Full text of the speech delivered by Justice Markandey Katju, Judge, Supreme Court of India on 13.10.2009 in the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore
There is a misconception that Sanskrit language is only a language for chanting mantras in temples or religious ceremonies. That, actually, is less than 5% of the Sanskrit literature, more than 95% of which has nothing to do with religion...
Full text of the speech delivered by Justice Markandey Katju, Judge, Supreme Court of India on 13.10.2009 in the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore
The topic which I have chosen to speak on today is `Sanskrit as a language of Science'. I have chosen this topic for two reasons:
1. You are yourselves scientists, and hence would naturally like to know about your scientific heritage and the great scientific achievements of your ancestors.
2. Today India is facing huge problems, and, in my opinion, these can only be solved by science.
We have to spread the scientific outlook to every nook and corner of our country, if we are to progress. And by science I mean not just physics, chemistry and biology but the entire scientific outlook. We must develop the rational and questioning attitude in our people, and abolish superstitions and empty rituals.
The foundation of India culture is based on the Sanskrit language. There is a misconception about the Sanskrit language that it is only a language for chanting mantras in temples or religious ceremonies. However, that is less than 5% of the Sanskrit literature. More than 95% of the Sanskrit literature has nothing to do with religion, and instead it deals with philosophy, law, science, literature, grammar, phonetics, interpretation etc. In fact, Sanskrit was the language of free thinkers, who questioned everything, and expressed the widest spectrum of thoughts on various subjects. In particular, Sanskrit was the language of our scientists in ancient India. Today, no doubt, we are behind the Western countries in science, but there was a time when India was leading the whole world in science. Knowledge of the great scientific achievements of our ancestors and our scientific heritage will give us the encouragement and moral strength to once again take India to the forefront of science in the modern world.
The word `Sanskrit' means “prepared, pure, refined or prefect”. It was not for nothing that it was called the `devavani' (language of the Gods). It has an outstanding place in our culture and indeed was recognized as a language of rare sublimity by the whole world. Sanskrit was the language of our philosophers, our scientists, our mathematicians, our poets and playwrights, our grammarians, our jurists, etc. In grammar, Panini and Patanjali (authors of Ashtadhyayi and the Mahabhashya) have no equals in the world; in astronomy and mathematics the works of Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskar opened up new frontiers for mankind, as did the works of Charak and Sushrut in medicine.
In philosophy Gautam (founder of the Nyaya system), Ashvaghosha (author of Buddha Charita), Kapila (founder of the Sankhya system), Shankaracharya, Brihaspati, etc., present the widest range of philosophical systems the world has ever seen, from deeply religious to strongly atheistic. Jaimini's Mimansa Sutras laid the foundation of a whole system of rational interpretation of texts which was used not only in religion but also in law, philosophy, grammar, etc. In literature, the contribution of Sanskrit is of the foremost order. The works of Kalidas (Shakuntala, Meghdoot, Malavikagnimitra, etc.), Bhavabhuti (Malti Madhav, Uttar Ramcharit, etc.) and the epics of Valmiki, Vyas, etc. are known all over the world. These and countless other Sanskrit works kept the light of learning ablaze in our country upto modern times.
In this talk I am confining myself to only that part of Sanskrit literature which is related to science.
As already stated above, there is a great misconception about Sanskrit that it is only a language to be recited as mantras in temples or in religious ceremonies. However, that is only 5% of the Sanskrit literature. The remaining 95% has nothing to do with religion. In particular, Sanskrit was the language in which all our great scientists in ancient India wrote their works.
Before proceeding further, I may take a digression from the topic under discussion. In fact, I will be taking several digressions during the course of this talk, and initially you may think that this digression has nothing to do with the subject under discussion, viz. Sanskrit as a language of science, but at the end of the digression you will realize its intimate connection with the subject.
India is broadly a country of immigrants.
While North America (USA and Canada) is a country of new immigrants, who came mainly from Europe over the last four or five centuries, India is a country of old immigrants in which people came over the last ten thousand years or so. Probably about 95 % people living in India today are descendants of immigrants who came mainly from the North-West and to a lesser extent from the North-East. Since this is a point of great importance for the understanding of our country, it is necessary to go into it in some detail (for further details see my article Kalidas Ghalib Academy).
People migrate from uncomfortable areas to comfortable areas. This is natural because everyone wants to live in comfort. Before the coming of modern industry there were agricultural societies everywhere and India was a paradise for these because agriculture requires level land, fertile soil, plenty of water for irrigation, temperate climate etc. which was in abundance in India. Why should anybody living in India migrate to, say, Afghanistan which has a harsh terrain, rocky and mountainous and covered with snow for several months in a year when one cannot grow any crop? Hence, almost all immigrations and invasions came from outside into India (except those Indians who were sent out during British rule as indentured labour, and the recent migration of a few million Indians to the developed countries for job opportunities). There is perhaps not a single instance of an invasion from India to outside India.
India was a veritable paradise for agricultural societies because it has level & fertile land, hundreds of rivers, forests etc. and is rich in natural resources. Hence for thousands of years people kept pouring into India because they found a comfortable life here in a country which was gifted by nature.
As the great Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri wrote:
“Sar zamin-e-hind par aqwaam-e-alam ke firaq
kafile guzarte gae Hindustan banta gaya”
Which means: “In the land of Hind, the Caravans of the peoples of the world kept coming in and India kept getting formed”.
Who were the original inhabitants of India ? At one time it was believed that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants. However, the generally accepted view now is that the original inhabitants of India were the pre-Dravidians aborigines whose descendants are the speakers of the Munda language who presently live in forest areas of Chota Nagpur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal etc., the Todas of the Nilgiris, and others known as Adivasis. Their population is only 5 to 7% of the total population of India. The remaining about 95% people living in India today are descendants of immigrants who came mainly from the north-west. Even the Dravidians are now believed to have come from outside, probably from the present Pakistan and Afghanistan areas, and this theory is supported by the existence even today of a Dravidian language called Brahui which is spoken by 3 million people in Western Pakistan (see Brahui on Google). In this connection one may also see ‘Cambridge History of India, Vol. I.
There are a large number of religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups, cultures etc. in our country, which is due to the fact that India is a country of immigrants. Somebody is tall, somebody is short, some are dark, some are fair complexioned, with all kinds of shades in between, someone has Caucasian features, someone has Mongoloid features, someone has Negroid features, etc. There are differences in dress, food habits and various other matters.
We may compare India with China which is larger both in population and in land area than India. China has a population of about 1.3 billion whereas our population is roughly 1.15 billion. Also, China has more than twice our land area. However, all Chinese have Mongoloid features; they have a common written script (Mandarin Chinese) and 95% of them belong to one ethnic group, called the Han Chinese. Hence there is broad homogeneity in China.
On the other hand, as stated above, India has tremendous diversity and this is due to the large scale migrations and invasions into India over thousands of years. The various immigrants/invaders who came into India brought with them their different cultures, languages, religions, etc. which accounts for the tremendous diversity in India.
As already stated above India was a country ideally suited for agriculture as it has level land, fertile soil, plenty of water, temperate climate etc. It is only in agricultural society that culture, arts and science can grow. In the preceding hunting stage these cannot grow because man has no free time in the hunting stage, and he has to devote all his time to get his food by hunting animals etc. The struggle for existence compels him to do this from morning to night leaving him no free time for doing free thinking. It is only when agriculture begins that man can get some free time for thinking. Since India was a country ideally suited for agriculture, people had free time here to do thinking. In ancient India there was a lot of intellectual activity. In our literature we read hundreds of instances of Shastrarthas, which were debates in which the intellectuals freely discussed their points of view in the presence of a large assembly. Thousands of books in Sanskrit were written on various subjects, though perhaps less than 10% have survived the ravages of time.
I have made this digression to point out that it was the geographical condition of India (flat and fertile land, temperate climate etc.) which enabled our ancestors to progress a lot in science and culture as our country was ideal for agriculture and hence provided a lot of free time for thinking.
Before dealing with the specific achievements of our ancestors in the fields of Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine, Engineering, etc. it is necessary to mention that the Sanskrit language made two great contributions to the development and progress of science in ancient India. :-
1. A language was created by the great grammarian Panini, namely Classical Sanskrit, which enabled scientific ideas to be expressed with great precision, logic and elegance. Science requires precision. Also, science requires a written language in which ideas can be written with great precision and logic.
No doubt the first language of people everywhere in the world is the spoken language, but further development of thinking cannot take place unless there is a written language in which ideas can be expressed with precision. A scientist may think out new ideas in his mind, but these will remain rambling, diffused and disorganized ideas unless they are set down in writing. By writing we give our ideas greater clarity and make them coherent and in a logical sequence, somewhat like in a mathematical theorem where each step logically follows from the previous step. Hence for progress in science a written language is absolutely essential in which scientific ideas can be expressed with great precision and logic.
2. A philosophy is required for the progress of science to give support and encouragement to science and scientific development.
2. The Brahmanas, which are books written in prose in which the method of performing the various yagyas is given. Each Brahmana is attached to some Samhita. Thus attached to the Rigveda is the Aitareya Brahmana and the Kaushiteki Brahmana, attached to the Samveda is the Tandya Brahmana and some other Brahmanas, attached to the white (shukla) Yajurveda is the Shatapatha Brahmana and some other Brahmanas, attached to the black (Krishna) Yajurveda is the Taitareya Brahmana and some other Brahmana, attached to the Atharvaveda is the Gopath Brahmana. As stated above, these Brahmana are written in prose, unlike the Samhitas which are mainly in poetry, and they prescribe the rules for performing the various yagyas.
3. The Aranyaks, which are forest books. These contain the germs of philosophical thought, though in undeveloped form.
4. The Upanishads which incorporated developed philosophical ideas.
The above four, namely, the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyaks, and the Upanishads collectively are known as Veda or Shruti.
The Brahmanas were written subsequent to the Samhitas, and their language is somewhat different from that of the Samhitas, obviously because the Sanskrit language had changed by the time they were written. Similarly, the Aranyaks were written subsequent to the Brahmanas, and, the Sanskrit of the Aranyaks is slightly different from that of the Brahmanas. The last part of the Veda is the Upanishads, and the language of the Upanishads is different from that of earlier Vedic works for the reason that the Sanskrit language kept changing over the centuries, as already stated above. The Sanskrit of the Upanishads is closest to Panini's Sanskrit.
After Panini wrote his Ashtadhyayi the entire non-Vedic Sanskrit literature was written in accordance with Panini's grammar, and even that part of the non-Vedic Sanskrit literature which existed before Panini was altered and made in accordance with Panini's grammar (except some words called apashabdas).
The Vedic literature is only about 1% of the entire Sanskrit literature. About 99% of Sanskrit literature is non vedic Sanskrit literature. For instance, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, the works of Kalidas, etc. are no doubt highly respected but they are not part of the Vedic literature and hence they are now almost all existing in accordance with Panini's grammar.
To illustrate, some parts of the Mahabharata were written before Panini because Panini has referred to the Mahabharat in his Ashtadhyayi. Even such parts of the Mahabharata were altered and made in accordance with Panini’s grammar. Thus today all of the Sanskrit non-Vedic literature is in accordance with Panini's grammar, except a few words and expressions, called Apashabdas or apabhramshas (as Patanjali has described them) which for some reason could not be fitted into Panini’s system, and hence have been left as they were.
However, it was not permissible to change the language of the Rigveda and make it in accordance with Panini's grammar. Panini or no Panini, one could not touch the Rigveda, because it was held to be so sacred that it was not permitted to change its language. In fact after having been initially composed may be around 2000 B.C. the Rigveda was thereafter never written and it continued from generation to generation by oral tradition from Guru to Shishya.
Thus the Vedic literature is not in accordance with the Panini's grammar. However, the non-Vedic Sanskrit literature (which is 99% of the entire Sanskrit literature) is almost all in accordance with Panini's grammar, including all the great scientific works. This provided for uniformity and it systematized the language so that scholars could easily express and communicate their ideas with great precision. This was a necessary requirement for the development of science.
The spoken language no doubt is very useful, but the spoken dialects change every 50 or 100 kilometers, and hence there is no uniformity in them. A written language like Classical Sanskrit in which scholars could express and communicate ideas to other scholars living far away with great precision and clarity was thus absolutely necessary for the development of science, and this is the great achievement of Panini.
As regards the second factor contributing to the development of science in ancient India, namely, scientific philosophy I would now like to tell you something about Indian philosophy. Hence I am making another digression.
The generally accepted view is that there are six systems of Classical (orthodox) Indian philosophy (Shat Dharshana) and three non classical (unorthodox) systems. The six classical (orthodox) systems are Nyaya, Vaisheshik, Sankya, Yoga, Purva Mimansa and Uttar Mimansa (also known as Vedanta). The non classical (unorthodox) systems are Buddhism, Jainism and Charvak.
In ancient India, Aryabhata in his book Aryabhatiya presented a mathematical system that postulated that the earth rotated on its axis. He also considered the motion of the planets with respect to the sun (in other words there was a hint in Aryabhat’s system of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, though there is a debate about it). The other famous astronomers of that time were Brahma Gupta who headed the astronomical observatory at Ujjain and wrote a famous text on astronomy, and Bhaskara, who also was a head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain. Varahamihira presented a theory of gravitation which suggested that there is a force due to which bodies stuck to the earth, and also kept the heavenly bodies in their determined places.
I am not going into detail into these theories of these great astronomers, but I would certainly like to say that it is remarkable that even today predictions can be made about the time and date of solar and lunar eclipses on the basis of calculations made by the ancient astronomers thousands of years ago, and that too at a time when there were no modern instruments like telescopes etc. and observations had to be made with the naked eye.
MEDICINE
The names of Sushruta and Charaka are the most famous in ancient Indian medicine. Sushruta is regarded as the father of Indian surgery and he invented cataract surgery, plastic surgery etc. many centuries before it was invented by the westerners. In his book Sushruta Samhita he has mentioned in great detail about the medicines and surgeries, including dozens of instruments used in surgeries, details of which can be seen on the internet by using Google. Sushruta said that to be a good surgeon one has to have a good knowledge of anatomy. Charaka Samhita is an ancient Indian Ayurvedic text on internal medicine written by Charaka and it is central to the modern day practice of Ayurvedic medicine. Both Sushruta Samhita and Charak Samhita were written in Sanskrit, details of which also can be seen in the internet in Google. In this connection it may be mentioned that in the London Science Museum in one floor relating to medicine, there is mention of the various achievements in medicine in ancient India including the surgical instruments used by Sushruta.
It is thus evident that India was far ahead of all countries in medicine in ancient times.
ENGINEERING
In Engineering, too, we had made great progress as is evident from the great South Indian temples in Tanjore, Trichy, Madurai, etc. as also the temples in Khajuraho, Orissa, etc. It is said that there was an institute in Aihole in Karnatka in the 6th Century A.D. which developed structural mechanics. The principles developed by this institute e.g. sloped roofs were applied to structures built in Kerala, eastern Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu.