonius, I did not find the Greek effort particularly rich in algorithms. No European text could explain in a satisfactory manner why there was no progress in the sciences in Europe between the beginning of the Common Era and 1400 CE other than saying that the Church played a big part in structuring the content and extent of education. What is particularly galling is that the Occidental admits that all Greek work was lost to Europe, but he credits the Indic with getting their hands on the Greek work, even though these works were presumably lost at a very early time. It seems to us an even more likely scenario was that whatever Greek texts existed at that time became rapidly obsolete and were no longer reproduced because there was no longer any need for them. The main reason for writing this book is that the real story of the Indic contribution to Astronomy has yet to be told. Few books give a coherent account of the Indic odyssey as it unfolds from the mists of antiquity to the pioneering work of Astrophysicist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar on the nature of the universe. If they do mention it at all, it is merely to say that they borrowed everything from Western historians of Mathematics (e.g. Toomer, Van der Waerden, Otto Neugebauer, or David Pingree) as their authoritative source. Rarely will they mention a Primary source in Sanskrit, because they are not familiar with the literature in Sanskrit and they do not trust the Indians to tell the true story. They prefer to get the story from an Occidental who may not have read a single book in its Sanskrit original rather than get it from Indian sources2. The net result is a book filled with clichs where the content is already degraded from multiple levels of interpretation and inadvertent filtering of the original source.

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 4 Notes, I am reminded of the Parable of the Lost Coin. This is the story of the man looking for a lost coin in a well lighted area, when he knows he has lost it in a darker area of the garden. 609

When asked why he was looking for it where he certainly couldnt find it, the man replied But it is better lighted here and I can see what i am looking for. Clearly the Parable of the lost coin is entirely apropos here

5 18 This book is not about the glories of a bygone era, where one bemoans the ephemeral nature of an enlightened past. It is a recounting of the irreversible nature of the changes that take place when a civilization is subjugated, its traditions are ridiculed, its history is rewritten, its language is driven into oblivion, and any attempt to combat this assault albeit in a non-violent and scholarly manner marks the individual as a fundamentalist. I am particularly amused that otherwise intelligent people have begun to use the epithet of choice, the veritable nom de plume of being a Hindutvawadi. The calendar, astronomy, and the story of time combine to make a fascinating chapter in the story of the Homo Sapiens, and it is the larger Civilizational canvas that I hope the reader will focus on.

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What do I take away from the writing of this book? It is my faith in the universality of the human spirit. If there is one thing above all that I treasure from this experience is that the love of science and mathematics does not recognize man made geographies, boundaries, ethnic classifications, language, social strata, or economics. It is for this reason I find that the current Eurocentric emphasis which persists among authors even to this day and which resulted from the theft of vast portions of our intellectual heritage, to be an anathema and to be of a particularly egregious nature with which I have little sympathy and have no tolerance whatsoever.

Prologue - the Parable of the Lost Coin

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But in 1280 Europe was largely an intellectual backwater. It would be well over 300 years before Cambridge could boast a world-renowned scientist on its roster. The writings of the ancient Greeks were largely lost, and it was only after Toledo and its world famous library was conquered from the Moorish rulers of Andalusia and Southern Spain in 1085 CE that Europe was able to make strides in the various branches of knowledge thanks to the large number of Arab documents that now fell into the hands of the Spaniards at one of the greatest libraries of the middle ages. For example, Ptolemys Syntaxis, which survives today as the Almagest (from 3 the Arabic Al Majisti ) was translated into Latin from the Arabic reputedly by a Gerard of Cremona in 1175 CE. This was the sole text known as the Arabo Latin text, in Astronomy for the majority of the people in Europe during the ensuing centuries, until the 17th century

21

In 1068 CE id al-Andalus , as far as we are aware, the first historian of Science and as his name indicates from Moorish Spain, wrote Kitb Tabaqt al-Umam in Arabic (Book of Categories of Nations, Livres des Categories des Nations). The book was translated into French in 1835 by Regis Blachre4 and into English by Alok Kumar5 in 1992. The text was produced in Spain in the 11th century in which id was reported to have made the observation that only eight nations were interested in and comprehended Science6. These eight people were the Hindus, the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, and the Arabs. In this List, he placed the Hindus at the Head of the list because Les Indous, entre tout les nations, a traverse le sicle et depuis lantiquit, furent la source de la sagesse, de la justice et de la modration. Ils furent un peuple, donne de vertus pondratrices, crature de penses sublimes, dapologues universel dinventions rares et de traits desprit remarquables
This much is largely uncontested and it is abundantly clear that the high opinion that SAA had of Indic advances in the sciences was not an isolated instance. We mention Severus Sebokht, a Syrian Bishop, who studied astronomy, philosophy, and mathematics in the monastery of Keneshre (in present day Syria) on the banks of the Euphrates in 662 CE: (the following statement must be understood in the context of the alleged Greek claim that all mathematical knowledge emanated from them). Severus Sebokht was familiar with the work of Babylonian, Indian, and Greek science and was apparently irritated by the superciliousness of those who propagated the myth of the superiority of Greek learning.7 "I shall not speak here of the science of the Hindus, who are not even Syrians, and not of their subtle discoveries in astronomy that are more inventive than those of

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the Greeks and of the Babylonians; not of their eloquent ways of counting nor of their art of calculation, which cannot be described in words - I only want to mention those calculations that are done with nine numerals. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value"8. But all of those high opinions of Indic science were anathema to the Colonial power that went to Herculean lengths to undermine the high reputation of the Indics and continues to do so even today.

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Colonialism is only a recent manifestation of Eurocentrism. It is not merely the conquest of dominion of vast lands and exerting ones will on millions of people. It is more than the act of unleashing unprovoked violence on a distant people, a violence not restricted to the physical realm. It subjects the colonized to an epistemic rupture of vast proportions. This is the narrative of one example of such an epistemic rupture. We will tell the story (and the history) of such a rupture in the case of Astronomy and Mathematics. We will amplify on what we mean by an epistemic rupture9 in the following pages and recapitulate the status of the Indian in the modern era.

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But there should be little doubt in anybodys mind that the subjects of linguistics and philology were a byproduct of the discovery of Sanskrit. The discovery of Sanskrit is often touted as a great achievement of the Europeans. It is obvious that it played a significant role in the manner in which the Occidental defined his own identity, and had a definite but significant impact in the manner in which they viewed the Indians. This contrived but highly negative image of the Indians was a major factor in the subsequent story that we have to tell.

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There is also the Frawley Paradox10. There is the vast Vedic literature (see appendix D), but according to the current narrative of Ancient Indian History it has no location much less an archaeology associated with it. And the Sarasvati Sindhu civilization which has an immense amount of archaeology spread over 1.5 million square miles covering 2/3rd of the western half of the Indian subcontinent but according to the conventional wisdom has hardly any literature. The juxtaposition of these 2 artifacts occurring for part of their respective histories congruently in time and space should have suggested that Ockhams razor is again a logical alternative and that the Harappan civilization is a late stage of the Vedic civilization, perhaps the mature stage of the Sulva Stra era.

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There is a fundamental difference in the Weltanschauung of the Occidental versus the Vedantic concept of the heritage of humankind. The Vedantin regards the Universe as his playground and he rejoices in the triumphs of the human spirit unfettered by limitations of geography and race and identity politics. The primary consideration of the Occidental appears to be to ensure his primacy and the priority of his civilization. This is not to say that every Indic subscribes to the Vedantic ideal, but such ontology is rarely subscribed to in the west and perhaps is the likely explanation for the obsession that the Occidental has exhibited to claim priority in every field of endeavor and manufacture a competitive antiquity however incredible the resulting conclusions may be. The Occidental has tried his best to prevent us from seeing the Indic civilization in its totality, by denying us the autochthonous origin of various disciplines. He was extraordinarily vehement in defining the new chronology and was careful that no

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discovery should be attributed to India prior to the Golden age of Greece. And soon it became an axiom of Indic thought that we had borrowed everything from the Greeks and Indians today are caught in the web of a circular argument, where we assume the answer to the question 'when did the Indics discover this. Typical of such Indian writers (and almost no Indian writer has challenged the basic steel frame of the Indian chronology of Vincent Smith) was Gaurang Nath Banerjee who wrote about Hellenism in Ancient India, which was obviously written to placate occidental sensibilities in 1920.

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There hardly exists a history book in Astronomy that does justice to the fact that the ancient Indians left behind a staggering amount of literature11 for us to decipher. In fact the perception is just the opposite; that Information about Indian mathematics is hard to get. This is in large part a problem that western historians have created by imposing unreasonable standards of reliability. In many cases the standards were impossible to meet, especially as researchers were hampered in their due diligence work because of inadequate knowledge of Sanskrit. On the other hand, these standards were never demanded of similar sources from Ancient Greece. As a result the bias against Indic contributions in antiquity has been institutionalized to a large degree.

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Thus, the study of the Indic contribution to the Computational Sciences has languished under a diminished set of extreme alternative hypothesis, one of which asserts that everything that the Indic developed in the exact sciences, was borrowed from Greece (or Babylon). Such an oversimplification is a familiar tactic used in denigrating ones adversary, and is known as Reductionism. The underlying assumption is that India has been for the most part a cultural cul-de-sac, where nothing new originated. This is what we term the Hegelian Hypothesisxii and it has been the fundamental assumption that most historians from the Occident have adopted largely ignoring the vast amount of Indic literature, where it was not consistent with their hypothesis.

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The other fundamental problem is the faulty chronology that he has bestowed upon India. It does not matter whether this was deliberate or inadvertent. The myopic Eurocentric view that has become the accepted doctrine has had serious repercussions for the historian of science studying other cultures. By postulating the impossibly late migration of a mythic race of people the present narrative has completely garbled the entire history of India. It is easy to understand the British rationale behind such a narrative when several historians were paid to write such a history in the nineteenth century. The idea was to project that the English were simply the latest in a string of invaders to have invaded the subcontinent and have therefore as much right to rule over you as the intellectual leadership of the country who have been the real exploiters of the common folk. Never mind that the Colonial power ruled over India with an Iron fist (e.g. No Indian could own firearms) and the only person who could exploit the Indians was the colonial overlord. It made a good story and provided the Indians with a punching bag that was within their ambit. By inventing and making the late arrival of the mythic ryans a fait accompli, the narrative killed several birds with one stone. Indian chronology became a hostage to the late arrival of the Indo ryans that leads to the coup de grace. Because of this late arrival he the Indo Aryan could not have developed anything worthwhile before the Greeks and the Babylonians. We are aware that victors write the history of a vanquished nation. But nave as the Indics were, they did not dream that the resulting story would be so diabolically different from reality. Implicit in all this is the racist notion that only the Indo ryans (a euphemism for Europeans) were capable of undertaking the truly hard tasks the development of Sanskrit, the development of astronomy etc.xiii, and 27

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Otto Neugebauer (ON) in the introduction of his classic on The exact sciences of Antiquityxiv. THE INVESTIGATION OF THE TRANSMISSION OF MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY IS
ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL TOOLS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELATIONS BETWEEN DIFFERENT CIVILIZATIONS. STYLISTIC MOTIVES, RELIGIOUS OR PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINES MAY BE DEVELOPED INDEPENDENTLY OR CAN TRAVEL GREAT DISTANCES THROUGH A SLOW AND VERY INDIRECT PROCESS OF DIFFUSION. COMPLICATED ASTRONOMICAL METHODS, HOWEVER, INVOLVING THE USE OF ACCURATE NUMERICAL CONSTANTS, REQUIRES FOR THEIR TRANSMISSION THE DIRECT USE OF SCIENTIFIC TREATISES AND WILL OFTEN GIVE US VERY ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TIME AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF CONTACT. IT WILL ALSO GIVE US THE POSSIBILITY OF EXACTLY EVALUATING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OR MODIFICATIONS, WHICH MUST BE CREDITED TO THE NEW USER OF A FOREIGN METHOD. IN SHORT THE INHERENT ACCURACY OF THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES WILL PENETRATE TO SOME EXTENT INTO PURELY HISTORICAL PROBLEMS. BUT ABOVE AND BEYOND THE USEFULNESS OF THE HISTORY OF THE EXACT SCIENCES FOR THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN GENERAL, IT IS THE INTEREST IN THE ROLE OF ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE IN H UMAN T HOUGHT T HAT M OTIVATES T HE F OLLOWING S TUDIES.

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Preservation of heritage issues

Why is it a necessity to discuss preservation of heritage and why now ?
The original idea for a seminar ,was that of Prof Shivaji in response to my query, which was essentially a 'now what' question. And then somebody remarked that we would probably get across our message more readily if we were perceived to be m0re constructive and concentrated on what should be done given that the current history is not only false but ridiculously so , rather than harping on what was false (almost everything BCE) So the obvious answer is that we should preserve what is left. As a historian of science, first step in this process is my responsibility to right the record of this process, so people do not make false conclusions . Take the example of Sanskrit. The popular refrain amongst westerns scholars is that they study Sanskrit for linguistic reasons. But do you really believe that the East India company, which is a company known for being extremely mercenary paid Max Mueller 4 shillings a page to study the arcane connexions between Sanskrit and German. Clearly the probability of the answer being yes to such a question is extremely low. Clearly what they wanted to know was whether the books contained knowledge they could use. It seems incredible to our post independence generation who are bred on constant propaganda that India could do nothing right and they would be astounded that a company which made money by buccaneering (trade was a euphemism for raiding merchant ships in the high seas) would have such a high opinion of India's knowledge.

Why Is preservation so important and what would be the consequence of not preserving our heritage
But now we know that the reason why they had such a high opinion of India's technological prowess was throughout history India had a high reputation for technological prowess and they hoped to make a quick buck out of any easy answers they may find in the Veda and the associate books. It is Bernard Cohn at the university of Chicago that first bought the attention of the western world to the role played by knowledge in Colonialism in his landmark publication Colonialism and its forms of knowledge While we in Asia are pretty blas about this sort of thing (one Indian Muslim listener was totally unimpressed by my recounting of the Colonial effort at rewriting our history ; his response was 'What do you expect ' when you are conquered' in contrast to the average westerner who is convinced of the moral superiority of the west and tends to be shocked when told that theft was the Occupation of the East India Company . So getting the record straight is the first part of the effort and my book is a recounting of the theft and the vast epistemic rupture that accompanied the theft , that in turn was the result of denuding India of its Sanskritic. Heritage. Having established that intellectual theft occurred on a fairly significant scale, it becomes easier for me to establish that the effort to remake the Indian in the image of the Conqueror, was not an altruistic one, where he wa concerned about the future

competitiveness of his Indian subjects as Macaulay would have you believe in his minute on education but one designed to defang the intellectual in Indian society by making him start all over and turn him into a Baboo ( Bernard Cohn refers to this transformation in Indian Society although not in such Graphic terms).I am not saying that Indians were fooled by his minute on education, because the vast majority of the Indics were skeptical of his approach and intentions. But the critique was directed more at his assumptions rather than on his intentions .The assumption being that the Indian system of knowledge was inferior in every way to the Occidental system. But i am deeply skeptical that a man of such superlative attainments as Macaulay would have been so obtuse that he would have failed to see much that could be emulated in the Indian system. Now we know that the best kept secret during the colonial regime was the extraordinary number of intelligent individuals that studied the Indian system so thoroughly. So my contention is that he was far more prescient. He realized that left to their own devices, there would be a steady stream of Indic scholars that would challenge the British contention that India was just a jaded left over from the impregnations of a superior intellect which later came to mean the Aryans. Now we know that the best kept secret during the colonial regime was the extraordinary number of highly talented Occidentals who studied India for nearly all of their adult Professional life so thoroughly that they spent a lifetime studying, and that is how Indology became a separate field of study.. So my contention is that he was far more prescient. He realized that left to their own devices, there would be a steady dissemination of Indic scholars that would challenge the British contention that India was just a jaded left over from the impregnations of a superior intellect which later came to mean he Aryans. See the quote I have of Rouse Ball where he expresses such a racist sentiment. So you say, I have heard all of this before, that a large number Europeans studied India for their entire life. I knew that. So what else is new1 It would be refreshing to admit that there is a large universe of thngs that one knows nothing about. But the real value of a factoid is the inferences he can make of it. So, here is the punch line of this story . But first we have to place one more factoid on the table, namely that it was Macaulay who hired Friedrich Maximilian Mueller to translate the sacred books of the east , But herein lies the conundrum. If as he himself vociferously proclaims that the general knowledge of the Indics would draw the ridicule of school girls (the exact quotes can be found in My South Asia File appendix where I have reproduced also his minute on education but noteworthy here is the subtle gender put own.) and he feels that Sanskrit is not a language worth learning, so much so that he forced the entire population to learn English, what is he doing paying a Mediocre student of Sanskrit , the princely sum of 4000 shillings a year or 200 Pounds in the year 1860. At one time in my career i was offered 400 pounds (circa 1964) a year, so 2oo pounds in 1860 was a very comfortable wage and needless to say Ma Mueller retired a very rich and wealthy man. But I hope by this time the light bulb has exploded and that the real reason why he wanted the intellectual leadership to switch to English was not out of concern for their well being an to integrate them in the English speaking world, but to prevent them from

1

one rarely admits to hearing a fact for the first time

retaining their lead in Sanskrit an set them back by several generations, so that they would no longer be competitive and would undoubtedly be able to shape their heads so that their ideas would be consonant with helping the British run their empire. I have often said that while the British did many things in India about which they should be ashamed they were not a particularly diabolical people. While this may be true of the population in general, the same cannot be said of the ruling classes We only saw the arrogant side of them but their diabolical nature was evident was evident on more than a few occasions. The three that come to mind, are The widespread pogroms they unleashed on civilians in the aftermath of the unsuccessful 1857 Anglo Indian War, the utter callousness with which they handled the famines in India, and the truly diabolical plan to reduce an intellectually vibrant society to an illiterate and penurious one. The next step is in the preservation of this knowledge. While engaged lifespan in this endeavor i make no pretense that everything in ancient India is of equal relevance to us. Ours is too short and if we are not discriminating, we may end up making very little or no progress. While we can offer criteria for this endeavor, my preference is to let the free market decide what it wants to keep and study further. But now he has more data and is better armed to make an informed choice.

1

Russell Bertrand, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, New York and London, 1919, p.71
3

Claudius Ptolemy called his work the , Megaly Syntaxis, Great System of Astronomy. It was translated by Al Thbit ibn Qurra circa CE 880 after the Khilafat of the 7th Abbasid Khalf Al Maamun and the name of the translation was Al Kitb al Majisti, the Greatest Book. In the early years after the translation into Latin from the Arabic in the late 11th century or early 12th century, even as late as CE 1515 it was known as the Arabo Latin translation. The direct translation from the Greek was available only in the 16th century, from a Vatican manuscript. One wonders why the Vatican took 16 centuries to find this manuscript. The premise here is that only the Vatican had the means, motive, and opportunity to control the dissemination of such a well known document. It is also a legitimate question to ask why the Almagest is always referred to as Ptolemys Almagest, when in fact he never wrote a book with such a title.
4

Rgis Blachre Le Livre de la catgorie des Nations

aid Al-Andalusi Science in the Medieval World: "Book of the Categories of Nations" (History of Science Series) (Hardcover) translated by , Semaan I. Salem (Author), Alok Kumar (Editor)
6

Richter-Bernburg, Lutz (1987). id, the Toledan Tables, and Andalus Science. In From Deferent to Equant: A Volume of Studies in the History of Science in the Ancient and Medieval Near East in Honor of E. S. Kennedy, edited by David A. King and George Saliba, pp. 373401. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 500.
7 8

Nau, Franois, Journal Asiatique 3 (13) (1899): 56-101, 238-303.

Nau, Franois. (1910) Notes d'astronomie indienne. Journal Asiatique 10 Ser. 16, 209 - 228. Needham, J. (1959) Science and civilization in China vol. .. www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/science+society/lecture6.html. Franois Nau (May 13, 1864 at Thiel September 2, 1931 at Paris) was a French Catholic priest, Mathematician and specialist in Syriac studies and other oriental languages. He published a great number of eastern Christian texts and translations for the first and often only time.
9

Episteme, a system of understanding or a body of ideas which give shape to the knowledge of that time. We use the Term Vedic Episteme in the sense of the Prama, means of obtaining knowledge and Pram; the correct knowledge obtained through rigorous reasoning and includes such methods as Pratyaksha, Upamna, Anumna, Anupalabdhi, Arthpatti, and Upapatti.
10

Named after David Frawley see for instance In search of the Cradle of Civilization, Wheaton, Illinois, Quest Books, 1995
11

David Pingree, Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit (CESS) five volumes, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia,1970.
xii

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Wrttemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. His influence has been widespread on writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (F. H. Bradley, Sartre, Hans Kng, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, Karl Marx), and his detractors (Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schelling). He introduced, arguably for the first time in philosophy, the idea that History and the concrete are important in getting out of the circle of Philosophia Perennis, i.e., the perennial problems of philosophy. He also stressed the importance of the other in the coming to be of self- awareness (see master-slave dialectic). We are primarily concerned here with his ideas on Indic studies. The invasion theory of Indian History was first postulated by Hegel in his Philosophy of History that India lacked

historical agency and that India was a cultural cul de sac from which nothing worthwhile ever emanated. It strikes every one, in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products, and those of the profoundest order of thought, has no History. Hegel, G. W. F. (1956). The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree, New York, Dover Publications, Inc.
xiii

Kosla Vepa The South Asia File

27 Kosla Vepa The Pernicious Effects of a Misinterpreted Greek Synchronism Paper presented at the ICIH2009
xiv

Otto Neugebauer The Exact Sciences in Antiquity first published in 1957 by Brown university press, republished by Dover publications, New York, NY, in 1967 Encomiums Kaushal has inspired me to read history passionately. he has contributed immensely to enhancing the world view of Indians inside India and abroad. January 2, 2008 1 st Dinesh Neelavar, Bus Dev, Telecom worked directly with Kosla at Non Profit Foundation Kaushal (Kosla) is a deep thinker and researcher. In his work at the Indic Studies Foundation he demonstrated how one can apply the "scientific method" while studying historical issues. He rarely forms an opinion until he studies all sides of a controversial issue. As the bulk of Indian history was written from a colonial perspective, it is important to revisit those issues from an unbiased, scientific viewpoint and validate earlier theories in light of modern evidence. This, I believe, is the strength of Dr. Kaushal Vepa and the Indic Studies Foundation. December 13, 2007 1 st Rao Vemuri, Owner, Eco Foundation was with another company when working with Kosla at Non Profit Foundation

I have known Dr Kaushal Vepa for more than 8 years. He is a learned and very well read person with expertise in many domains. His prodigious memory and sharp analytical abilities bring light to many aspects that are otherwise missed by traditional experts. He has excellent communication skills, always concise, to the point and fully leverages his excellent command on English and many other languages. preservation Dr Kaushal is one of the best experts in the world on Indian history, culture, politics and science, as well as world geo-politics, history & culture. His scientific and engineering background gives him an insight that most Indologists miss. I am thankful to Dr Kaushal for his leadership, guidance and support to India Research Foundation, as well as other India centric organizations. He is one of the greatest person I have met, and it my privilege to be associated with Dr Kaushal Vepa and to learn from him. December 10, 2007 1 st Arun Sharma, Co-founder, India Research Foundation worked directly with Kosla at Non Profit Foundation Kaushal was very helpful in articulating our objectives of our project and was the most significant contributor on how we run our project at india-forum . His articles on history and Hinduism are very popular and very intuitive which brings in a fresh insights. December 10, 2007 1 st Muthukumar Prakasham, Owner, Rhytha Web Solutions worked directly with Kosla at Non Profit Foundation I had occasion to first meet with Shri Kosla Vepa last year when I presented a paper at the conference on Indian History organized by him and his Foundation. I am much impressed by the yeomen service he is doing in the cause of the Indic learning, cultural and historical research, and especially applaud his commendable contribution of facilitating active participation in these subjects by the non-professional, part-time, aspiring or amateur researchers. I also recommend his very insightful and thought provoking book The South Asia File. January 31, 2010 1 st Sarvesh Tiwari, Senior Principal Consultant, Genpact LLC (Formerly GE Process Solutions) was with another company when working with Kosla at Indic Studies Foundation Additional Information Websites: