INDIA’S CONTRIBUTION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD CIVILIZATION

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, Ph.D Dr.Suraksha Bansal, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G.) College Sr. Lecturer, College Of Education (D.I.M.S.)
Roorkee (U.A.), India Meerut (U.P.), India

India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the
grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most
astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!"
Roorkee (U.A) Meerut (U.P.) Mark Twain

From the time of Megasthenes (Greek Geographer, 300B.C.) who described India to Greece, down to
the 18th century India was all a marvel and mystery to Europe. Marco Polo (1254-1323 A.D.) pictured
its western fringe vaguely, Columbus blundered upon America in trying to reach it, Vasco-De-Gama
sailed around Africa to rediscover it, and merchants spoke rapaciously ‘wealth of the India’ but
scholars left the mine almost untapped.

French scholar Romaine Rolland rightly commented that “If there is one place on the face of earth
where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the
dream of existence, it is India!"

Nothing should more deeply shame the modern Student than the recency and inadequacy of his
acquaintance with India. Here is a vast peninsula of nearly two million square miles; two thirds as large
as the United States and twenty times the size of U.K. with one fifth of the population of the earth; an
impressive continuity of development and civilization from Mohenjo-daro, 2900B.C. or earlier to
modern age; faith compassing every stage from idolatry to the most suitable and spiritual pantheism;
philosophers playing the thousand variation on one monistic theme from the Upanishads eight centuries
before Christ to Shankara eight centuries after him; scientists developing astronomy three thousand
years ago and winning noble prize in our own time; a democratic constitution of untraceable antiquity in
the villages; wise and beneficent rulers like Ashoka and Akbar in the capitals; ministrels singing great
epic almost as old as Homer and poets holding world audiences today; artists raising gigantic temples
for Hindu Gods from Tibet to Ceylon and from Cambodia to Java, or carving perfect palaces by the
Score for Mughal Kings and Queens. This is the India that patient scholarship is now opening up, like a
new intellectual continent, to the western mind which only yesterday thought civilization exclusively
European thing.

Mark Twain has rightly said: "So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man
or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems
to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked."

India’s work in Science is very old and very young; young as an independent and secular pursuit, old as
a subsidiary interest of her priests. Emmelin Plunret said: "They were very advanced Hindu astronomers
in 6000 BC. Vedas contain an account of the dimension of Earth, Sun, Moon, Planets and Galaxies."
Calendars and Constellations in astronomy was an incidental offspring of astrology. The earliest
atomically treatises the siddhantas (ca, 425 B.C.) were similar to Greek science and Varahamihira whose
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compendium was significantly entitled complete system of Natural Astrology was surprisingly similar to
Greeks. The greatest of Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhatta, discussed in verse such
poetic subjects as quadratic equations, sins and the value of π; he explained eclipses, solstices and
equinoxes, announced the spherieity of the earth and to diurnal revolution on its axis and wrote in daring
interaction of Renaissance Science: “The sphere of the stars is stationary the earth, by his revolution,
produces the daily rising and seeing of planate and stars”1. His most farmers’ successors, Brahmgupta,
systematized the astronomical knowledge of India. These men and their followers were well adapted to
the usage of the division of skies into Zodiacal constellation, they made a calendar of twelve months
each of thirty days, each of the thirty hours, interesting an intercalary month every five years they
calculated with remarkable accuracy the diameter of the moon, the eclipses of the moon and the sun, the
position of the poles and the position and motion of the major star.2 P. Johnstone: said "Gravitation was
known to the Hindus (Indians) before the birth of Newton. The system of blood circulation was
discovered by them centuries before Harvey was heard of."They expounded the theory, though not the
law, of gravity when they wrote in the ‘Siddhantas’. “The earth, owing to its force of gravity, draws all
things to itself”.3

Kanada believed light and heat to be varieties of the same substance. Udayana taught that all heat
comes from the sun and Vachaspati like Newton, interpreted light as composed of minute particles
emitted by substance and striking the eyes. Musical notes and intervals were analyzed and
mathematically calculated in the Hindu Treatises music e.g. in the ocean of music (Sangita Ratnakara)
of Sharamgadeva (1210-47) and the ‘Pythagorean Law was formulated by which the number of
vibrations, and therefore the pitch of the note, varies inversely as the length of string between the point
of attachment and the point of touch. There is some evidence that Hindu mariners of the first century
A.D.used a compass made by an iron fish floating in a vessel of oil and pointing north pole.

Chemistry developed from two sources-medicine and industry. The art of tempering and casting iron
developed in India long before its appearance in Europe Vikramaditya, for example erected at Delhi (ca
380 A.D.) an iron pillar that stands untarnished today after 15 centuries; and the quality of metal, or
manner of treatment which has preserved it from rust or decay is still a mystery to modern metallurgical
science. Something has been said about the chemical excellence of cast iron in ancient India and about
the high industrial development of Gupta times, when India was looked to, even by imperial Rome, as
the most skilled of the nations in such chemical industries as dyeing, tanning, soap making, glass and
cement. As early as the second century B.C. Nagarjuna devoted an entire volume to mercury. By the
sixth century the Hindus were far ahead of Europe in industrial chemistry; they were masters of
calcinations, distillation sublimation, steaming fixation, the production of light without heat, the mixing
of anesthetic and soporific powders, and the preparation of metallic salts and compound King Porus is
said to have selected, as a specially valuable gift for Alexander, not gold or silver, but thirty pounds of
steel. The Muslims took much of this Hindu chemical science and industry to the near east and Europe,
the secret of manufacturing “Damascus” blades for example was taken by the Arabs from the Persians
and by the Persians from India.

The Hindus seems to have been the first people to mine gold. Herodotus 5 and Megasthenes tell us in
great length about the animals, which help the miners to find the metal by turning it up in their searching
of the sand. Much of the gold used in Persian Empire in the 5th century B.C. come from India, Silver,
Copper, Lead, Tin, Zinc were also mined- iron as early as 1500 B.C.6.

Anatomy and physiology, like some aspects of Chemistry, were by- products of Hindu medicines. As far
back as the 6th century B.C. Hindu physicians described ligaments, Sutures, lymphatic, Nerve plexus,
Facial, Adipose and Vascular tissues, Mucous and Synovial membranes and many more muscles than
any modern cadaver is able to show.7 They understood remarkably well the processes of digestion the
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different functions of the gastric juices, the conversion of chime into chyle and of this into blood. 8
anticipation Weisman by 2400 years, Atreya (ca,500B.C.) held that the parental seed is independent of
the parent’s body and contains itself, in miniature the whole parental organism. Examination for Virility
was recommended as a prerequisite for marriage in the men; the code of Manu warned against marrying
mates affected with tuberculosis, epilepsy, leprosy, chronic dyspepsia, piles or loquacity. The great men
in Hindu medicine are those of Sushruta in the 5th century B.C. and Charaka in the second century A.D.
Sushruta, Professor of medicine in the University of Benarus, wrote down in Sanskrit a system of
diagnosis and therapy whose elements had descended to him from his teacher Dhanvantri. His book
dealt at length with Surgery Obstetrics, Diet, Bathing, Drugs, Infant feeding and hygiene and medical
education.9 Charaka composed a Samhita (or Encyclopedia) of medicine and gave to his followers an
almost Hippocratic conception of their calling “Not for self, not for the fulfillment of any earthly desire
of gain, but solely for the good of suffering humanity should you treat your patients, and so excel all”.
Only less illustrious than these are Vagbhata (625A.D.) who prepared a medical compendium in prose
and verse, and Bhava Misra (1550 A.D.) whose voluminous work on anatomy, physiology and medicine
mentioned, a hundred years before Harvey, the circulation of the blood and prescribed mercury for that
novel disease Syphilis, which has been brought in by the Portuguese as apart of Europe’s heritage to
India.

Sir W. Hunter, British Surgeon has rightly observed that: "The surgery of the ancient Indian physicians
was bold and skilful. A special branch of surgery was dedicated to rhinoplasty or operations for
improving deformed ears, noses and forming new ones, which European surgeons have now borrowed."
Sushruta described many surgical operations Cataract, Hernia, Lithotomic Caesarian Section etc. and
121 surgical instruments, including Lancets, Sounds, Forceps Catheters and Rectal and Vaginal
speculums. He advocated the dissection of dead bodies as indispensable in the training of surgeons. He
was the first to graft upon a torn ear portion of skin taken from another part of the body, and from him
and his Hindu successor’s rhinoplasty- the surgical reconstruction of the nose-descended into modern
medicine.10 “The ancient Hindus” says Garrison “Performed almost every major operation except
legation of the arteries.” Limbs were amputated abdominal sections were performed, fractures were set
hemorrhoids and fistula were removed. Sushruta laid down elaborate rules for preparing an operation,
and his suggestion that the wound by sterilized by fumigation is one of the earliest known efforts at
antiseptic surgery. Both Sushruta and Charaka mention the use of medicinal liquors to produce
insensibility to pain. In 927 A.D. two surgeons treplanned the skull of a Hindu King, and made him
insensitive to operation by administering a drug called Somohini.

B.G. Rele observed that: "Our present knowledge of the nervous system fits in so accurately with the
internal description of the human body given in the Vedas (5000 years ago). Then the question arises
whether the Vedas are really religious books or books on anatomy of the nervous system and medicine."
('The Vedic Gods') For the detention of the 1120 disease that he enumerated, Sushruta recommended
diagnosis by inspection palpation and auscultation. Taking of the pube was described in a treatise dating
1300 A.D. Urinalysis was a favorite method of diagnosis. Hindu physicians were reputed able to cure
any patient without having seen anything more of him than his water. Hindu physicians were especially
skilled in concocting antidotes for poisons; they still excel European physicians in curing snake bites.
Vaccination unknown to Europe before the 18th century, was known in India as early as 550 A.D., if we
many judge from a text attributed to Dhanvantri “Take the fluid of the poke on the udder of the cow—
upon the point of a lancet and lance with it the arms between the shoulders and elbows until blood
appears then mixing the fluid with the blood, the fever of the small pox will be produced modern
European physicians believe that caste separateness was prescribed because of Brahman belief in
invisible agents transmitting disease, many of the laws of sanitation enjoins Sushruta and Manu seem to
take for granted what we moderns, call the germ theory of discase.11
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Will Durant, American Historian said that: "It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has
sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and
above all numerals and the decimal system." Hypnotism as therapy seems to have originated among the
Hindus the Englishmen who introduced hypnotherapy into England-Braid, Esdaile and Elliotson-
undoubtly got their ideas and some of their experience from contact with India. In the time of
Alexander, says Garrison” Hindu physicians and Surgeons enjoyed a well deserved reputation for
superior knowledge and skill and even Aristotle is believe by some students to have been indebted to
them. Persians and Arabs translated into their languages in the 8th century A.D., the thousand year old
compendia of Sushruta and Charaka the great caliph Haroun-at-Rashid accepted the preeminence of
Indian medicine and scholarship and imported Hindu physicians to Baghdad. Lord Amphill concludes
that medieval and modern Europe owes to system of medicine directly to the Arabs and through them to
Indias.12 In the field of the mathematics the Hindus developed a system superior to that of the Greeks.
Among the most vital part of our oriental heritage are the ‘Arabic’ numerals means from Hind (India)
the miscalled Arabic numerals are found on Rock Edits of King Ashoka (256 B.C.) a thousand years
before their occurrence in Arabic literature. Said the gate and magnanimous Laplace.13 It is India that
gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value position
as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we
ignore its true merit but it’s very simplicity the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our
arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement
the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonian, two of the
greatest men produced by antiquity.

Albert Einstein once said that - “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which
no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made!"The decimal system was known to
Aryabhatta and Brahmgupta long before its appearance in the writings of the Arabs and the Syrians, it
was adopted by China from Buddhist missionaries and Muhammad Ibu Musa al-Knwarazmi, the
greatest mathematicians of his age (d.ca.850 A.D.) seems to have introduced it into Baghdad. The oldest
known of Zero in Asia or Europe is in Arabic document dated 873 A.D. The most modest and most
valuable of all numerals is one of the subtle gifts of India to mankind.

Algebra was developed by in apparent independence by both the Hindus and Greeks, but the adoption of
its Arabic name (al-jabr, adjustment) indicates that it come to Western Europe from the Arabs-ie from
India rather than from Greece14 the great Hindu leaders in this field, as in astronomy, were Aryabhatta,
Brahmgupta and Bhaskara. The last (b1114 A.D.) appears to have invented the radical sign and many
algebra symbols. These men created the conception of a negative quantity, without which algebra would
have been impossible, the formulated rules for permutations and combinations; they found the squire
root of 2 and solved in the 8th century A.D., indeterminate equations of the second degree. That were
unknown to Europe until the days of 7 Euler a thousand years later15 they expressed their Science in
poetic form and to mathematical problem a grace characteristic of India’s Golden age. These two may
serve as example of simple Hindu Algebra.

“Out of a swarm of bees one fifth past settled on a kadamba blossom; one third on a silindhra flower;
three times the difference of those numbers flew to the bloom of a kutaja one been, which remained,
hovered about in the air. Tell me, Charming woman the number of bees------. Eight rubies, ten emeralds
and a hundred pearls, which are in thy ear-ring my beloved were purchased by me for thee at an equal
amount, and the sum of the price of the three sorts of gems was three less than half a hundred tell me the
price of each, O auspicious woman.”16
The Hindus were also successful in geometry; in the measurement and construction of altars the priest
formulated the Pythagorean Theorem, several hundred years before the birth of Christ. Aryabhatta found
the area of a triangle, a trapezium and a circle and calculated the value of π at 3.1416-a figure not
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equaled in accuracy until the days of Purbach (1423-61) in Europe. Bhaskara anticipated the differential
calculus; Aryabhatta drew up a table of sins and the Surya Siddhantas provided a system of trigonometry
more advanced than anything known to the Greeks.

The growing of cotton appears earlier in India then elsewhere, apparently it was used for cloth in Mohan
—jodaro.17 In our oldest classical reference to cotton Herodotus says with pleasing ignorance; Certain
wild trees there wear wool instead of fruit, which in beauty and quality excels that of sheep, and the
Indians make these clothing from these trees. It was their wars in near east that acquainted the Romans
with tree grown wool. Arabian travelers in 9th century India reposted that “In this country they make
garments of such extraordinary perfection that nowhere else is there like to be seen- sewed and woven to
such a degree of fineness, they may be drawn through a ring of moderate size.”18 The medieval Arabs
took over the art from India and their word “quttan” gave the word cotton. The name Muslin was
originally applied to fine cotton weaves made in Mosul from Indian models.

Calico was recalled because it came (first in 1631) from Calicut on the south westerns shores of India.
Embroidery says Marco-Polo, speaking in Gujarat in 1293 A.D. is here performed with more delicacy
than in any other part of world but weaving was only one of the many handicrafts of India. Europe
looked upon the Indians as expert in almost every line of manufacture woodworked, every world, metal
work, bleaching dying tanning, soap making, glass blowing gun powder, firewall, cancue etc. China
imported eye glasses from India in 1260 A.D. Bernier traveling in India in 17th century described it as
humming with industry. Fitch in 1585 saw a fleet of one hundred and lightly boats carrying a great
variety of good down the river Jamuna.18

A Rough Guide to India rightly said that: "It is impossible not to be astonished by India. Nowhere on
Earth does humanity present itself in such a dizzying, creative burst of cultures and religions, races and
tongues. Enriched by successive waves of migration and marauders from distant lands, every one of
them left an indelible imprint which was absorbed into the Indian way of life. Every aspect of the
country presents itself on a massive, exaggerated scale, worthy in comparison only to the superlative
mountains that overshadow it. It is this variety which provides a breathtaking ensemble for experiences
that is uniquely Indian. Perhaps the only thing more difficult than to be indifferent to India would be to
describe or understand India completely. There are perhaps very few nations in the world with the
enormous variety that India has to offer. Modern day India represents the largest democracy in the world
with a seamless picture of unity in diversity unparalleled anywhere else."

References-

1. Sarton Geo; Introduction to the History of Science Vol-1.

2. Barnetc.L.C. - The Heart of India-page 188-90.
3. Muthu, D.C. - The Antiquity of Hindu medicine and civilization. London -page 97.
4. Sarkar, B.K, Hindu achievement in exact Science, New York-page 36-59.
5. Herodotus: Histories translated by Cary, 111-112.
6. Lajpat Rai, England’s Debt to India, 176.
7. Garrison, F.H.: History of medicine, page 71.
8. Sarkar, Geo,-Introduction to the history of science Vol I-page 78.
9. MacDonnell, A.A.- India’s Poet-Oxfprd-page-180.
10. Lajpat Rai-Unhappy India-286.
11. A MacDonnell,-180.
12. Lap lace, Pierre Simon, French Astronomer and mathematician- 1749-1827.
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13. Sedgwic, W. and Tyler. - Short History of Science. New York-page.186.

14. Lowie, R.H.-Are we civilized- New York-page.269.
15. Monier-Williams Sir, M.-India wisdom-London page-183-84.
16. Childe, V.Gorton-The most ancient East-209London.
17. Smith, V.-Akbar page-396.
18. Polo Marco-Travels 307 Ed Mamul Komroft-New York.