Appearance of Modern Human Behavior

“Modern humans have been around for at least 160,000 to 200,000 years but there is no archaeological evidence of any technology beyond basic stone tools until around 90,000 years ago. In Europe and western Asia this advanced technology and behaviour explodes around 45,000 years ago when humans arrive there, but doesn’t appear in eastern and southern Asia and Australia until much later, despite a human presence. In sub-Saharan Africa the situation is more complex. Many of the features of modern human behaviour — including the first abstract art — are found some 90,000 years ago but then seem to disappear around 65,000 years ago, before re-emerging some 40,000 years ago.[High Population Density Triggers Cultural Explosions]

So why did those cultural and technological explosions happen at those particular moments in time? Was it a boost in brain power or advance in language? It turns out that the answer is population density.

The research, which is published in the June 5 issue of the journal Science, suggests that tens of thousands of years ago, as human population density increased so did the transmission of ideas and skills. The result: the emergence of more and more clever innovations. [Party Animals: Early Human Culture Thrived in Crowds – Yahoo! News]

And

Using genetic estimates of population size in the past, the team went on to show that density was similar in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Middle-East when modern behaviour first appeared in each of these regions. The paper also points to evidence that population density would have dropped for climatic reasons at the time when modern human behaviour temporarily disappeared in sub-Saharan Africa.[High Population Density Triggers Cultural Explosions]

Here is the original paper

Undeciphered Scripts

As the debate over the Indus script – on if it is a language or not and if so, is it Dravidian or Indo-European – continues, New Scientist has an article listing seven other scripts that cannot be read.

Proto-Elamite is the world’s oldest undeciphered script – assuming that it really is a fully developed writing system, which is by no means certain. It was used for perhaps 150 years from around 3050 BC in Elam, the biblical name for an area that corresponds roughly to today’s oilfields of western Iran. It is almost as old as the oldest writing of all, the earliest cuneiform from Mesopotamia. Little is known about the people who wrote the script.[Decoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can’t be read – life – 27 May 2009 – New Scientist]

The Poisons of Mithridates

(via Wikipedia)

During the reign of Hatshepsut (1479 to 1458 B.C.E.), one of the female Pharaoh’s of Egypt, a series of poisonings happened in Thebes. The queen had signed a peace agreement with Libyans and three scribes died during the ceremony. This was followed by the death of many others, which coincided with the escape of a known poisoner from prison. How Judge Amerotke, the Chief Judge from the Halls of Two Truths, solves the mystery is the story of P. C. Doherty’s excellent historical murder mystery – The Poisoner of Ptah
The author’s note at the end of the book has a section on known poisoners of the ancient world including the the most famous one — Mithridates VI of Pontus — who lived in the first century B.C.E. It is believed that he got his knowledge of poisons and antidotes from India, among other sources.
Mithridates VI who ruled the kingdom of Pontus from 119 to 63 B.C.E, was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, but he troubled Rome to no end. Between 89 B.C.E and 63 B.C.E, three Mithridatic wars were fought between Roman legions and Mithridates VI.
Though he was a brave warrior, Mithridates feared one thing: death by poisoning. So a team of doctors – Scythian shamans – always accompanied him. He also took preventive care by consuming a small amount of poisons with his food to give him immunity. This in fact resembles the plan that Chanakya devised for Chandragupta Maurya.
Even before Chanakya, preventive measures for poisoning was known in India. According to Manusmriti, a king was to eat food mixed with antidotes against poison. The king was also required to wear gems which destroy poison^[1]. Both Charaka and Susruta had written about antidotes; one called Mahagandhahasti had sixty ingredients^[2].
According to Chanakya those who are cruel, lazy and devoid of any affection for their relatives shall be recruited as poisoners. These poisoners were to spy on the indoor activities of officials by getting jobs, adopting a disguise or working as entertainers. But poisoners, probably those not working for the state, who harmed others were considered anti-social elements. Such poisoners were to be exiled^[3].
Chanakya also wrote about destroying an enemy army using poisons. A spy in the enemy camp, disguised as a wine seller, was allowed to poison the army. Chanakya discusses various strategies for this: first the poisoner was to distribute unadulterated wine, and when the army chiefs were drunk, given poisoned wine. Or cheap food could be sold to the aggressor with poison mixed or women could buy food from a merchant into a vessel which had poison, nag a bit about the high price and put the material back into the merchant’s ware^[3].
The king was to eat only freshly cooked food only after physicians and helpers had tested it for poisons. Chanakya gives a list of poisons and various effects and ways by which poisons could be identified in food. To prevent poisoning, entertainers were forbidden from using poisons in their shows. He noted that “a single assassin could achieve with weapons, fire or poison, more than a fully mobilized army.^[3]”
Mithridates was erudite and read many texts. Also Indian medicine was well known and admired in Rome and it is possible that Mithridates came to know these details from them^[2].
During those times people believed that there was a universal antidote — theriac — which could cure all poisons. To find this theriac, Mithridates experimented various concoctions;a painting by Robert Thorn shows Mithridates testing poisons on a prisoner. He finally came up with a mixture of fifty-four antidotes which was named mithridatium. The formula for this antidote was preserved by Pliny the Elder, Galen and Andromachus the Elder, the physician of Nero. Theriac was quite popular during even during the Middle ages till the 19th century, though it was not Mithridatic formula that was being used.
Mithridates’ last day on earth took an ironic turn when he wanted to die by poisoning and failed. Mithridates’ army was defeated by Pompey in 65 B.C.E, but the king escaped with this two daughters to his castle near the Bosphorous. As the Roman soldiers were closing in, he shared a vial of poison with his daughters, who died immediately. But Mithridates, who was conditioned by poison was unaffected. Finally he fell on the sword of one of his bodyguards and committed suicide^[3].
References:

Manusmriti translated by G. Buhler
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs by Adrienne Mayor (suggested by P.C. Doherty via e-mail)
Kautilya – The Arthashastra
University of California chronicle By University of California (1868-1952)

The Biblical Migration Theory

The discovery of skeletons in Mohenjo-daro in 1920s led Sir Mortimer Wheeler to opine that Harappa was overthrown by invaders, inspired by the Vedic god Indra.^[1] Now archaeology and genetic studies have discredited Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s Aryan invasion theory, which originated in the twentieth century. The external origins of Aryans is now being kept alive by “sporadic migration and occasional contacts” theory^[2]. But much before the Aryan invasion theory, there used to be a migration theory of Biblical proportions^[3] whose originator was Jean-Antoine Dubois, a French-Catholic missionary, who spent time in Pondicherry, Madras Presidency and Mysore from 1792 to 1823.
The French revolution started in 1789 and Dubois fled in 1792 at the age of 27, which turned to be a wise decision, for if he had stayed back he would have been killed. In India he adopted the local dress and habits like the Tuscan Jesuit missionary Roberto de Nobili, the Roman Brahmin, who did this almost two centuries before Dubois. This technique worked well, for he was welcomed by people of all castes.
In 1799, when Seringapatam fell, Richard Colley Wesley who was the Governor General of India, invited Dubois to organize the Christian community of Mysore which had been forcibly converted to Islam by Tippu Sultan; he reconverted 1800 people.
His greatest accomplishment was writing a book — Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies — based on his experience, important books and various records he obtained. It is in this book that he came up with his theory for the origins of the Brahmins.
He was aware that Hindus claimed Brahmins originated from Brahma’s head and that they were from near Maha-Meru and Madara Parvata. He was aware of the concept of the seven rishis, recognized in the Great Bear and the flood story in Indian mythology.
For Dubois, these Hindu fables were absurd. Before presenting his theory, he first dismissed two other ideas. The first one claimed that Egyptian king Sesostris conquered land till the Ganges; the second, that the caste system was obtained from the Arabs.
Once these were out of the way, Dubois presented his thesis. After the flood, the whole world was repopulated again. For this, Noah and his sons dispersed around the world. One group went West, while the others under the guidance of Magog, Noah’s grandson, went to the Caucasian range. From there they came via the North into India and populated it. He even has a date for this migration – nine centuries before Christian era. Thus the Brahmins, according to Dubois, were descendants of Magog’s father Japheth.
By the time Dubois wrote his manuscript, comparative linguistics had just arrived on the scene in a big way. In 1786, Sir William Jones published his The Sanscrit Language in which he observed that Sanskrit resembled Greek and Latin and suggested a common source, which would be called proto-Indo-European. Dubois decided to dabble in a bit of linguistics himself.
For Dubois, Magog and Gotama sounded the same. He suspected that they were the same person. He also found similarities between Prometheus and Brahma (say Brema and Prome aloud few times and you will get it. Or may be not). If you think that this Brahma = Prometheus thing does not add up, here is the clincher. Like how Prometheus asked Hercules for help, Brahma also asked Vishnu for help, not once, but many times. As I found myself nodding in agreement, he ruined it for me with the statement that Prometheus could be Magog himself.
With our current understanding it is easy to dismiss the work as fanciful narrative, but in the 19th century it was taken seriously; Dubois’ work was influential. He gave the French manuscript to Mark Wilks, the British Resident of Mysore, who in turn sent it to the Madras government. In 1816, it was translated to English. The prefatory note to the English edition was by none other than F. Max Muller, who wrote that Dubois, though a missionary, was free from theological prejudices. Lord William Bentinck, who would later become the Governor General and would play a part in Macaulay’s education in India, recommended the book highly. Bentinck praised the book saying that it would help the East India Company employees a great deal in their conduct with the natives. The East India company paid 2000 star pagodas for the manuscript.
While everyone — Wilks, Bentick, Muller — praised the book for the observations on the caste system, no one found the Biblical connection objectionable. Even preface to the 1906 edition which I read did not question it. Thus Indian history of the 19th century combined Sir William Jones’ comparative linguistics, Dubois’ Biblical Migration theory and Max Muller’s arbitrary dating of the Vedas. The impact of Sir William Jones and Max Muller are still present in the same form, while Dubois’ migration theory is present in a modified version.
The path taken by Indo-Europeans of the Aryan Migration Theory 2.0 is the same as that proposed by Dubois: from the Caucasus to India. A group of Indo-Europeans would go West, like Noah’s sons, to be the Mittani.^[1]
Though he came to covert, by his own account, Dubois was not a successful missionary^[4].

Dubois later wrote a controversial pamphlet — Letters on the state of Christianity in India — in which he declared that it is next to impossible to convert Indians. He went back to Paris on Jan 15, 1823, never to return again. He kept a low profile and Max Muller who visited Paris in 1846 did not know that Dubois was well and alive at that time. Dubois died two years later.
Postscript: Dubois was paid well and he lived off the money for some time. There is a controversy that the original manuscript was not written by Dubois, but was based on something written by Pere Coeurdoux in 1760s^[5].
References:

The Wonder That Was India by A L Basham
Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History; By Edwin Bryant, Laurie L. Patton
A Survey of Hinduism by Klaus Klostermaier
Debate Transactions of the Royal Historical Society By Royal Historical Society
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. By Nicholas B. Dirks
Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies by Abbe J. A. Dubois

Indus Script: A Formal Language

This picture shows a Harappan seal with five inscriptions or characters, which have been undeciphered. In fact there are many decipherments, but no scholarly consensus. One of the disputes is at a fundamental level: do these markings belong to a language or were the Harappans illiterate?
Finally, in a breaking news moment, we have an answer.

Now, a team of Indian scientists reports in Friday’s issue of Science journal that the Indus script has a structured sign system showing features of a formal language. Using mathematical and computational tools, researchers show that the script has well-defined signs, which begin and end texts, with strong correlations in the order in which the signs appear.[Scientists inch closer to cracking Indus Valley script – Home – livemint.com]

According to Asko Parpola, an expert on Indus seals

“It’s a useful paper,” said University of Helsinki archaeologist Asko Parpola, an authority on Indus scripts, “but it doesn’t really further our understanding of the script.”
Parpola said the primary obstacle confronting decipherers of fragmentary Indus scripts — the difficulty of testing their hypotheses — remains unchanged. [Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery | Wired Science from Wired.com]

Also

J. Mark Kenoyer, a linguist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says Rao’s paper is worth publishing, but time will tell if the technique sheds light on the nature of Indus script.
“At present they are lumping more than 700 years of writing into one data set,” he says. “I am actually going to be working with them on the revised analysis, and we will see how similar or different it is from the current results.”[Scholars at odds over mysterious Indus script – life – 23 April 2009 – New Scientist]

Additional Reading:

Communists do a Nehru

In election posters dead people are mandatory. But in Kerala, the featured dead people are Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. India’s ties with Israel is the biggest crisis facing Kerala right now according to the campaign speeches. The previous crisis – if the library of Alexandria was burned by Arabs — was somehow amicably resolved.
India’s deal with Israel is a big issue for the Communists because of the recent Indo-Israeli missile deal, which will protect India from, to borrow the Prime Minister’s words, “neighboring countries.” Now the Communists have become more Nehru than Nehru himself .

Nehru’s opposition for the creation of Israel, did not stand his way of asking their help during the 1962 war with China. Nehru asked David Ben-Gurion for help and Israelis sent military equipment. During the 1965 and 1971 wars too Israel sent mortar rounds, while our so called friends did pretty much nothing. India also demanded that while Israel sent ammunition, they remove any Israeli markings from it. The ammunition was obtained regularly as demanded and India condemned them in public and always supported the Palestinian cause.[Einstein, Nehru and Israel]

One way to be a Nehru is to oppose Israel while asking for help. (There are other ways too which is left as an exercise to the reader). This is exactly what the Communists did.
While the party is against Israel, one of their ministers, C. Divakaran of CPI, wanted to import Israeli bulls to impregnate Malayali cows; the Kerala bulls were only good for calling hartals. The goal of this exercise was to combine business and pleasure – for the Israeli bulls. The Israeli bulls were expected to do their magic and many mooos later milk production was to increase by 20%. Even the farmers unions were enthusiastic about this: they identified the hill station of Mattupetti for the bulls to sing songs.
C. Divakaran was not setting up new standards in Nehruvian school of geo-politics; he was just following the path of Jyothi Basu. During his tenure as the person in charge of taking Bengal to stone age, Basu wanted an industrial tie up with Israel. It also turns out that we blogged about this in 2003.
Thus we have Nehrus all around us, replicating rapidly, like Agent Smith in Matrix Reloaded. There is no problem with that, but if only they stopped dumping the other stuff which the bull produces on us.

Can the CEC turn a Mongoose Golden?

When Yudhishtira’s yagna was about to end, a mongoose with half his body in golden color turned up. This mongoose, who could speak, opined that this sacrifice was not equal to the deeds of a poor brahmin who lived in Kurukshetra.
Perplexed, the brahmins who were sapient in matters of yagna, asked him to explain. They had done the sacrifice as per the rituals. They had uttered the mantras without thinking of the Reed Wharbler or Whitethroat. So what could go wrong?
The mongoose simply said, “story time.”
There lived a poor brahmin family with nothing to eat. One day the head of the household got some barley. The food was divided and they were about to eat when a guest arrived. The brahmin gave his share to the guest but the guest was still hungry. So his wife gave her share. Soon their son and daughter-in-law followed. The guest departed and the family too departed — to heaven.
The mongoose who was watching this came out, rolled in the barley, and half of his body turned golden. The mongoose rolled around in Yudhishtira’s palace and the other half did not turn golden, but just became dirty.
Yudhishtira told the mongoose that if he visited the Chief Election Commissioner, the fate would be the same. The mongoose read a Rediff article and was shocked

“If you go to his residence, he won’t even offer you a glass of water. He may even eat in front of you without offering you anything,” a close friend said. This attitude is more because of a give-nothing-take-nothing principle than anything else, insiders say “He had to attend so many dinner meetings. In the two decades or so that I have known him, I have never seen him eat outside,” a friend said, adding, “He will entertain you in the drawing room and may talk to you for two hours, but there won’t be a single offer for any refreshments or even water.” [He lives by the give-nothing-take-nothing principle ]

The mongoose thanked Yudhishtira for the tip. He read other Rediff articles and found a person who could help him.

Chawla was also found to have exercised ‘extra-statutory control in jail matters’, including ‘the treatment of detenues’. Not confining himself to dictating to his boss as to the persons to be arrested, he also prescribed how they were to be treated in prison. For instance, he was for constructing special cells with asbestos roofs to ‘bake’ certain prisoners. [Unfair to impute motives to CEC]

The ‘asbestos treatment’ would definitely bring a glow to his skin, the mongoose thought, but he would be dead. Finally the mongoose looked at the 401(k)s, bank balances and house price of various people and decided to be content with what he had. He lived happily ever after.

How old are our mantras?

The Michael Wood documentary, The Story of India, which was telecast in six parts on PBS mentioned something interesting in the very first episode. Wood talked about the Out of Africa theory – the migration of humans 70,000 years back, from Africa along the shores of Arabian Sea into South India – and mentioned that all non-Africans in the world are descendents of these Indians. Nothing new in that.

Going in search of clues left by those ancient migrants in South India, he arrived at the house of a Kerala brahmin who is teaching his son mantras the way it has been done for millenia. Wood then shows the 2006 athirathram – a 12 day vedic ceremony – and mentions that certain sounds recited in this ceremony takes years to learn but have no meaning. When brahmins were asked for meaning, they did not know. They simply knew that it was handed down.
Since man is a speaking animal, we have always assumed that any word man says is in language, but some of those mantras are not in any known language. Hence these sounds, which are still recited today, are considered to have evolved before human speech.
Of Birds and Humans
Frits Staal of UC Berkeley thought that the claim that mantras are older than language was “preposterous.” In 1975 he helped finance an athirathram, which had not been conducted since 1956 due to financial constraints. Analyzing the sounds he came to the conclusion that mantras could belong to a pre-language era since:

Mantras are language independent: Anything in language can be translated whereas mantras remain the same in all languages.
Mantras, even though they seem to be in a language like Sanskrit, are not used for their meaning.
Mantras follow patterns, like refrain, which is not seen in language.

The clincher for the pre-language theory came when the sound patterns were analyzed to find the nearest equivalent in nature. The technique followed was like this: He took a mantra like Jaimintya Gramageyagana (45.2.1) which goes:

vo no ha bu / idam idam pura ha bu / pra va pra
vas ia ia ha yi / nina ninava tarn u vo ha bu / stiisa vi
sakhtaia Ya ha vi / dramutalyayi / o vi la /

It was split into patterns like AB / CB / DE/.. where A = vo no and B = ha bu. Comparing it to bird songs, it was found that the patterns were similar and such patterns were not found any where else.
As a side effect, by comparing the patterns of mantras and certain birds, it is possible to find which birds influenced the mantras. There is research which found patterns in the composition of Igor Stravinsky and a bird usually found in the region where he worked. Thus some of the mantra sounds were found to be inspired by the songs of Blyth’s Reed Warbler and Whitethroat – two birds which migrate to India.
There are examples of bird-human interaction in Vedas and Upanishads. Some vedic chools have been named after birds — like kausika after the owl or taittiriya after the partridge. D. D. Kosambi believed that Vedic clans were totemic. Then there is the story of Satyakama Jabala in Chandogya Upanishad who:

Critiques
Having established this similarity between bird song and mantra, the theory then takes off with a life of its own. There are vedic rituals for making rain and curing illness and similarly birds sing for building nests or attracting females; there are rituals and bird songs for various occasions. Then it was also found that bird sing – believe it or not – just for pleasure. So Staal extends the theory to say that, similar to skiing, dancing and music, mantras and rituals too are done for pleasure.
Between Staal’s athirathram in 1975 and Wood’s in 2006, one was held in 1990 near Thrissur which I attended for a day. This athirathram, which was extensively covered in Malayalam newspapers, was highly respectful and the words I heard were not “playful” or “pleasurable.” I can understand singing for pleasure, but am yet to meet a priest who said, “it’s a weekend and raining outside, let’s do a ganapati homam for pleasure.”
Prof. Staal thinks that not just the sounds, but rituals too are meaningless. But Wood writes that mantras, “work on emotions, the physiology, and the nervous system.” According to Wood, these rituals are a away of achieving heightened mental and physical state. So I am not sure if this research is of the Ganesha phallus quality. If you have seen any paper or book by anyone else, please leave a comment.
Postscript: Kosambi’s concept that Vedic clans were named after animals was criticized inThe Early Brahmanical System of Gotra and Pravara (Purusottama Pandita, John Brough). They wrote that it is equivalent to saying an Englishman with the surname Fox belongs to a totemic clan of that animal. Instead they suggest that the bird name could have come from the clan name.

Reference: Michael Wood has a companion book to the program. More details can be found in Staal’s paper, Mantras and Bird Songs, in which one quoted sentence reads: “there are mechanisms in existence which reinforce economical perfection in motor skills independently of the attainment of the ultimate biological goal in whose pursuit the learned movement is developed.” Staal’s book on this topic is available in limited preview mode in Google Books.

[serialposts]

A Conference on the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilization

A conference titled “International Conference on the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilization: A Reappraisal” is being held in Los Angeles on Feb. 21 and 22, 2009.

The aim of the conference is to discuss, reconsider and reconstruct a shared identity of the Sindhu (Indus) and Saraswati cultures, using archaeological and other scientific evidence as well as Vedic literature. For two days eminent archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, religious studies specialists and geneticists will present and discuss their findings on the salient issues of the Sindhu-Saraswati civilization and assess its contribution to Indian culture. The conference hopes to inform the general educated public about the contribution of these early South Asian cultures to world civilization, and about the issues and problems of interpretation related to them.

The title of the conference itself will cause alarm among one section of historians who believe that Indus Civilization and Vedic culture have nothing in common. Now the ritual will start with the precision of the south west monsoon and words will start pouring – Hindutva, Gujarat, rich NRIs, minorities, oort cloud etc. This is despite the fact that some of the participants — Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (University of Wisconsin), Jim G. Shaffer (Case Western Reserve University), Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky (Harvard University), Edwin Bryant (Rutgers University), Maurizio Tosi (University of Bologna, Italy) and Nicholas Kazanas (Omilos Meleton Cultural Institute, Athens) —- are not even Hindus.

These conferences, whether ideology driven or not, are happening regularly in India and United States. Also the rivalry between the AIT camp and the opponents has resulted in a great debate which would have been one sided otherwise. For a historian who is not bound by dogma, these discourses are educational, since it brings out data, which would have remained buried.
Note: The conference is free for public.

Op-Ed in Mail Today: Kerala Astronomers and Eurocentrism

(This op-ed was published in Jan 25, 2009 edition of Mail Today/ PDF)
To commemorate the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, P Govinda Pillai, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) ideologue, in an article in the Malayalam newspaper Mathruboomi, examined the legacy of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. He also bought out an important topic – Eurocentrism in history writing – due to which we know about the work done on telescopes by Galileo, Hans Lippershey and Roger Bacon, but almost nothing by the Arab scientist al-Hassan.
Mr. Pillai stopped there. He wrote nothing about the contributions of mathematicians and astronomers from his state, Kerala, in developing the heliocentric model and calculating planetary orbits. It is not Mr. Pillai alone who is at fault. This apathy, this ignorance, this refusal to acknowledge Indian contributions — all point to a deep malaise in our historical studies. For perspective on this issue, we need to understand the contributions of Indian astronomers and decide if we should be like Confucians during the time of the Ming dynasty or 21st century Peruvian archaeologists.
The Kerala School of Mathematics
In 1832, a paper, “On the Hindu quadrature of a circle”, was read at the Royal Asiatic Society. This paper by Charles M. Whish of the East Indian Company Civil Service described eight mathematical series quoting from a text called Tantra Sangraham (1500 CE) which he had discovered in Kerala. These series were also mentioned in Yukti Dipika by Sankara Variyar and Yukti-Bhasa by Jyestadevan; both those authors had learned mathematics and astronomy from Kellalur Nilakanta Somayaji, the author of Tantra Sangraham. Some of those series were linked to Madhavan of Sangramagramam (1340-1425 CE). These mathematicians who lived between the 14th and 16th centuries formed the Kerala School of Mathematics and were proof that Indian mathematics did not vanish after Bhaskaracharya.
The importance of the Kerala school can be appreciated only by understanding the Copernican revolution. The contribution of Copernicus was two fold: first he improved
the mathematics behind the Ptolemaic system and second, changed the model from geocentric to heliocentric. The heliocentric model was proposed as early as the third century BCE by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos and so it is the math that made the difference.
In his Tantra Sangraham, Nilakanta revised the Indian planetary model for the interior planets, Mercury and Venus and for this he formulated equations to find the center of the planets better than both Islamic and European traditions. He also described the planetary motion in which Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn moved in eccentric orbits around the Sun, which in turn went around the Earth. Till Nilakanta, the Indian planetary theory had different rules for calculating latitudes for interior and exterior planets. Nilakanta provided a unified rule. The heliocentric model of Copernicus did not alter the computational scheme for interior planets; it would have to wait till Kepler (who wrote horoscopes to supplement his income).
In their propensity to solve astronomical problems, mathematicians of the Kerala school developed concepts like Gregory’s series and the Leibniz’s series. The hallmark of earlier texts, like those of Madhava, were instructions and results without proofs or explanations. It is believed that the proofs and explanations were passed orally and hence rarely recorded. Yuktibhasha, the text written by Jyesthadeva, contain proofs of the theorems and the derivations of the rules, making it a complete text of mathematical analysis and possibly the first calculus text.

Lessons from Peru
Our education system, based on content from Western textbooks, have rarely questioned Western accomplishments. But Peruvians thought differently. When Peruvian archaeologists revisited the history written by the victors they discovered that the romantic tales woven by the Conquistadors were – well, tales. According to the original story, Francisco Pizarro, a Spaniard arrived in Peru in 1532 with few hundred men. Few weeks after their arrival, in a surprise attack, they killed the Inca king Atahualpa and took Cusco, the Inca capital. Four years later the Inca rebellion attacked Cusco and the new city of Lima.
On August 10, 1536, while Copernicus and the Kerala school were revolutionizing the world of astronomy half a world away, Francisco Pizzaro watched as tens of thousands of Incas closed in on Lima. With just a few hundred troops, Pizzaro had to come up with a strategy for survival. The Spaniards lead a cavalry attack and first killed the Inca general and his captains. Devoid of leadership the Incas scattered and once again the Spaniards won.
Recent archaeological excavations found a different version of this story. Out of the many skeletons found in the grave near Lima, only three were found to be killed by Spanish weapons; the rest by Incas. A testimony by Incas who were present in the battle was found in the Archive of the Franciscans at the Convent of San Francisco de Lima, which mentioned that it was not a great battle, but just a few skirmishes. Pizzaro was helped by a large army of Indian allies and the battle was not between the Spaniards and Incas, but between two Inca groups. It was also found that size of rebels were not in tens of thousands, but in thousands and there was no cavalry charge.
Thanks to the work of native archaeologists dramatic accounts of a small band of heroic Europeans subduing the Incas has a new narrative.
Lessons from China
Instead of following such examples and popularizing the work of Indian mathematicians, we have been behaving like Confucians at the court of the 15th century Ming emperor Zhu Di who erased evidence of the large fleets that sailed as far as the Swahili coast. While the world knows about the accomplishments of Europeans like Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Magellan and Francis Drake, little is known about Zheng He who arrived in Calicut eighty years before da Gama commanding a fleet of three hundred ships carrying 28,000 men; Vasco da Gama arrived with three ships and less than two hundred men.
Between 1405 to 1433, Zheng He’s fleet made seven voyages —- three to India, one to Persian Gulf and three to the African coast — trading, transporting ambassadors, and establishing Chinese colonies. Following the death of the emperor who commissioned these voyages, the Confucians at the court gained influence. Confucius thought that foreign travel interfered with family obligations and Confucians wanted to curtail the ambitious sailors and the prosperous merchants.
So ships were let to rot in the port and the logs books and maps were destroyed. The construction of any ship with more than two masts was considered a capital offense. A major attempt at erasing a proud chapter in their history was done by the natives themselves.
Appreciating our stars
The goal is not to diminish the accomplishments of Copernicus or Galileo but to note that no less important accomplishments were achieved by the Kerala school either before or around the same time. Interestingly in the West, Copernican revolution was considered a movement into science to which the Church, obstinate in religious dogma, would take umbrage. In India no one was burned at the stake or put under house arrest for proposing a heliocentric model.
Instead of accepting the astronomical concepts of the Church on faith, Galileo investigated them and found new truths. Extrapolating that to historical studies we need to critically examine the Eurocentric history like the Peruvians and popularize the work of our ancestors. In this International year of astronomy, if we do not inform everyone about our great astronomers, who will ?
Postscript: In the midst of all this Eurocentric history, as a surprising exception to the norm, the only educational institution where one can take an elective course in The Pre-History of Calculus and Celestial Mechanics in Medieval Kerala is Canisius College, New York.
References: This credit for this article goes to Ranjith, a reader of this blog. He alerted me to Govinda Pillai’s article and then sent various research papers and articles about the Kerala School. He made me read Modification of the earlier Indian planetary theory by the Kerala astronomers, 500 years of Tantrasangraha, Madhavan, the father of analysis, Whish’s showroom revisited and The Pre-History of Calculus and Celestial Mechanics in Medieval Kerala.
Dick Teresi’s book Lost Discoveries, which I first read in 2003, covers the ancient roots of modern science and has sections on Indian mathematicians and astronomers. I remember buying The Crest of the Peacock and lending it to a mathematician friend; the book is now inside a singularity. The Great Inca rebellion was covered in the excellent PBS documentary of the same name. References for Zheng He can be found in an earlier article. In 2000, the University of Madras organized a conference to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Tantrasangraha. The papers presented at this conference can be found in 500 Years of Tantrasangraha
Finally, Rajiv Malhotra on Eurocentrism of Hegel, Marx, Mueller, Monier Williams, Husserl.
(images via wikipedia and indiaclub)