Home Ancient History 7 Ancient Indian Inventions …

7 Ancient Indian Inventions

That Will Surprise You
Ancient Indians have contributed to shaping
the world in ways you probably couldn’t
imagineI From plastic surgeries to the
conceptualization of intellectual theories,
there are many extraordinary ancient Indian
inventionsI

Nov 1, 2020 • By Simran Sood, BA History and

Anthropology :in-progress<

Bakhshali manuscript, the Oldest record of Zero Symbol :Dotted

form<, 3rd-4th century CE; Elephant-headed child Ganesha,
13th century CE; Chert cubed-weights excavated at Chanhu-
daro, Indus Valley, 2400-1700 BCE

In the quest for historical and

archaeological documentation, people
usually observe, preserve, and interpret
the in-your-face evidenceI Materialistic
proofs such as monuments, palaces, etcI and
written sources are prioritizedI Along the
way, the smaller, but not insigniMcant,
developments and historical achievements
are discardedI It is important to acknowledge
the involvement of such material and
philosophical contributions in the
progression of the march of historyI We will
do so below by looking at some important
ancient Indian inventionsI

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···

The Indus Valley

Civilization And Ancient
Egyptian Inventions

Terracotta bull, Indus Valley Civilization, 2600-1900 BC, via

the British Museum, London

Ancient India, in this manner, has done its

share of revolutionizing and popularizing its
originations to the present-day human
societyI The Indus Valley civilization, rivaling
the likes of Egyptians and Greeks, played an
important role in establishing important
milestones in epistemology, arts and crafts,
technology, clothes and fabrics, metrology,
genetics, industrial production, and every
other Meld imaginableI Read about the
antiquity and current inVuence of seven such
ancient Indian inventionsI

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···

7: The Concept Of Zero

Bakhshali manuscript, the Oldest record of Zero Symbol :Dotted

form<, 3rd-4th century CE, via University of Oxford

Present mathematics owes it to ancient

Indian scholars for developing the skill of
countingI Trading of materials and ideas was
a prevalent activity between ancient India
and ancient Greece, and hence, there are
many records of the exchange of
mathematical ideas between the two
civilizationsI Even though Greece is credited
for contributing some opinions on the
concept of zero, the world of Math was
revolutionized by ancient Indians in 500
CEI

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···

In the long list of surprising Indian

inventions, the astronomer Aryabhata is
always cited for Mrst using the expression
‘Kha’ for zero in his numbering systemI
Through him, zero had Mnally gained a
positional valueI Its purpose now shifted
from being a mere named concept to
becoming a number in its own rightI 100
years later, you see another scientiMc genius,
Brahmagupta employing the word sunya
_empty`, widely-used in present-day India, to
denote zeroI Various synonyms such as akasa
_sky` are used in later years, connoting to the
idea of an ‘empty circle’ and imagining the
concept of zero in diaerent forms, apart
from simply tallying numbersI This is how
the concept of zero transformed from an
adjective to a noun _proper number`I

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The notion was spread towards the Western

lands by Arab tradersI One important thing
to remember is that zero was not conceived
for computation, rather, as a part of a system
used for storing numbersI Indians and
Greeks, on the other hand, performed their
computations on sandboardsI Based on
inscriptions found in these two ancient
societies, there is a lot of debate as to which
civilization should be credited for assigning
the symbol ‘O’ to the concept of zeroI

6: Plastic Surgery: Facial

Reconstruction

···

Elephant-headed child Ganesha with Parvati, his mother, seated

on his lap, 13th century CE, via the British Museum,
London

Today, the practice of plastic surgery is

seemingly as important in the show business,
on an international level, as having actual
skills and talentsI These aesthetic surgeries
are certainly on the list of Indian inventions,
whose mentions you will Mnd throughout the
myths and historical texts of the
subcontinentI

···

The theory of reconstructive surgery is

recorded in Indian sources as old as 4000
years agoI Vedic records of the time retell
the story of Shiva, a Supreme Hindu deity,
replacing the head of his dead human son,
Ganesh, with the face of an elephant babyI
According to these sources, the knowledge of
Ayurveda _the science of life` was passed
down from Brahma, another Supreme Hindu
deity, to Sushruta, the son of King of
Banaras, through a chain of gods and
humans acting as the connecting linksI

Sushruta then gathered all these learnings,

including information about plastic surgery,
in Sushruta Samhita, a section of the famous
four-part religious texts called the VedasI
Many of the practices prevalent today, such
as a nose job or skin grafting, are mentioned
by SushrutaI He describes the surgery of
rhinoplasty in great detail, with steps as
informative as using the patient’s cheek or
forehead Vap to reconstruct a person’s noseI
Another source from 4th century India
discusses the use of plastic surgery in
Ashtanga Hridyans by the great ancient
Indian scholar AthreyaI

···

5: Weights: A System Of
Measuring

Chert cubed-weights excavated at Chanhu-daro, Indus Valley,

2400-1700 BCE, via the British Museum, London

···

The Indus Valley civilization is an evolved

and recently-discovered ancient cultureI The
Harrapan and the succeeding cultures of that
time are credited with inventing many of the
common things we use today, especially in
the system of measuring— for instance, the
ruler and the weightsI In the 1930s, Mfty-
eight cubed weights were discovered at
Chanhudaro, an archeological site of the
Indus Valley civilization which can be
located in modern-day PakistanI

The Indian inventions, dated 2400-1700

BCE, were made using the decimal and
binary mathematical systems of
measurementI The pieces discovered were
multi-colored, made of diaerent sands, and
came in diaerent shapes and sizesI
Metrologists estimate that the stones were
Mrst shaped with a chisel, and then stroked
on smooth surfaces till the required mass
amount was achievedI

···

The Indus Valley people were extremely

careful in producing these weightsI Over
time and space, with a gap as wide as seven
centuries, the level and degree of precision
of the mass weight remained very accurate,
with a margin error more or less than only
two percentI In addition to their mastery at
hand-crafting, the weight range establishes
that the Indus people were also aware of the
usage of the powers of ten, the basis of the
decimal system, and also employed numbers
of large values in their computationsI

4I Chess: Originally Four

Players

···

Ivory chest-piece, a man seated on two horses, 17th century,

India, via The British Museum, London

Chess is considered a game for intellectually

evolved peopleI However, even in olden
times, the model of Chaturanga _the four
divisions`, the most famous one out of the
two premature Indian inventions of the
board game, was played by the IndiansI
Robert Caplan designates the time of
development for the strategy game anywhere
between 3000 BCE – 500 CEI The game
reached Persia and Europe through the
ArabsI

···
This infant Indian invention of chess had 64
squares and unlike its present counterpart,
was played by four people instead of twoI
Each player had eight pieces: four pawns,
king, bishop, knight, and rookI Alternatively,
in place of a six-faced dice, an oblong one
was usedI In addition, the players facing each
other were allied and two teams were
formed based on the opposing directions of
their seating positionsI

In a general understanding, chess is

attributed to have Mrst been mentioned in
the Puranas, a collection of 18 religious texts
in ancient Indian literatureL Legend says that
to amuse Ravana, the villain of the epic
Ramayana, with imagery of warfare, his wife
invented the game of chessI Mahabharata,
another Indian saga, recounts how the
Pandava brother Yudhishthira lost his
kingdom, estates, riches and even, his wife to
the sly Shakuni in a game of diceI

···

3: Cotton: Natural Fibers

And Cultivation

Indian man and woman of Punjabi descent card cotton, :possible<

geographical successors of Indus natives, 19th century, India,
via The British Museum, London

···

Arguably, cotton is the most commercialized

commodity in the worldI With another
achievement under its belt in the long list of
Indian inventions, Indus Valley civilization
had started growing cotton way before
anyone elseI While the ancient Greeks
adorned goatskins and other animal hides as
clothing, ancient Indians had started
cultivating cotton in the 5th-4th millennium
BCEI

Greek philosopher Herodotus describes

Indian cotton as “a wool exceeding in beauty
and goodness that of sheep”I Other accounts
describe Indian cotton to be “woven in
winds”I The Arab merchants carried the
notion of cotton cultivation to Greece and
then Europe in 800 CEI The oldest cotton
thread, dated to the Neolithic age, was found
at the archeological site of Mehrgarh and
RakhigarhiI

···

The Indian invention cotton has been a part

of its national identity for many centuriesI
The colonial desire for the trade of cotton
fabrics was a driving factor behind British
imperialism in 17th century IndiaI Hence,
the charkha, cotton spinning wheel, and
khadi, plain cotton cloth, were symbolic of
the struggles of the Indian independence
movement in the mid-1900sI

2: Yoga: Connection Of
Mind And Body

···

Yoga Narasimha in powerful discipline pose, Vishnu in his Man-

Lion Avatar, 1250 CE, South India, via Yoga: The Art of
Transformation Exhibition, Cleveland Museum of Art

The term yoga has varied meanings in the

Sanskrit lexicon, ranging from the noun
chariot _200 BCE–400 CE` to the union of
the body with GodI It is in the 3rd century
BCE we see that the God of Death makes the
comparison of the body and intellect to the
rider and the chariotI In the text Kathaka
Upanisad, Nachiketa, the youngest brother of
Pandavas, is made privy to the three
foundations of yoga: the importance and
physiology of the human body; the
connection of the individual to the Supreme
being; and, the components of the mind and
bodyI

···

Buddhist and Jain schools of philosophical

thought also embody the yogic theory in the
later yearsI Between 300 BCE-400 CE, the
Yogic theory had been immortalized into
some core principles that inVuence our
understanding of the concept in this day and
ageI It employed all forms of human
philosophy: cognition, perception, divine and
supernatural knowledge, and consciousnessI

Two stances on the modern popularized

practice of Yoga stop it from being
incorporated everywhere for the global goodI
The elitist Christian yoga-phobic mentality
on one hand, and the listing of yoga amongst
Indian inventions, do not allow the followers
of Christianity and Hinduism to intermingle
with this notionI The idea of globalization
and an inter-connected world dies out as
these groups resist the acceptance of cultural
realities diaerent from their ownI

···

1: Cataract: An Indian
Invention In Medicine

Sushruta Samhita Palm Leaf, 12th-13th century, Nepal, via

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

···

The Bower Manuscript, named after the

discoverer who unearthed the Sushruta
Samhita _the book of medicine` in Turkestan,
1890, details the possible variety of
procedures and diseases for the beneMt of
humankindI The translation by Bhisgratna in
1907 recognizes the physician Sushruta, as
the writer, and for his contributions to the
philosophical and procedural theories of
medicineI In this book, there is mention of
couching, the operation used in the
treatment of cataractI

Sushruta describes the procedure of cataract-

couchingI He outlines the removal of cataract
in various steps, by the use of a pointed
instrumentI The main task is to disturb the
lens material, take it to the back of the eye
and burst it with an incisionI He cleans the
eye with butter and advises to rest it for 10
daysI The stages of the procedure are as
detailed and descriptive as his instructions
on skin Vap removal for a nose jobI

···

Many modern-day ophthalmologists, namely

eye doctors, refute that the form of
‘couching’ performed by Sushruta cannot be
considered the correct procedureI According
to them, Jacques Daviel introduced the
method of extracapsular cataract surgery in
the 1700sI

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Cite this Article

READ NEXT:
Ancient Egypt: 16 Little Known Facts About
The World’s Longest Continuous Civilization

      

By Simran Sood
BA History and Anthropology (in-
progress)

Simran works independently as a

writer and researcher. She is a
student of History and Anthropology.
Currently, she is assisting in the
writing of an archaeological and
historical book. She is also a part-
time assistant for philosopher
Volker Zotz. When she’s not busy
typing at the rate of sixty words per
minute, you can \nd her lazing
around and hopelessly devouring
historical romance dramas.

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