Indology and Indologists A study in motives - Indic Studies Foundation

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Indology and Indologists 

A study in motives and people 

Kosla Vepa PhD 

Indic studies Foundation, 

948 Happy Valley Rd., 

Pleasanton, Ca 94566.,USA 

webmaster@indicethos.org 

vepa@indicstudies.us 

"Modern India will find her identity and the modern Indian will regain his soul when our 

people begin to have some understanding of our priceless heritage. A nation which has had 

a great past can look forward with confidence to a great future. It would be restorative to 

national self-confidence to know that many discoveries of today are really re-discoveries 

and represent knowledge which ancient India had at her command. World thinkers have 

stood in marvel at the sublimity of our scriptures." 

(source: Let's regain our lost soul - By Nani A Palkhivala - Tapovan Prasad - Chinmaya 

Mission vol. 39 #2 February 2001p 29).

(under construction) 

Part I 

It is taken as largely axiomatic in the study of the History of the Indic peoples 1 , that the civilization that remains extant has 

been brought into the area by migrating races such as the Aryans , and in fact some would argue,that such a statement holds 

also for the so called Dravidians of India. According to such a narrative everything that was worth preserving has been 

handed down to us over the centuries by migrations, within the last 3 1/2 millennia, into the subcontinent, from somewhere 

else. It is also true that the history that is taught the children of India today is vastly at variance with the puranic accounts 

handed down to us over several millennia. It is to state it without any embellishments, a revised history that is completely at 

odds with the traditional history of India. Even so great an effort as the History and Culture of the Indian people edited by RC 

Majumdar, with the blessings of KM Munshi of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, the most famous of Indian historians at the time 

of Independence accepts the basic framework of the History of India as revised by the British colonialists. Fifty years after 

independence the narrative has not changed and the banner of the colonial version of history is now borne by the Indian left 

including the Communists and the rump of the Congress party left behind after successive defections from its fold and 

whose only common ideology is the adulation of the Nehru Gandhi dynasty . 

A substantial percentage of Indians now feel they have a stake in the preservation of this false history and when confronted 

with the reality of their acquiescence to a false and revised history of their own land by a very recent arrival on the scene, 

react with irrelevant responses such as “why blame the British” (the issue is not one of blame, for after all we are in great 

admiration of the British for the extraordinary sagacity they displayed in prolonging their imperial rule by every artifice 

imaginable). One possible reason for such a stance by the Indic in our view is the so called Societal Stockholm Syndrome, 

which we have elaborated upon elsewhere. We have also dealt with the systematic approach that the British used to remake 

the weltanshcuung of the indic and to create an international image of the Indic that is much at variance with reality , and the 

success they achieved in the resulting internalization of these views by the Indic himself in our essay titled the South Asia 

File. 

1 We will define the adjective Indic (as in Indic civilization) to be inclusive of all the people who derived their civilization from the 

Dhaarmic traditions of the Indian subcontinent.. For the most part we willll restrict ourselves to the subset of those residing in the 

subcontinent including most of present day Afghanistan and some eastem regions of present day Iran 

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In this monograph we will study the motivations of 2 classes of individuals.. One category belonged who made it a lifelong 

passion to study the Indic people and their achievements in sciences and the arts and in the process undertook a 

dangerous and long journey in order to satisfy their curiosity. The other category belongs to those who were influenced 

considerably by the work of the Indic ancients. The study is startling in that the current disdain with which the Indic is held in 

the post colonial era is a development that occurred mainly in the last 200 years and that for most of our recorded history the 

Indic has been held in high esteem by the denizens of the globe. It appears the British had no small part in assiduously 

cultivating such a picture of the Indic. We say this because substantial numbers of scholars from Britain have expressed their 

disdain for the contributions of the Indics in unequivocal terms. But the pattern of spending a lifetime studying the Indics for 

a lifetime and imbibing their knowledge and then subsequently belittling their achievements was first exhibited by the 

Afghan scholar Al Biruni ( a very rare instance of such behavior in the ancient and medieval world) is more prevalent in recent 

times. To the extent that these contributions of the ancient Indics are held in high esteem by the occidentals, after the advent 

of colonial conquest, it is because it was understood that these were contributions made by the so called Aryans 

immediately after arrival in the subcontinent and that such a creative and inventive spark was extinguished shortly thereafter 

. To quote W W Rouse Ball, the historian of mathematics 2 

“The Arabs had considerable commerce with India, and a knowledge of one or both of the two great Hindoo works on algebra 

had been obtained in the Caliphate of Al-Mansur (754-775 AD)though it was not until fifty or seventy years later that they 

attracted much attention. The algebra and arithmetic of the Arabs were largely founded on these treatises, and I therefore 

devote this section to the consideration of Hindoo mathematics.The Hindoos like the Chinese have pretended that they are 

the most ancient people on the face of the earth, and that to them all sciences owe their creation. But it is probable that these 

pretensions have no foundation; and in fact no science or useful art (except a rather fantastic architecture and sculpture) can 

be definitely traced back to the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula prior to the Aryan invasion. This seems to have taken place 

at some time in the fifth century or in the sixth century when a tribe of Aryans entered India by the North West part of their 

country. Their descendants, wherever they have kept their blood pure, may still be recognized by their superiority over the 

races they originally conquered; but as is the case with the modern Europeans, they found the climate trying and gradually 

degenerated” 

2 W W. Rouse Ball in 'A short account of the History of mathematics' Dover Publications,1960, (originally appeared in 1908, page.146 

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We remind our readers that such a sentiment was expressed as late as the beginning of the 20 th century, after the 

renaissance and the enlightenment. 

In fact no study of this kind would be complete without a reference to the differing standards by which Occidentalists have 

concluded whether a particular discipline was imported or exported out of the Occident. We quote the Aryabhata group from 

the University of Exeter at Exeter in the UK in a paper delivered by Dennis Almeida, titled “Transmission of calculus from 

Kerala to the west” 

“However, we are aware that for some unfathomable reasons, the standard of evidence required for an acceptable claim of 

transmission of knowledge from east to west, is different from the standards of evidence required for a similar claim of 

transmission of knowledge from West to East. Priority and the possibility of contact always establish a socially acceptable 

case for transmission from west to East, but priority and definite contact never seems to establish an acceptable case for 

transmission from East to West, for there is always the possibility, that similar things could have been discovered 

independently. Hence we propose to adopt a legal standard of evidence, good enough to hang a person for murder. Briefly we 

propose to test the hypothesis on the grounds of motivation, opportunity, circumstantial evidence and documentary 

evidence” 

Examples abound, especially when it comes to areas such as Mathematics, Astronomy and Linguistics and the discovery of 

the origin of scripts. In particular we cite the instance of David Pongee’s PhD thesis titled “Materials for the Transmission of 

Greek astrology to India”. Notice he does not ask whether such a transmittal ever happened. That is a given, a hypothesis that 

needs not to be proven. This is another example of a circular argument. Assume the answer in your initial assumptions and 

then claim that it is an incontrovertible fact 

We begin our story by turning our attention to the question of why India has been a subject of such intense interest at least 

over the prolonged period of over 2 millennia. 

Why was India such a subject of intense study for over a period of 2 millennia? 

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India has been a subject of exhaustive study and ubiquitous interest to a wide variety of peoples from all corners of the 

ancient and the modern world throughout the millennia. To begin with we like to understand the various motives behind this 

intense interest. Was it merely intellectual curiosity? Was it really the intention to study these subjects in order that they may 

be critiqued extensively and then rubbished as inconsequential to the progress of humankind ? Was it a curiosity into the 

origins of the European languages and history, given that the oldest and most prolific literature of antiquity was in Sanskrit 

and Pali? We feel the answers were unique to each individual. But certain patterns are emerging among indologists 

particularly of British and German origin. 

There are many reasons for this intense and sustained interest, not least among them being the considerable prowess of the 

ancient Indic in matters of scholarship, relating to the exact sciences. The Indian university system of the ancient era was 

world renowned and attracted student from a wide variety of countries. They were strung across the northern Indo Gangetic 

plain starting from Takshashila on the western end to the famed universities of Nalanda, Odantipura and Vikramshila in 

present day Bihar 

Indology is a name given by Indologists to the academic study of the history, languages, the sciences and cultures of the 

Indian subcontinent. Strictly speaking it encompasses the study of the languages, scripts of all of Asia that was influenced by 

Indic culture. As one can imagine this encompasses almost all of present day Asia except perhaps the very northernmost 

reaches of Siberia. Indology as viewed by its practitioners in Europe and America is analogous to Entomology, the science of 

insects, in more ways than one. In both instances the subjects of the study have little say in the matter and the scope of the 

study. The study is always carried out to be of benefit to the people who undertake the study and there is little or no benefit to 

the subject of the study who may end up sacrificing his life for the ’cause’. Indological studies or the study of the Indic people 

in a scholarly and serious manner can be broken up into 6 major categories in some cases with overlapping time periods. 

Regions of the world where interest in Indic studies was predominant 

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1. Babylonian and Greek (2500 BCE to 150 BCE). The Semitic and Mediterranean world had ubiquitous contacts 

with the Indic. We are in the long drawn out process of researching this phase of Indology. Our knowledge of the 

facts, are meager at the moment. But the more we learn about the Greeks , the more it is apparent that they 

learned a lot of their sciences from the Indian subcontinent

This came to a virtual stop during the heyday of the Roman Empire when it became the paramount Mediterranean 

power after the fall of Carthage. Rome remained a major trading partner of India but ceased to be interested in 

Indic scholarship. The Byzantines or the Eastern Empire centered in Constantinople, even though it has sufficient 

contacts ceased to evince interest after the advent of the adoption of Christianity, as India came to be associated 

increasingly with the Pagan practices that they were trying hard to extinguish in Europe. 

2. China and the Sinic Civilization. (2500 BCE – 1200 CE) The interaction between the Indic and Sinic civilizations 

has been one of long standing, reaching back to the ancient era, and it has been a two way street, contrary to 

popular misconceptions. The interaction has been ubiquitous and consistent. India has borrowed much from the 

Sinic civilization ranging from the mundane to the sublime and vice versa. There is much work yet to be done to 

study the extent of this interaction, an area that was merely of tertiary interest to the European 

3. Arab and Non Arab Islamic studies of India (most of the Islamic savants who studied India did not speak Arabic 

as their native tongue, but were descended from converted central Asian and Indic civilizations (700 CE to 1200 

CE). In fact it can safely be said that the Arab savants had enormous respect for the capabilities of the Indics as 

did the Greeks like Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyanneous before them. The glaring exception to this 

statement is the cognitive dissonance exhibited by Al Biruni , the most well known amongst the Islamic 

indologists, who spent a considerable portion of his life in India while expressing scathing contempt and 

stereotyping of Hindus in his remarks about Indians in general. That there is a contradiction between spending a 

great portion of one life learning from a people and then trashing them unequivocally does not seem to bother 

AlBiruni. Furthermore , Al Biruni even though a native of Khorasan (Khwaresm), was raised in Ghazni and spoke 

a dialect of Farsi known as Dari, which is spoken even today in Afghanistan. These areas of Afghanistan were 

in fact freshly Islamized after the last of the Hindu Shahi Kingdoms were defeated not very much earlier. The 

point being Al Biruni was no stranger to Hindu scholarship or culture prior to coming to India. Such an attitude of 

studied indifference and condescension even after a lifetime of imbibing Indic knowledge,became more and more 

prevalent after the advent of the colonial era and the norm rather than the exception . 

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The scholarly exchanges with the Khilafat came to a halt after the sack of Baghdad and Damascus by Hulagu, the 

grandson of the Mongol Great Khan Chinghiz, the most victorious conqueror of all time. It was also severely 

impacted when vast numbers of Indics were taken in slavery, especially able bodied men and women, and those 

with skills in the arts and sciences and equally large numbers were killed at the rate of 100,000 a day during and 

after a battle. So great were the numbers of Indian slaves who flooded the slave markets of Damascus that the 

price of slaves dropped dramatically and would seriously impact the economics of slavery as a profitable 

activity. Some have estimated the sustained decimation of the Indic population over the 5 centuries of Islamic 

domination of the subcontinent to be in the neighborhood of over 70 million people and for the first time India, 

always a highly densely populated country in relative terms to the rest of the globe, suffered a drop in 

population. The scholars retreated farther and farther to the south until they reached Kerala, which is where the 

Kerala School of astronomy and mathematics flourished for at least 300 years, producing such stalwarts as 

Nilakanta Somayaji, till the 1700’s 

4. Pre- British colonial Catholic church dominated study of India. It may be surprising to learn that one of the first 

pioneers in European Indology was the 12th Century Pope, Honorius IV. Then as now, the primary focus of the 

study was not the scientific acquisition of knowledge but to arm themselves with enough facts to be able to 

convert the Indic population to Christianity. 

5. British colonial Indology (1780 CE – 2000 CE) which was in reality dominated by German scholars. Interest in 

Indology only took shape and concrete direction after the British came to India, with the advent of the discovery 

of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones in the 1770’s. Other names for Indology are Indic studies or Indian studies or 

South Asian studies. 

The extraordinary level of interest by German scholars in Indic matters is a very interesting narrative in its own 

right and we need to reflect upon the highlights of this phenomenon. The German speaking people experienced a 

vast increase in intellectual activity at about the same time that Britain colonized India. We do not understand 

the specific factors that came into play during this time, other than to remark on the tremendous intellectual

ferment that was running concurrently during the French revolution, and the keen interest that Napoleon showed 

in matters scientific including the contributions of the orient. Clearly the remarks that Sir William made about 

Sanskrit as well as the high-level of interest that he provoked in the Sanskrit language, contributed to the overall 

sense of excitement. But why was it Germany and not Britain as the center of research on the Oriental 

contributions. The answer lies in the intense search for nationhood that was under way in Germany during that 

period. When Sanskrit was discovered, and it dawned on the Germans that the antiquity of Sanskrit was very 

great, and that Sanskrit and German were somehow related, the Germans suddenly had an answer to the 

question of their own ethnic and linguistic origins. Sir Henry Maine an influential Anglo Indian scholar and former 

Vice Chancellor of Calcutta university, who was also on the Viceroys council, pronounced a view that many 

Englishman shared about the unification of Germany. 

A nation has been born out of Sanskrit 

From the beginning, the great interest that Germany showed in Sanskrit had to do with their own obsessions and 

questions regarding their ethnic and linguistic origins. It had very little or at least far less to do with the origin of 

the ancient Indic, about whom they had considerably less interest. And yet, that does not stop the proponents of 

the AIT in India, whose knowledge of Eiropean history appears to be rudimentary at best, from asserting that AIT 

is an obsession of nationalistic Hindus.Such is the fate and the perversion of history that conquered nations can 

aspire to Different aspects of this fascinating chapter, on the postulation of an Aryan race and its corollaries the 

Indo European, Indo German are described for instance by various authors Trautmann 3 , Rajaram 4 and Arvidson 5 . 

The interesting but curious aspect of this phenomena is t hath while the concept of the Aryan race has pretty 

much been discarded by most of the modern generation of the European world, It lingers on in the narrative of 

Indian History, a relic of the heyday of Europe’ s dominance on the world scene, when racist theories were 

abundant to explain this dominance as being a consequence of their heritage as an Aryan people 

3 Trautmann, Thomas, “Aryans and British india”, 1997, University of California press 

4 Rajaram, Navaratna “The Politics of History, Voice of India, 1995 

5 Stefan Arvidsson 2006:38 Aryan Idols 

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One of the criticisms leveled at the new breed of Indian historians who wish to uncover the authentic history of 

India after the morass of inconsistencies to which it has sunk is that they are motivated by political 

considerations and the further charge is made that they are ‘nationalistic’. Apart from the question of any 

violation of ethics by being nationalistic not being apparent to me, this is to us a perplexing charge to make since 

it is apparent that political motivations have been always dominant in the pursuit of Indological studies during 

the colonial era, right from the outset since the time of Sir William Jones, when he discovered the existence of 

Sanskrit. One such political motivation was the need for the European to define his identity outside the 

framework of Semitic traditions which dominated the religious life of Europe. The notion that the North European 

Viking owed much of his civilization to the Mediterranean Semite was not palatable to most of the elite among the 

countries of Northern lands of Europe for reasons which we do not have the time to go into now. So, the 

discovery of Sanskrit was accompanied by a big sigh of relief that the languages of Europe did not after all derive 

from Hebrew but from an ancestor language which was initially assumed to be Sanskrit. In the immediate 

aftermath of the discovery of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, there was a great gush of admiration and worship of 

the sublime nature of the Sanskrit texts such as Sakuntala. But as the European realized that the present day 

practitioners of Sanskrit were not blonde and blue eyed (remember ideas of racial superiority were dominant in 

18 th century Europe despite the advent of the enlightenment and the renaissance) this was found to be equally 

unpalatable. 

The European indologist therefore came upon the ingenious explanation that the Sanskritic culture of the 

subcontinent was not native to the subcontinent but was impregnated by a small band of nomadic Viking like 

marauders who then proceeded to transform themselves within the short space of 200 years into the intellectual 

class of India. This hypothesis (because that is what it was) had of course no basis in fact, but it served the 

purpose and killed several birds with one stone. It denied India the autocthonous legacy of the dominant culture 

of the subcontinent, and helped create a schism in the Indian body politic, and further implied that the native 

Indics were incapable of original thought and certainly were not capable of producing a language like Sanskrit. It 

filled the obsessive need during those decades that the European had for an ancestor that was not Semitic in 

origin. Lo and behold the ancestor did not come from India but from a long lost Shangrila of whom there were no 

survivors (so that their hypothesis could never be contradicted). Thus was born the mythical Aryan, whose only 

qualification was that he should hail from a land that was anywhere but India, preferably from a region not very 

densely inhabited or conscious of their antiquity. Further it gave the excuse for the British to claim that they were

indeed the later day version of the Aryans destined to lord it over lesser, more unfortunate people by reason of 

the fact that they were Aryans. See for instance (Trautmann (1997) or Chakrabarti (1997)) 

In short, the study of India, during the colonial era has always been accompanied by a healthy dose of imperialist 

dogma and by disdain for a people who they felt could so easily be vanquished in battle by handful of 

Englishmen. This is in addition to the normal human tendency to exhibit a degree of the NIH syndrome (Not 

Invented Here). This is a train of thought that needs to be explored further, but we do not wish to be sidetracked 

from the main topic. We hasten to add that the fundamental scholarly impulse and intellectual curiosity that 

drives most scholars still motivates a substantial section of the indologists, despite much pressure from 

European academia to toe the line. But this stream of objective scholars died out pretty soon after and became 

almost extinct in the nineteenth century, and in general, with a few exceptions amongst the French, the European 

Indologists toed the party line that Indic contributions were shallow and insubstantial 

In fact the British presence in India was steadily increasing long before the Battle of Plassey in 1757 CE, but so 

great was the insularity of the colonial overlord that it took almost three hundred years for a scholar like Sir 

William to show up in India after Vasco da Gama landed of the coast of Goa in 1492 CE, and notice the 

similarities between Sanskrit and the European languages. 

But the discovery of Sanskrit by Sir William and the coming of the British had a terminally fatal effect on the 

conduct of scientific studies in India. It cut off the Indic from his own native source of traditional learning and 

replaced it with the traditions of a land far away with which he had no physical contact, and could not relate, with 

the result that literacy fell to 6% at the turn of the 20th century . Education was tightly controlled by the 

government and all support to schools that did not teach English was summarily stopped, except in states that 

were ruled by a local Maharajah such as Travancore Cochin, Baroda and Mysore. India was turned into a vast 

Gulag where no ideas other than those of the British were allowed to penetrate and Indian were effectively barred 

from traveling to foreign lands, except on a one way trip to a distant land as indentured labor, lest they return 

with the subversive notions of freedom and democracy which as Churchill remarked on more than one occasion 

were not applicable to the subject populations of their Colonies. So great was the travel restriction that the Indic 

internalized this consequence of the rule of the Colonial Overlord, to be a characteristic of the assumed native 

propensity to aversion of adventure and exploration. There was no money allocated for research and no 

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encouragement of savants, who had little opportunity to pursue further research. So the steady supply of Indic 

scientists which lasted till about 1780 CE finally died out and Indic science was almost extinguished from the 

land. 

This is not to say that there have been no benefits accrued from the change in the medium of instruction to 

English. Due to the fortuitous circumstance that a substantial part of the new world now spoke English, placed 

Indic youngsters at an advantageous situation when it came to getting admission to graduate studies in North 

America. This coupled with the investment in higher education made by Jawaharlal Nehru India’s first Prime 

Minister catapulted India into the leadership ranks of countries who were players in the new Information 

Technology. But the negatives remain. The vast majority of the Indian population are not participants in this new 

bounty, because they do not have the access to the expensive schools that purvey access to such an education. 

The most telling impact of the newly coined endeavor called philology , that was the result of this unwanted 

gush of attention engendered ever since the discovery of Sanskrit, was the manner in which the Indic was 

viewed by the rest of the world and even more importantly the internalization of the British and European view of 

India by the average literate English educated Indic. Till then the Indic was widely respected throughout the world 

and his geographical origin was synonymous with scholarship. Today, it is commonplace in India to deride 

somebody who expresses pride in his tradition and his civilization as being jingoistic. The Colonial overlord went 

to extraordinary lengths to undermine the Civilizational commonalities amongst the people of India by variousw 

an diverse means. Anything that had a negative impact was played to the hilt. The antiquity of Indian history was 

systematically whittled away and the new dates had to conform to the notion that Indid not cotnribiute anything 

opf value to civilization an dtha thall she know in the area of science and mathematics, was learned from the 

Greeks. The Indian was uniformly characterized as a shiftless indolent with very few redeeming qualities 

So great was the change and so lasting in its effect that today vast numbers of Indian youth have almost the 

same opinion of India and Indic traditions that the Colonial overlords had, of India in the eighteenth and 

nineteenth century. There has been a massive change in the psyche of the Indic, much of it for the worse, a fact 

that was brought out in vivid portrayals by V S Naipaul when he coined the phrase ‘the wounded civilization’ in 

his references to the subcontinent.

Examples of the internalization of the European views of India abound in India today. Even eminent Indian 

historians like RC Majumdar have expressed some of these views in writing without substantiating how they 

arrived at such conclusions. We give below a sample. It is ironic that these viewpoints are usually expressed by 

Indics rather than non Indics. 

The Indic is inherently incapable of adventurous behavior and will not venture beyond the confines of the Indian 

subcontinent (Kaalapaani syndrome) 

The Indic is incapable of original, rational and creative ideas. The Indic is incapable of independent thinking and 

is unquestioning in his adherence to authoritarian diktats such as those in the Vedic texts and is only capable of 

rote learning(presuming it is conceded that the Indic is capable of learning at all.) 

The caste system is an artifact of the Indic religious belief system, and that the Indic is inherently opposed to 

egalitarian ideas and is wedded to the racial and ethnic stratification of his own society. 

The Indic is especially unique and egregious in the manner in which he exploits his fellow Indics 

The indic is fundamentally not tuned to making progress and advancing in the modern world, and is lost in an 

ancient mind set 

Everything good and worthwhile in the Indian subcontinent has been imported by the invaders, and the only 

indigenous characteristics are those like caste that are inherent to the Indic civilization. 

The Indic is fatalistic and will not make an effort to change his destiny which is written in stone the moment he is 

born 

The Indic is lazy and indolent 

The Indic has no sense of history and is even poorer at keeping records of his historical past 

As a consequence of the above the Indic is socially backward, possibly morally corrupt and perennially hence 

dependent upon Westernization to reform the current problems in Indian society. 

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The germ of such a vast change in psyche was the goal of Thomas Babington Macaulay and he would have been 

rather pleased to see the consequences of his minute on education where he proposed changing the medium of 

instruction to English in the 1830’s in order to produce a class of Brown Englishman who would occupy 

positions intermediate between those of the Colonial overlords and the unwashed masses of the subcontinent. 

In the same vein, HH Wilson, the first occupant of the Boden Chair in Sanskrit, wrote as follows, 

“From the survey which has been submitted to you, you will perceive that the practical religion of the Hindus is 

by no means a concentrated and compact system, but a heterogeneous compound made up of various and not 

infrequently incompatible ingredients, and that to a few ancient fragments it has made large and unauthorized 

additions, most of which are of an exceedingly mischievous and disgraceful nature. It is, however, of little avail 

yet to attempt to undeceive the multitude; their superstition is based upon ignorance, and until the foundation is 

taken away, the superstructure, however crazy and rotten, will hold together.” 

Power over a vast area like India does strange things to people, one of which is the loss of ‘common sense’ , not 

to mention the loss of humility, and one can see the process of creating the mythological Indian has already 

begun as early as 1833, the process of remaking the Indic mindset had commenced in earnest. 

6. Indic studies by native Indics when the Indic tradition miraculously resurrected itself shortly after the beginning 

of the twentieth century from an almost comatose condition (1900 CE to the present) 

So we come to the sixth and current period of Indological studies. The European, with few exceptions continued 

to study the Indic past as if the present day practitioners did not exist. In this the indologists tried to emulate 

Egyptology and the study of Meso American civilizations. In both these instances, the Europeans could say 

anything they liked without being challenged by survivors of the tradition and get away with it, because there 

were no survivors after the routine scourging of native populations using the well entrenched twin techniques - 

first with the sword and then the Holy book to erase all prior traditions, as well as inflicting upon them diseases 

which effectively decimated their populations. They studied India in the same vein, making untenable

assumptions and hypothesis and then indulged in circular arguments that anything that does not fit the 

assumption is invalid 

But the Hindu is a strange creature, imbued with the genetic longevity of the cockroach and the intellectual 

hardiness that comes from millennia of tradition devoted to scholarship. Indics were the first to codify the 

principle of acquisition of knowledge known now by the name of epistemology and they resisted the imposition 

of a history and a narrative that was substantially at variance from their Puranic traditions. These principles of 

acquisition of knowledge are alluded to in my booklet on Dhaarmik traditions and include Perception and 

Observation (Pratyaksha), Anumaana (inference), Comparison and Analogy (Upamaana), shabda ( acceptance, 

though not necessarily uncritical acceptance, of the Word as manifested in the ancient scriptures, Arthapaati 

(implication) and anupalabdi (non apprehension and skepticism in the face of non-apprehension). 

The systematic approach, combined with the methodology of learning recommended by the Upanishads namely, 

the triune method of shravana, manana and nididhyasana forms the core of the approach to all kinds of 

knowledge , whether It be Paara Vidya or Apaara Vidya (see Glossary). The term Shravana refers basically to 

hearing, but also includes reading, discussions and the like. Manana is contemplation of what has been studied 

or heard. Nididhyasana is concentration on the subject to the exclusion of everything else. It may not always be 

possible or advisable to practice multitasking, which has become de rigueur in this age of rapid technological 

change. Usually, the initial knowledge about anything has to be acquired through a guru, because he is the 

dependable authority on the subject. Manana and Nididhyasana depend on one’s own effort, with some guidance 

from the guru. The role of the teacher is only as a guidepost. The journey has to be undertaken by us with our 

own efforts. 

It is this comprehensive approach to the acquisition of knowledge that has given the edge to the Hindu vis a vis 

other civilizations over the millennia and is catalyzing the reclamation of the high ground in the field of Indic 

studies. This is not to say that the Modern Indic should ignore the work done by others in this field , but it does 

mean the converse that indologists outside India, can no longer ignore the legitimate claims to scholarship of 

Indic savants in the study of their own History. Let us hope that as we go from here that he, the Western 

Indologist will abandon the politically motivated approach that he has taken till hitherto and will accord the 

discerning Indic savant the same consideration and apply objective criteria to the studies undertaken by those 

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who are not of a European background. Certainly it means that he should eschew the use of the convenient and 

stereotypical characterization of anything that he does not like as being a product or a conspiracy of the 

Hindutva or a Hindu nationalist. 

In reality, there is a basic contradiction in the western characterization of the Hindu and the pejorative use of the 

word Hindu nationalist. The Hindu faith or Sanaatana Dharma has often been characterized in my view with 

adequate justification, as being too eclectic and all encompassing. In fact in the quote above Hayman Wilson 

characterizes it as being ‘heterogeneous and contradictory’. And yet, there is the constant and ubiquitous 

drumbeat in the use of the word Hindu nationalist, which implies an exclusionary stance and narrow 

mindedness. To the followers of Plato and Socrates in the Occidental world, I ask, well, which is it, eclectic and 

all encompassing weltanschuung, or exclusionist and narrow minded. 

Eurocentrism and Mathematics 

For some their Eurocentrism (or Graeco-centrism) is so deeply entrenched that they cannot bring themselves to face the idea 

of independent developments in early Indian mathematics, even as a remote possibility. Thhhe following passages 

quotedfrom Gheverghese’s The crest of the Peacock, 

“A good illustration of this blinkered vision is provided by a widely respected historian of mathematics at the turn of this 

century, Paul Tannery. Confronted with the evidence from Arab sources that the Indians were the first to use the sine function 

as we know it today, Tannery devoted himself to seeking ways in which the Indians could have acquired the concept from the 

Greeks. For Tannery, the very fact that the Indians knew and used sines in their astronomical calculations was sufficient 

evidence that they must have had it from the Greeks. But why this tunnel vision? The following quotation from G. R. Kaye 

(1915) is illuminating: 

"The achievements of the Greeks in mathematics and art form the most wonderful chapters in the history of civilization, and 

these achievements are the admiration of western scholars. It is therefore natural that western investigators in the history of 

knowledge should seek for traces of Greek influence in later manifestations of art, and mathematics in particular."

It is particularly unfortunate that Kaye is still quoted as an authority on Indian mathematics. Not only did he devote much 

attention to showing the derivative nature of Indian mathematics, (Attempts to show the derivative nature of Indian sciences, 

and especially its supposed Greek roots, continue even today. For example, David Pingree has prepared a chronology of 

Indian astronomy which is notable for the absence of any Indian presence!) usually on dubious linguistic grounds (his 

knowledge of Sanskrit was such that he depended largely on indigenous ‘pandits’ for translations of primary sources), but he 

was prepared to neglect the weight of contemporary evidence and scholarship to promote his own viewpoint. So while 

everyone else claimed that The Bakhshali Manuscript was written or copied from an earlier text dating to the first few 

centuries of the Common era, Kaye insisted that it was no older than the 12 th century A.D. Again, while the Arab sources 

unanimously attributed the origin of our present-day numerals to the Indians, Kaye was of a different opinion. And the 

distortions that resulted from Kaye’s work have to be taken seriously because of his influence on Western historians of 

mathematics, many of whom remained immune to findings which refuted Kaye’s inferences and which established the 

strength of the alternative position much more effectively than is generally recognized. 

This tunnel vision is not confined to mathematics alone. Surprised at the accuracy of information on the preparation of alkalis 

contained in an early Indian textbook on medicine (Susruta Samhita) dating to few centuries BCE, the eminent chemist and 

historian of the subject, Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1909) suggested that this was a later insertion, after the Indians had come 

into contact with European chemistry! 

This Eurocentric tendency has done more harm, because it rode upon the political domination imposed by the West, which 

imprinted its own version of knowledge on the rest of the world. “ 

The geographical location of India made her throughout history an important meeting-place of nations and cultures. This 

enabled her from the very beginning to play an important role in the transmission and diffusion of ideas. The traffic was often 

two-way, with Indian ideas and achievements traveling abroad as easily as those from outside entered her own 

consciousness. Archaeological evidence shows both cultural and commercial contacts between Mesopotamia and the Indus 

valley. Certain astronomical calculations of the longest and shortest day included in the Vedanga Jyotisa, the oldest extant 

Indian astronomical text, have close parallels with those used Mesopotamia. 

Some sources even credit Pythagoras with having traveled as far as India in search of knowledge, which may explain some of 

the close parallels between Indian and Pythagorean philosophy and religion. These parallels include: 

17

18 

a. a belief in the transmigration of souls; 

b. the theory of four elements constituting matter; 

c. the structure of the religio-philosophical character of the Pythagorean fraternity, which resembled Buddhist monastic 

orders; and 

d. the contents of the mystical speculations of the Pythagorean schools, which bear a striking resemblance of the Hindu 

Upanishads. 

According to Greek tradition, Pythagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus and others undertook journey to the 

East to study philosophy and science. By the time Ptolemaic Egypt and Rome’s Eastern empire had established themselves 

just before the beginning of the Common era, Indian civilization was already well developed, having founded three great 

religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – and expressed in writing the massive literature (of the Veda, the Brahmanas, 

the Upanishads, the Purana,) as well as fundamental theories in science and medicine. There are scattered references to 

Indian science in the literary sources from countries to the west of India after the time of Alexander. In a letter Aristotle wrote 

to his pupil Alexander in India, he warns of the danger posed by intimacy with a ‘poison-maiden’, who had been fed on poison 

from her infancy so that she could kill merely by her embrace! 

(source: The crest of the peacock: Non-European roots of Mathematics - By George Gheverghese Joseph p. 1 - 18 and 215 - 

216 

What are the major contentions and the resulting contradictions in the Western chronology of India 

The inherent contradictions of the Aryan Invasion Theory by the mythic and yet to be identified Aryan race 

The insistence that Indic astronomy , geometry and mathematics was not autochthonous to India but was 

borrowed from the Greek or the Babylonians

The origin of the Brahmi script is a victim of the ‘anywhere but India’ syndrome 

Devaluation and denigration of the extent of the ancient Indic contribution to Mathematics and Astronomy 

Dating of the mahabharata 

Dating of the Satapatha Brahmana 

Dating of the Veda 

Dating of the Vedanga Jyotisha 

Dating of the Sulva sutras 

The beginning of the Vikrama era 

The dating of the Buddha 

The dating of the Arthashastra 

The dating of Chandragupta Maurya 

The dating of Panini’s Ashtadhyayi and consequentially the dating of Panini himself 

The dating of Aryabhata 

There are resulting inconsistencies in the chronology of the Indic historical narrative,, whcich is now horribly 

mangled to fit the straightjacket of britiish assumptions 

In discussing the individuals , one is struck by the generally . high intellectual caliber of the scholars who form 

ther bulk of the Indologists. And yet a very high percentage were loathe to discard the prevalent racist dogma 

of the day , that the Indics were incapable of a high level of intellectual effort and that therefore the only 

explanation (of the high level of civilization in the Indian subcontinent relative to the rest of the ancient world) 

was that such a circumstance could only have been possible if an alien civilization had transplanted it from 

somewhere else the and were unable to free themselves of the racial prejudice that the Indic was incompetent to 

make these discoveries 

19

20 

Part II The people who studied India from the ancient era 

Explanatory notes : The dates associated with most of these gentlemen should be regarded only as approximate 

at least to the nearest decade, as there were no accurate birth records prior to the 18 th century. Unlike in ancient 

India where a birth was sometimes recorded with the appropriate nakshatra, tithi, maasa and samvatsara , such 

access to a calendar was not easily available to the ordinary folk in Europe till well into the enlightenment . A 

such the birthdates of most European individuals other than royalty, prior to the nineteenth century, must be 

regarded with circumspection and merely as an approximation. 

One final comment before we begin. It is estimated that the total manuscript wealth available in India today is in 

the order of 5 million according to the National Mission for Manuscripts was established in February 2003, by the 

Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India. A unique project in its programme and mandate, the 

Mission seeks to unearth and preserve the vast manuscript wealth of India. India possesses an estimate of five 

million manuscripts, probably the largest collection in the world. These cover a variety of themes, textures and 

aesthetics, scripts, languages, calligraphies, illuminations and illustrations. Together, they constitute the 

‘memory' of India's history, heritage and thought. These manuscripts lie scattered across the country and 

beyond, in numerous institutions as well as private collections, often unattended and undocumented. The 

National Mission for Manuscripts aims to locate, document, preserve and render these accessible—to connect 

India's past with its future, its memory with its aspirations. The electronic catalogue or database contains data on 

about three hundred thousand (300,000) manuscripts, and the database is steadily increasing day by day. 

This is the case despite heavy losses due to wars, destruction and natural decay. Out of this staggering number 

about 1 million have been catalogued in India and perhaps another 200,00 abroad in various libraries such as 

the Bodleian Libray in Oxford. This by far the largest extant literature from the ancient world for any civilization. 

There is nothing even remotely comparable anywhere else. In one field alone, namely astronomy, the late David 

Pingree found so many manuscripts that he called the resulting effort at cataloguing a Census.

The DeviMahatmya MS in Sanskrit, an example of a manuscript on palm-leaf, Bihar or Nepal, 11th c., 32 ff., 5x31 cm, 2 

columns, (3x27 cm), 5 lines in an early Bhujimol script, borders marked with double lines with orange pigmentation between 

lines, 1 miniature in text. 

Binding: Nepal, 11th c., carved wooden covers, decorated with 10 miniatures, poti with hole for the binding cord. 

Provenance: 1. Monastery in Nepal (ca. 11th c.-); 2. Sam Fogg cat. 17(1996):40. 

It is no wonder that scholars have found the study of India to be such a fertile field and continue to find it so even today. 

21

0 N 

o 

. 

22 

Name Brief description 

1 Babylonian, Chinese and 

Greek Indologists 

2 ITsing

3 

Pythagoras of Samos 

(560BC - 480BC) 

"Through Vibration comes 

Motion 

Through Motion comes 

Color 

Through Color comes Tone" 

He was a Greek philosopher who was responsible for important developments in 

the history of mathematics, astronomy, and the theory of music. He founded the 

Pythagorean Brotherhood and formulated principles that influenced the thoughts 

of Plato and Aristotle. The influence of Pythagoras is so widespread, and coupled 

with the fact that no writings of Pythagoras exist today, 

He traveled widely in his youth with his father Mnesarchus, who was a gem 

merchant from Tyre. His family settled in the homeland of his mother, Pythais, on 

the island of Samos, where he studied with the philosopher Pherekydes. He was 

introduced to mathematical ideas and astronomy by Thales, and his pupil 

Anaximander in Miletus when he was between 18 and 20 years old. Thales advised 

Pythagoras to travel to Egypt to learn more of these subjects. Leaving Miletus, 

Pythagoras went first to Sidon, where he was initiated into the mysteries of Tyre 

and Byblos. It is claimed that Pythagoras went onto Egypt with a letter of 

introduction written by Polycrates, making the journey with some Egyptian sailors 

who believed that a god had taken passage on their ship. Arriving in Egypt, 

Pythagoras tried to gain entry into the Mystery Schools of that country. He applied 

again and again, but he was told that unless he goes through a particular training 

of fasting and breathing, he cannot be allowed to enter the school. Pythagoras is 

reported to have said, " I have come for knowledge, not any sort of discipline." But 

the school authorities said," we cannot give you knowledge unless you are 

different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in 

actual experience. No knowledge is knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. 

So you will have to go on a 40 day fast, continuously breathing in a certain 

manner, with a certain awareness on certain points." After 40 days of fasting and 

breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school at Diospolis. It 23 is 

said that Pythagoras said,"You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different 

man, I am reborn. You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole 

standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has 

changed. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, 

through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life." 

Some say that Pythagoras had been to India as part of his travels through Persia 

and Babylon. There seem to be reasons not to scoff at such a claim. The main 

reason being that much of his interest in numbers is not all that dissimilar to the

4 Alexander’s Invasion of 

India. The defeat of Puru 

and the crossing of the 

Indus. 

24 

The invasion of India by Alexander while not directly connected with Indology, is 

indeed a very curious episode in Indic History which has a bearing on the 

chronology of India. First and foremost , there is clearly no record of his invasion 

in any accounts of Indian history. He appears to have fought a minor Baron or 

regional Governor or Satrap of the Chakravarti by the name of Puru, who 

administered a region near present day Takshashila, if we are to believe the 

accounts of the Greeks. Now who were these Greek historians who reported on 

the victory of Alexander. The recounting is done by Strabo and Arrian (Arrian was 

a proconsul in the employ of the Roman empire and lived 400 years after the 

advent of Alexander’s expedition) as well as Pliny and Plutarch. They were 

certainly not present at the time of the battle, but relied on the descriptions given 

by Alexander’s companions, Onesecritus, Aristibulus and his admiral Nearchus .In 

what follows we give the gist of the Western acccount of the event. It is incredible 

that very few western authors have bothered to check the account of the Greek 

invasion in the Indian historical record and if they did they rarely report that they 

found little or nothing. This is especially curious because the English historians 

based their entire chronology on the date of Alexander’s battles and on the 

second hand description of Megasthenes, the Seleucid Greek ambassador who 

came to the court of Chandragupta, shortly after Alexander died and Seleucus 

Nicator took over the Eastern part of Alexander’s empire 

From Wiki 

After the death of Spitamenes and his marriage to Roxana (Roshanak in Bactrian) 

to cement his relations with his new Central Asian satrapies, in 326 BC Alexander 

was finally free to turn his attention to the Indian subcontinent. Alexander invited 

all the chieftains of the former satrapy of Gandhara, in the north of what is now 

Pakistan, to come to him and submit to his authority. Ambhi (Greek: Omphis), 

ruler of Taxila, whose kingdom extended from the Indus to the Jhelum 

(Greek:Hydaspes), complied. But the chieftains of some hilly clans including the, 

Aspasios and Assakenois sections of the Kambojas (classical names), known in 

Indian texts as Ashvayanas and Ashvakayanas (names referring to the equestrian 

nature of their society from the Sanskrit root work Ashva meaning horse), refused 

to submit. 

Alexander personally took command of the shield-bearing guards, footcompanions, 

archers, Agrianians and horse-javelin-men and led them against the 

Kamboja clans—the Aspasios of Kunar/Alishang valleys, the Guraeans of the 

Guraeus (Panjkora) valley, and the Assakenois of the Swat and Buner valleys.

5 Megasthenes (350 BCE ?) Partly adapted from Antiquity and Continuity of Indian History by Prasad Gokhale 

(excerpt) 

Megasthenes wrote extensively on India in a book titled Indika, during his travels 

to the Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately none of his original manuscripts survive 

today. Megasthenes book titled Indica is lost and nobody in the modern world 

has been able to retrieve the book or its contents. So all we have is the account of 

Arrian and Strabo who claim to quote him. Megasthenes purportedly lived at the 

court of King Sandrocottus, for some years after 302 BCE (approximately 20 years 

after the much ballyhooed invasion of Alexander) as the ambassador of Seleucus 

Nicator who proclaimed himself the emperor of the eastern dominions of 

Alexander after his death. 

But we forget that there was more than one Chandragupta in Indian History. There 

is also the first of the Imperial Gupta dynasty Chandragupta I. Modern historians 

place him 600 years after Sandrocottus (of the Mauryas). Note this is only a 

relative dating and not an absolute one. The reason they gave was that this would 

place Asoka Vardhana (Chandragupta’s grandson) around the middle of the third 

century. Of course this does not explain why it is so sacrosanct to place Asoka in 

the middle of the third century BCE. But assuming the answer as an assumption 

was probably equally in vogue then, long before we had coined the phrase 

‘circular argument’. Other scholars such as M Troyer, Kuppiah, Narayana Sastry 

objected to this identification with Chandragupta Maurya and they pointed out that 

Chndragupta of the Gupta empire should be identified with Sandrocottus. Troyer 

communicated this view to Max Mueller but M Mueller did not even bother to 

reply. 

However, the Greek chronicles are strangely silent on the names of Chanakya 

(Chandragupta's Guru) who managed to install the Maurya on the Magadha 

throne, Bindusar (his son) and even Ashoka (his grandson) whose empire 25 

extended far wider than that of Chandragupta. The empire of Chandragupta, 

also known as the Magadha empire, was very powerful and had a long history 

but is nowhere mentioned by the Greeks. Even Buddha bhikkus and the 

flourishing religion of the Buddha are not mentioned in their literature. This 

imbroglio has been challenged by various scholars and is precisely 

summarized by K. Rajaram (in "A Peep into the Past History, Seminar Papers", 

Madras, 1982), "There are difficulties in calculating the date of the coronation of 

Asoka .. In the first instance, the very identification of Sandrokotus with 

Chandragupta Maurya is questioned. In the second one, the date of the death of

6 Menander, The greek 

Buddhist 

26

7 Euclid (approximately 

323 BCE - 283 BCE) 

We are not sure about the extent to which Euclid traveled in the East or had studied Indian 

methods in Geometry, but that there was considerable commerce and travel there is no doubt 

since this is the time shortly after the formation of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires.We do not 

have any records of Indians travelling to Greece but there is some evidence of Greeks travelling 

east. So it does make sense to study the Greek methods such as the Elements of Euclid versus the 

geometry of the more ancient Sulva sutras which are dated much earlier by several 

centuries.Again Indics are the most qualified to make this comparison , since the study of Euclids 

elements is part of the school curriculum, whereas many in the west and this includes scholars in 

have only a nodding acquaintanace with the names of Baudhayana or Apastambha. 

While many ancient individuals, known and unknown, contributed to the subject, none equaled the 

impact of Euclid and his Elements of geometry, a book now 2,300 years old and the object of as 

much painful and painstaking study as the Bible. Much less is known about Euclid, however, than 

about Moses. In fact, the only thing known with a fair degree of confidence is that Euclid taught at 

the Library of Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I (323–285/83 BC). Euclid wrote not only on 

geometry but also on astronomy and optics and perhaps also on mechanics and music. Only the 

Elements, which was extensively copied and translated, has survived intact. 

Euclid's Elements was so complete and clearly written that it literally obliterated the work of his 

predecessors. What is known about Greek geometry before him comes primarily from bits quoted by 

Plato and Aristotle and by later mathematicians and commentators. Among other precious items 

they preserved are some results and the general approach of Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 BC) and his 

followers. The Pythagoreans convinced themselves that all things are, or owe their relationships to, 

numbers. The doctrine gave mathematics supreme importance in the investigation and 

understanding of the world. Plato developed a similar view, and philosophers influenced by 

Pythagoras or Plato often wrote ecstatically about geometry as the key to the interpretation of the 

universe. Thus ancient geometry gained an association with the sublime to complement its earthy 

origins and its reputation as the exemplar of precise reasoning. 

27

8 q 

u 

o 

28 

Apollonius of Tyana 

(ca. 1, Tyana - ca. 97 AD, 

Ephesus) was a Greek Neo- 

Pythagorean philosopher 

and teacher 

Apollonius of Tyana 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

Engraved portrait of Apollonius of Tyana. The Nazarene, by Raphael. N.M. Starr, 

Medium. 

Apollonius of Tyana (ca. 1, Tyana - ca. 97 AD, Ephesus) was a Greek Neo- 

Pythagorean philosopher and teacher. His teaching influenced both scientific 

thought and occultism for centuries after his death. 

James Francis prefaced a discussion of elements of fiction and reality that 

confront one another in Philostratus' vita of Apollonius, "The most that can be 

said further both with certainty and without fear of 'contamination' from 

posthumous representations is that Apollonius appears to have been a wandering 

ascetic/philosopher/wonderworker of a type common to the eastern part of the 

early empire." Apollonius is virtually only known through the medium of 

Philostratus, whose biography's peripatetic narrative structure is built upon a 

series of instructive dialogues and the sage's responses to places and events (see 

Life of Apollonius of Tyana). Apollonius was a vegetarian, and a disciple of 

Pythagoras. He is quoted as having said "For I discerned a certain sublimity in the 

discipline of Pythagoras, and how a certain secret wisdom enabled him to know, 

not only who he was himself, but also who he had been; and I saw that he 

approached the altars in purity, and suffered not his belly to be polluted by 

partaking of the flesh of animals; and that he kept his body pure of all garments 

woven of dead animal refuse; and that he was the first of mankind to restrain his 

tongue, inventing a discipline of silence described in the proverbial phrase, "An ox 

sits upon it." I also saw that his philosophical system was in other respects 

oracular and true. So I ran to embrace his teachings..." 

This is The Prayer of Apollonius of Tyana, circa 23: "Oh, Thou Sun, send me as far 

around the world as is my pleasure and thine; and may I make the acquaintance of 

good men but never hear anything of bad ones, nor they of me." 

What makes Apollonius intriguing from an Indic viewpoint is that he espouses 

Indic values and is described by Philostratus as being a vegetarian. He is also 

regarded as having won the respect of his fellow citizens as a person who had 

been to India to partake of their wisdom. Much of the ancient world sent its best 

and brightest minds to Indic universities such as the one in Takshasheela (Taxila),

9 Ptolemy 

29

10 Huen Tsang (Xuan Zang) 

30

11 I Tsing (635 CE Buddhist pilgrim who has left behind an account of his travels to India. His name 

may correctly be pronounced as Yijing, and is also written as I-ching. Born in 635 

AD in Fan-Yang (modern Cho-Chou) near present-day Beijing, he began a secular 

education at the age of seven. His teacher died when he was twelve; it was at this 

time that he devoted himself to the study of the Buddhist Canon. In his fourteenth 

year (AD 648) he was admitted to the Order. 

After his ordination in 654, I-tsing spent five years in the study of the rules of 

discipline (Vinayapitaka) which remained his main interest and formed the main 

topic of his writing. The pilgrim was aware of FA-HIEN's travels and also of the 

immediate example of HIUEN-TSANG, - he was in Changan when Hiuen-tsang's 

funeral took place there in 664 AD - and was inspired by them to go to India. 

I-tsing left for India from Canton by sea in 671, arriving in India in 673. After 

visiting the sacred Buddhist sites in Magadha, he resided at the great Nalanda 

monastery for ten years (676-685), devoting himself to the study of the Vinya. He 

left India in 685 for the city of Shri Bhoja (or Sri Boja, known as Shri Vijaya, ie 

Palembang in Sumatra), which at that time was very much under the cultural 

influence of India. Here he devoted himself to the translation of Buddhist Sanskrit 

texts. 

In 689 I-tsing returned to China to obtain assistance for his translations. He then 

returned to Sri Vijaya, and remained there for five more years, returning to China 

in 695 during the reign of the well-known patron of Buddhism, the Empress Wu 

Zetian. Thus, I-tsing's stay abroad roughly covers a period of twenty-five years 

(671-695). He received much acclaim on his return, but like his predecessor Hiuentsang, 

I-tsing devoted the remaining years of his life to the translation of Buddhist 

works. He died in 713 AD at the age of 79, during the reign of the Chinese Emperor 

Zhongzong. 

31 

Apart from his translations, I-tsing has left behind two important works. The 

Qiufa Gaoseng Zhuan (Ch' iu-fa Kao-seng Chuan) is a series of brief 

biographies of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims he met or heard of while he was in 

India. This work is interesting in that it gives an impression of the numbers of 

pilgrims who went to India but have left no records of their own. His major work, 

Nanhai Jigui Neifa Zhuan (Nan-hai Chi-kuei Nei-fa Chuan) meaning 'A Record of 

the Buddhist Religion sent Home from the Southern Sea', is quite unique among 

the records left by the Buddhist pilgrims. It is possible that because of the

12 

13 

32

14 

15 

33

16 

17 

34

18 

35

19 Severus Sebokht 

36 

662 CE 

The first sign that the Indian numerals were moving west comes from a source 

which predates the rise of the Arab nations. In 662 AD Severus Sebokht, a 

Nestorian bishop who lived in Keneshra on the Euphrates river, wrote:- 

I will omit all discussion of the science of the Indians, ... , of their subtle 

discoveries in astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the 

Greeks and the Babylonians, and of their valuable methods of calculation which 

surpass description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of 

nine signs. 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. 

This passage clearly indicates that knowledge of the Indian number system was 

known in lands soon to become part of the Arab world as early as the seventh 

century. The passage itself, of course, would certainly suggest that few people in 

that part of the world knew anything of the system. Severus Sebokht as a Christian 

bishop would have been interested in calculating the date of Easter (a problem to 

Christian churches for many hundreds of years). This may have encouraged him 

to find out about the astronomy works of the Indians and in these, of course, he 

would find the arithmetic of the nine symbols.

20 Abu Abdulla Muhammad 

Ibrahim-al-Fazari in 772-773 

CE 

Abu Abdulla Muhammad Ibrahim-al-Fazari in 772-773 A.D. translated Sidhanta 

from Sanskrit into Arabic, which, according to G. Sarton provided "possibly the 

vehicle by means of which the Hindu numerals were transmitted from India to 

Islam". 

37

38 

Muhammad Ben Musa aI- 

Khuwarizmi (circa 

783 -850 ). 

Portrait on wood made in 1983 from a Persian illuminated manuscript for the 

l200th anniversary of his birth. Museum of the Ulugh Begh Observatory. 

Urgentsch (Kharezm). Uzbekistan (ex USSR). By calling one of its fundamental 

practices and theoretical activities the algorithm computer science 

commemorates this great Muslim scholar. Made a detailed study of Hindu 

mathematics and Astronomy. A manuscript copy of this work dated 743 A H (or 

1342 CE) is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and it is surmised to be 

the earliest copy in existence. An English translation from the Arabic was made 

by Fredric Rosen and published in 1931 

The following is a quote from “Asian contributions to Mathematics by Romesh 

Gangolli 

http://www.pps.k12.or.us/depts-c/mc-me/be-as-ma.pdf 

“The first book on algebra known to us is the book by the Persian mathematician 

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (9th century CE.). It survives to us today only 

in 

Latin versions translated from the Arabic original. The title of the original book in 

Arabic was Hisab al-jabr wa-al-muqabala. The word algebra in fact is derived from 

the word aljabr in that title. Hisab means calculation. By al-jabr, which has been 

translated as "completion or restoration," al-Khwarizmi meant the process in 

which the same term is added to both sides of an equation in order to eliminate 

negative terms. He used almuqabala, which has been translated as "reduction" or 

"balancing,” to denote the process in which like terms on both sides of an 

equation may be canceled. To illustrate, I use the words of van der Waerden, (p. 

70): 

Thus, the equation 

2 

50 + x = 29 + 10x 

which occurs in Rosen's translation of al-Khwarizmi's Algebra on page 40, is 

reduced by al-muqabala to 

2 

2 

21+ x = 10x 

21+ x = 10x 

which in Rosen reads: “There remains twenty-one and a square, equal to ten 

things.” 25 

Thus, al-Khwarizmi was concerned in his book with the art of solving equations 

by "completion, restoration, reduction and balancing.” The process by which one 

can

21 Notes on the extent to 

which Arab mathemticiaqns 

and astronomers borrowed 

from india 

See Brennand 

22 4 Vigila (976 CE) Written in 976 in the convent of Albelda (near the town of Logroño, in the north 

of Spain ) by a monk named Vigila, the Coda Vigilanus contains the nine 

numerals in question, but not zero. The scribe clearly indicates in the text that 

the figures are of Indian origin: 

Item de figuels aritmetice. Scire debemus Indos subtilissimum ingenium habere 

et ceteras gentes eis in arithmetica et geometrica et ceteris liberalibu.c 

disciplinis concedere. Et hoc manifèstum at in novem figuris, quibus quibus 

designant unum quenque gradum cuiu.slibetgradus. Quatrum hec sunt forma: 

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. 

“The same applies to arithmetical figures. It should be noted that the Indians 

have an extremely subtle intelligence, and when it comes to arithmetic, 

geometry and other such advanced disciplines, other ideas must make way for 

theirs. The best proof of this is the nine figures with which they represent each 

number no matter how high. This is how the figures look: 

39

23 Al Biruni Abu Rayhan 

Muhammad ibn Ahmad al- 

Biruni Persian: ﯽﻧوﺮﻴﺑ نﺎﺤﻳرﻮﺑا , 

September 15, 973– 

December 13, 1048) 

40 

Close to the banks of the 

Ganges, in Patna, stands the 

Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public 

Library a unique repository of 

about 21,000 Oriental 

manuscripts and 2.5 lakh 

printed books. It contains one 

of the origiinal manuscripts o 

In the 11th century, Islam came to India from Persia through the conquest by 

Mahmud of Ghazni. Ghaznavi brought along a number of poets, artisans and 

religious persons who settled down in India. But he also brought death and 

destruction to the lands he conquered . Even AlBiruni says of his master that 

everywhere Ghazni went the people scattered like the wind and that it was hard to 

come across learned men because they fled from the prospect of certain death . 

Like many a conqueror before and after him he specially targeted the Brahmanas 

and sent huge numbers of Indians into slavery and exile to the slave markets of 

Damascus , Isfahan and Samarkand. It was the advent of Islam that terminated 

scholarship in th exact sciences in northern India after 1200 CE 

Lahore (now in Pakistan) in the Punjab became an important centre of Persian 

literature, art and mysticism. Between 1206 CE and 1687 CE Muslim dynasties 

appeared in different parts of India. During this period, Turks, Tartars and some 

Arabs who had imbibed Iranian influence came to India. During the rule of the 

Khilji dynasty (14th century) several Persian scholars from Tabriz and Isfahan 

visited the royal courts in India. 

During the 11th century CE, Al-Biruni, believed to be a Shia Muslim of Iranian 

origin born in Khwarizm in northern Iran, visited India during the Ghaznavi period. 

Actually al Biruni spoke Dari as his native tongue, which suggests he lived and 

grew up in present day Afghanistan where Dari is one of the dialects of Farsi that 

is widely spoken even today, and by that token can hardly be termed as somebody 

unfamiliar with Indic traditions even before he came to India 

He wrote his famous Kitab-ul-Hind in Persian, which involved a detailed study of 

Indian customs, traditions and the Indian way of life. Earlier, many Indian works on 

astronomy, mathematics and medicine had been translated into Arabic during the 

early Abbasid period, and Al-Biruni, who was also very interested in astronomy 

and mathematics, refers to some of these texts. Biruni was a prolific writer, and 

besides his mother tongue, Dari(an Iranian dialect), Persian and Arabic, he also 

knew Hebrew, Syriac and Sanskrit. [44] He studied Sanskrit manuscripts to check 

earlier Arabic writings on India. Al Biruni composed about 20 books on India – 

both originals and translations, and a great number of legends based on the 

folklore of ancient Persia and India. He developed a special interest in the 

Samkhya Yoga traditions of Indian philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita. He was 

possibly the first foreign scholar to have seriously studied the Puranas, specially 

the Vishnu Purana. [45] Biruni also rendered the al-Magest of Ptolemy and Geometry 

of Euclid into Sanskrit. [46] 

However, AlBiruni, for all his scholarship is prey to the prejudices of his co-religionists and as we have mentioned in the

24 Saad al Andalusi (1068) Saad al-Andalusi, the first historian of Science who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqut al- 

Umam in Arabic(Book of Categories of Nations) Translated into English by Alok 

Kumar in 1992To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of 

numbers (3) and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and 

reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) 

and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. 

After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of 

medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of 

compounds and the peculiarities of substances. 

25 William of Malmesbury 

(1125 CE) 

C. 1125, The Benedictine chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote De gestis 

regum Anglorum, in which he related that the Arabs adopted the Indian figures 

and transported them to the countries they conquered, particularly Spain . He 

goes on to explain that the monk Gerbert of Aurillac, who was to become Pope 

Sylvester II (who died in 1003) and who was immortalized for restoring sciences 

in Europe, studied in either Seville or Cordoba, where he learned about Indian 

figures and their uses and later contributed to their circulation in the Christian 

countries of the West. L Malmesbury (1596), 36 ; Woepcke (1857), p. 35J 

26 Adelard of Bath (1130 CE) C. 1130, Adelard of Bath wrote a work entitled: Algoritmi de numero Indorum 

(“Algoritmi: of Indian figures”), which is simply a translation of an Arabic tract 

about Indian calculation. [Boncompagni (1857), vol. Ii (not to be mistaken for 

Peter Abelard of Abelard andHeloise fame).. was responsible for 

introducing Indian numerals in Europe….. 

41

27 Bishop Raymond of Toledo 

(1140 CE) 

42 

C. 1140, Bishop Raymond of Toledo gave his patronage to a work written by the 

converted Jew Juan de Luna and archdeacon Domingo Gondisalvo: the Liber 

Algorismi de numero Indorum (“Book of Algorismi of Indian figures) which is 

simply a translation into a Spanish and Latin version of an Arabic tract on 

Indian arithmetic. [Boncompagni (1857), vol. 11 

28 Robert of Chester (1143 CE) C. 1143, Robert of Chester wrote a work entitled: Algoritmi de numero Indorum 

(“Algoritmi: Indian figures”), which is simply a translation of an Arabic work 

about Indian arithmetic. [Karpinski (1915); Wallis (1685). p. 121

29 Rabbi Abraham Ben MeIr 

Ben Ezra (1092—1167) 

C. 1150, Rabbi Abraham Ben MeIr Ben Ezra (1092—1167), after a long voyage to 

the East and a period spent in Italy , wrote a work in Hebrew entitled: Sefer ha 

mispar (“Number Book”), where he explains the basic rules of written 

calculation. 

He uses the first nine letters of the Hebrew alphabet to represent the nine units. 

He represents zero by a little circle and gives it the Hebrew name of galgal 

(“wheel”), or, more frequently, sfra (“void”) from the corresponding Arabic 

word. 

However, all he did was adapt the Indian system to the first nine Hebrew letters 

(which he naturally had used since his childhood). 

In the introduction, he provides some graphic variations of the figures, making 

it clear that they are of Indian origin, after having explained the place-value 

system: “That is how the learned men of India were able to represent any 

number using nine shapes which they fashioned themselves specifically to 

symbolize the nine units.” (Silberberg (1895), p.2: Smith and Ginsburg (1918): 

Steinschneider (1893)1 

43

30 John of Seville (1150 CE) Around the same time, John of Seville began his Liberalgoarismi de practica 

arismetrice (“Book of Algoarismi on practical arithmetic”) with the following: 

44 

Numerus est unitatum cot/echo, quae qua in infinitum progredilur (multitudo 

enim crescit in infinitum), ideo a peritissimis Indis sub quibusdam regulis et 

certis lirnitibus infinita numerositas coarcatur, Ut de infinitis dfinita disciplina 

traderetur etfuga subtilium rerum sub alicuius artis certissima Jege ten eretur: 

“A number is a collection of units, and because the collection is infinite (for 

multiplication can continue indefinitely), the Indians ingeniously enclosed this 

infinite multiplicity within certain rules and limits so that infinity could be 

scientifically defined: these strict rules enabled them to pin down this subtle 

concept. 

[B. N., Paris, Ms. lat. 16 202, p 51: Boncompagni (1857), vol. I, p. 261

31 Leonardo of Pisa (1202) 

Fibonacci 

“In 1202, Leonard of Pisa (known as Fibonacci), after voyages that took him to the 

Near East and Northern Africa, and in particular to Bejaia (now in Algeria), wrote a 

tract on arithmetic entitled Liber Abaci (“a tract about the abacus”), in which he 

explains the following: 

Cum genitor meus a patria publicus scriba in duana bugee pro pisanis 

mercatoribus ad earn confluentibus preesset, me in pueritia mea ad se uenire 

faciens, inspecta utilitate el cornmoditate fiutura, ibi me studio abaci per aliquot 

dies stare uoluit et doceri. Vbi a mirabii magisterio in arte per nouem figuras 

Indorum introductus. . . Novem figurae Indorum hae sun!: cum his itaque 

novemfiguris. et turn hoc signo o. Quod arabice zephirum appellatur, scribitur qui 

libel numerus: “My father was a public scribe of Bejaia, where he worked for his 

country in Customs, defending the interests of Pisan merchants who made their 

fortune there. He made me learn how to use the abacus when I was still a child 

because he saw how I would benefit from this in later life. In this way I learned the 

art of counting using the nine Indian figures... The nine Indian figures are as 

follows: 

987654321 “ 

Quoted from Georges Ifrah The Universal History of Numbers. The Arabs were 

instrumental in transmitting this knowledge to Europe. 

45

32 Alexandre de Ville Dieu 

(1240 CE) 

46 

Around 1240, Alexandre de Ville-Dieu composed a manual in verse on written 

calculation (algorism). Its title was Carmen de Algorismo, and it began with the 

following two lines: Haec algorismus ars praesens dicitur, in qua Talibus 

Indorumfruimur bis quinquefiguris 

“Algorism is the art by which at present we use those Indian figures, which 

number two times five”. [Smith and Karpinski (1911), p. 11]

33 Maximus Planudes (1260- 

1310 CE) 

Around the year 1252, Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes (1260—1310) 

composed a work entitled Logistike Indike (“Indian Arithmetic”) in Greek, or 

even Psephophoria kata Indos (“The Indian way of counting”), where he 

explains the following: “There are only nine figures. These are: 

123456789 

[figures given in their Eastern Arabic form] 

A sign known as tziphra can be added to these, which, according to the Indians, 

means ‘nothing’. The nine figures themselves are Indian, and tziphra is written 

thus: 0”. [B. N., Pans. Ancien Fonds grec, Ms 2428, f” 186 r”] 

It Is not surprising that the initial impulse to study the Indian number system 

came from Arabs, Byzantines and the Arab Maghreb in Spain rather than from 

Rome 

http://mathdl.maa.org/convergence/1/?nodeId=1293&pa=content&sa=viewDocument 

by Peter G Brown 

Maximus Planudes was born around 1255 in Nicomedia and died at 

Constantinople around 1305. He took the name Maximus, replacing his baptismal 

name of Manuel, when he became a monk, shortly before 1280. Apart from 

translating theological and classical works from Latin into Greek - a good 

knowledge of Latin seems to have been a rarity among the Byzantines - he is best 

known for his editions and commentaries on Greek poetry and drama, as well as 

for his training of upcoming scholars, such as Manuel Moschopoulos, who 

continued the important work of preserving, and ensuring the survival of a 

47

48 

number of important Greek works. 

As with Moschopoulos, who wrote a work on Magic Squares, Planudes had an 

interest in Mathematics, evidenced by his editions of Aratos' 

Phainomena, Theodosios ' Sphairica, Euclid's Elements, (Ps-)Iamblichos' 

Theologoumena Arithmeticae and Diophantos ' Arithmetica. 

The present work, The Great Calculation According to the Indians, introduces (i) 

the (eastern) Arabic form of the Indian numerals, as used in Persia, along with (ii) 

a detailed exposition of algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication and 

division, both in the decimal system of these numerals and also in the 

sexagesimal system (iii), whose applications lie in astronomy. Finally, he gives 

algorithms for the extraction of square roots (iv), to various degrees of accuracy. 

The introduction of this numeral system to Europe cannot be traced down to any 

one person or event, but seems to have occured in various places independently 

and over a period of time. The earliest known European manuscript containing the 

first nine Hindu-Arabic numerals dates from 976 and was found in a monastery in 

northern Spain. Later, Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, after a residency in Toledo in 

the early twelfth century brought some form of the numeral system, (probably the 

western Arabic variety), to England sometime between 1140 and 1167, replacing 

the Arabic symbols with Hebrew letters, but maintaining the decimal structure. 

Other figures such as Gerbert of Aurillac (c. 945-1003) and John of Hallifax 

(Sacrobosco)(c. 1195-56) in France also played their part in the disemination of 

the new system. 

Planudes may have acquired his knowledge of the numeral system and algorithms

during his time in Venice, where he was stationed as Ambassador during the reign 

of the Byzantine Emperor Andronicos II. Venice was at that time, of course, a 

major trading city and a vital point of contact between the East and West. 

49

34 Meister Eckhart (1260 CE) From the book Meister Eckhart, Paulist Press, NY, 1981, ISBN 0 8091 0322 2. 

50 

“I was struck by Eckharts remarks on detachment Middle high German 

Abegeschedenheit), which show remarkable resemblance to those in the Gita, 

page 47“True detachment is nothing else than for the spirit to stand as immovable 

against whatever may chance to it of joy and sorrow, shame and disgrace, as a 

mountain of lead stands before a little breath of wind. Thus immovable 

detachment brings a man into the greatest equality with God, because God has it 

from his immovable detachment that he is God, and it is from his detachment that 

he has his purity and his simplicity and his unchangeability” 

It is not clear, at this point in my studies of Eckhart, as I am still in the process of 

discovery as to his prior knowledge of Vedanta, and whether this is an a posteriori 

belief, but clearly this is an extraordinarily prescient observation invoking one of 

the essential tenets of Vedanta, namely Vairagya 

35 Petrus of Dada (1291) Petrus of Dada (1291) wrote a commentary on a work entitled Algorismus by 

Sacrobosco (John of Halifax, c. 1240), in which he says the following (which 

contains a mathematical error): Non enim omnis numerus per quascumquefiguras 

Indorum repraesentatur “Not every number can be represented in Indian figures”. 

[Curtze (1.897), p. 25 

36 

37 Pope Honorius IV (1312) The Holy Father encouraged the learning of oriental languages in order to preach 

Christianity amongst the pagans. Soon after this in 1312, the Ecumenical Council 

of the Vatican decided that-“The Holy Church should have an abundant number of 

Catholics well versed in the languages, especially in those of the infidels, so as to 

be able to instruct them in the sacred doctrine.” The result of this was the creation 

of the chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean at the Universities of Bologna, 

Oxford, Paris and Salamanca. A century later in 1434, the General Council of Basel

38 The Crafte of Nombrynge 

(1350 CE) 

39 St.Francis Xavier 

(1506 CE – 1552 CE ) 

returned to this theme and decreed that –“All Bishops must sometimes each year 

send men well-grounded in the divine word to those parts where Jews and other 

infidels live, to preach and explain the truth of the Catholic faith in such a way that 

the infidels who hear them may come to recognize their errors. Let them compel 

them to hear their preaching.” 1. Centuries later in 1870, during the First Vatican 

Council, Hinduism was condemned in the “five anathemas against pantheism” 

according to the Jesuit priest John Hardon in the Church-authorized book, The 

Catholic Catechism. However, interests in Indology only took shape and concrete 

direction after the British came to India, with the advent of the discovery of 

Sanskrit by Sir William Jones in the 1770’s. Other names for Indology are Indic 

studies or Indian studies or South Asian studies. Political motivations have been 

always dominant in the pursuit of Indological studies right from the outset since 

the time of Sir William Jones, when he discovered the existence of Sanskrit. 

In fact the British presence in India was steadily increasing long before the Battle 

of Plassey in 1757 CE, but so great was the insularity of the colonial overlord that 

it took almost almost three hundred years for a scholar like Sir William to show up 

in India after Vasco da Gama landed of the coast of Goa in 1492 CE, and notice the 

similarities between Sanskrit and the European languages 

The Crafte of Nombrynge (c. 1350), the oldest known English arithmetical tract: II 

fforthermore ye most vndirstonde that in this craft ben vsed teen figurys, as here 

bene writen for esampul 098 ^ 654321... in the quych we vse teen figwys of Inde. 

Questio II why Zen figurys of Inde? Soiucio. For as I have sayd afore thei were 

fonde frrst in Inde. [D. E. Smith (1909) 

One of the first Europeans to realize the similarity between Sanskrit and the 

European Languages. This hardly dampened his ardor to institute one of the 

most savage inquisitions in the history of the church against the native 

populations of the Portuguese Indian dominions such as Goa. His task along 

with others who followed him was both to gather intelligence and knowledge 

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52 

while at the same time converting people to the Catholic faith at a very high 

rate. 

The following is a European account , which is clearly one sided 

XAVIER, FRANCIS (1506–1552), cofounder of the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus 

(the Jesuits), missionary, and saint. Francisco de Jassu y Xavier was born in the 

family castle in the kingdom of Navarre (now northern Spain), the fifth and youngest 

child of noble, wealthy, and pious Catholic parents. His early education took place at 

home and under the tutelage of local priests. In 1525 the keen, ambitious student left 

home permanently, bound for Paris. A handsome, slender, athletic youth, about five 

feet four inches tall, he was noted then, as throughout his life, for his cheerful and 

vivacious personality. At the University of Paris, Xavier gained a master of arts degree 

in philosophy in 1530, taught this subject for several years (1530–1534), and then 

studied theology until 1536. 

During his years at the university, Ignatius Loyola, a fellow student since 1528, 

became an increasingly important influence on Xavier, and by 1533 Xavier had 

become one of his disciples. In 1534 Xavier made the Spiritual Exercises under the 

direction of Ignatius and on August 15 he joined Ignatius and five other students in a 

chapel in Montmartre, a district of Paris, where all of them vowed to lead lives of 

apostolic poverty, to labor for the salvation of their neighbors, to make a pilgrimage to 

Jerusalem, and to place their services at the disposition of the pope. Together with 

three other students who joined the group when it renewed its vows a year later, these 

men were the ten founders of the Society of Jesus. 

Beginning the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Xavier left Paris in November 1536 with eight 

of his companions and, traveling by foot, reached Venice nearly two months later.

Ignatius met them there. In Venice, Xavier, along with Ignatius and four other 

companions, was ordained a priest in June 1537. War with the Turks ruled out a 

voyage across the Mediterranean to Palestine, so in 1538 Xavier went to Rome and 

there shared in the discussions that led to the founding of the Society of Jesus. Until 

his departure from Rome in 1540, he served as secretary of the new religious order. 

When the pious King John III of Portugal put out a call for missionaries, especially for 

the care of recently converted Paravas (Bhavatas) in southern India, Xavier left Rome 

for Portugal, traveling overland to Lisbon in the entourage of the Portuguese 

ambassador. While awaiting the annual departure of the India fleet, Xavier performed 

various priestly tasks in the city and at the royal court. His ship set sail in April 1541, 

rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and wintered in Mozambique, where Xavier's two 

Jesuit colleagues remained. After further stops at Melinde (Malindi, in modern-day 

Kenya) and the island of Socotra (off the coast of modern-day Somalia, where Xavier 

had to be dissuaded from remaining), the voyage ended in May 1542 in Goa, a district 

on the west coast of India and the main Portuguese center in that country. 

Until the end of the rainy season in September, Xavier ministered to the Portuguese 

and native Christians in Goa. Accompanied by three native helpers, he then sailed to 

the southern tip of the continent. For the next three years his apostolate was centered 

in Malabar and Travancore, the coastal regions northwest of Cape Comorin; in the 

regions northeast of the cape as far as São Thomé (modern-day Madras); and on the 

neighboring island of Ceylon. Much of his ministry consisted of instructing the 

thousands of Parava pearl divers and fishermen who had been converted to Roman 

Catholicism around 1535 but whose religious knowledge remained minimal. 

Spectacular numbers of conversions were made: Xavier reported baptizing over ten 

thousand villagers in Travancore in one month. 

In September 1545 Xavier sailed from São Thomé to Malacca, a Portuguese settlement 

on the Malay Peninsula; then to the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in the East Indies, 

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54 

where his main concern was the native Christians, left without clergy in the 

Portuguese centers of Amboina and Ternate; and then as far north as the Moro 

Islands. He returned to Malacca in June 1547 and to Goa in March 1548. After further 

work along the Fishery Coast he returned to Goa once again. In April 1549 he set sail 

with three Japanese converts and two fellow Jesuits to inaugurate the Christian 

mission in Japan. When he departed from Japan for Goa twenty-seven months later, 

he left behind some two thousand converts. Hoping to initiate a Christian mission to 

China, he took ship from Goa in April 1552, but he was not allowed to disembark on 

the Chinese mainland. After three months of fruitless waiting on the desolate island of 

Sancian (near Canton), he died on December 3 following a brief illness. His incorrupt 

body was taken in 1554 to Goa, where it is still enshrined and greatly venerated. 

Xavier is ranked by the Europeans who overlooked his murderous propensities during 

the inquisition among the greatest missionaries in Christian history. His numerous 

far-ranging journeys were not those of a spiritual adventurer, restlessly seeking new 

fields to conquer. He served not only as missionary but also as apostolic nuncio and 

Jesuit superior, with the duty of investigating mission possibilities in areas then little 

known to Europeans. He was both a pioneer and organizer of the Jesuit missions in 

the Far East, intent on obtaining suitably trained European co-workers. He was eager 

to supply mission stations with churches, schools, and personnel and to be kept 

informed about them. In 1622 he was canonized, and in 1927 he was designated by 

Pius XI as patron of all missions. His annual liturgical feast is celebrated on December 

3. 

See Also 

Jesuits. 

Bibliography

40 Matteo (Matthew ) Ricci 

1552 – 1610 ) 6 

The critical edition of the letters and other writings of 

Mateo Riccii an Italian Jesuit Missionary who with Michael Ruggieri opened the 

door to China for evangelization but more importantly from the perspective of 

determining the means by which knowledge was transmitted to Europe, acted as 

the transmitter of such knowledge from the east to the West. Born in Macarena on 

October 6, 1552. Went on to study law at Rome. Where in 1572 he joined the 

society of Jesus (SJ)…. He studied mathematics and geography under Clavius at 

the Roman college between 1572 and 1576 and in 1577 left for the indies via 

Lisbon. He arrived in Goa in 1578 where he taught at the college until 1582 and 

went on to China to establish the Catholic church there. But it is the 4 years he 

spent in Goa and Malabar that interests us. 

The Portuguese if we recall had a large presence in Cochin (until the protestant 

Dutch closed down the Cochin College in 1670. So Ricci was sent to Cochin and 

remained in touch with the Dean of the Collegio Romano. He explicitly 

acknowledges that he was trying to learn the intricacies of the Indian calendrical 

systems from Brahmanas. ( See for instance , Ricci (1609) 7 

6 The Aryabhata Group at the University of Exeter in the UK “Transmission of the Calculus from Kerala to Europe”, published in 

Proceedings of thje International symposium and Colloquium on the 1500 th Anniversary of the Aryabhatiyum, Kerala Sastra Sahitya 

Parishat,2002. 

7 Ricci (1609) 7 et les remaniements de sa traduction latine (1615)’, in: Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres. Comptes 

rendus des séances de l'année 2003, janvier-mars, 2003, 61-84. 

55

56 

The task of preparing the Panchangas (literally the five parts) which were more 

than a calendar and should properly be referred to as a almanac, was the 

provenance of the Jyotishi pundit who was well versed in the Calendrical 

algorithms to devise the proper almanac for his community. Each community (for 

example farmers) had differing needs for their almanac and hence the need for a 

Jyotishi Pundit. Today this is done with Calendrical software with the help of the 

ephemeris published by the Government of India annually. The standard treatises 

used then were the Laghu Bhaskariya and in Kerala the Karanapadhati. 

So, it is clear that Matthew Ricci was trying too contact the appropriate 

Brahmanas, as he explicitly stated that he was trying to do, and it appears unlikely 

that he did not succeed in imbibing these techniques from them.

This is a case where we do not have documentary (as of this date, but with every 

indication that we will find such evidence, evidence of the transmission of 

knowledge, but where there exists motive, opportunity and circumstantial 

evidence. Because of the more exacting standards applied to India, the 

Occidentalists will not concede that such knowledge must have been transmitted 

to the west. 

However as a result of the double standard, this was enough in most instances for 

western historians and philologists to dub India as a region from which nothing 

worthwhile ever emanated. Which, but 

41 The Society of Jesus (SJ) The Society of Jesus was the elite corps of the intellectual army of the Vatican. 

They served as the top rank of the evangelizing educators as well as the 

57

58 

Founded August 15, 1535, 

by St.Francis Xavier 

intelligence arm of the Vatican that gathered knowledge from foreign lands to be 

absorbed into the church run schools in Europe... Such an activity was by no 

means illegal(although intelligence gathering about sensitive matters such as the 

miliary would be considered illegall in most countries today/. The resulting benefit 

to the west was rarely acknowledged by western historians of science who are 

loathe to admit that Europe had borrowed anything from Asia .Mateo Ricci was 

part of a small army created by the Vatican just for this purpose. Here is an 

example of a “intelligence briefing done for the benefit of the Vatican hierarchy. 

There are interesting anecdotes about Roberto de Nobili, who passed himself of as 

a Brahmana. 

The Jesuits clearly had more than a passing interest in India. During this period , 

the emperor Akbar, invited some Jesuits to his court as part of his attemot to 

create a Din I Ilahi or a Universal faith. The portuguese interpreted this to mean 

that he was amenable to conversion to Catholicism. At about the same time mateo 

Ricci was sending back valuable information regarding the Mughal army. 

At that time the Jesuits had more than a fleeting interest in the development of 

calendrical systems. Ricci’s teacher Christof Clavius, was busy heading the 

commission that uiltimately reformed the Gregorian calendar in 1582, an event that 

had been preceeded by centuries of controversy.. In 1535 the council of trent had 

already authorized the Pope to make the requisite correctons to the Julian 

calendar (effective since the time of Julius Ceaser). This was a time also that the 

Europeans realized that there were major errors in their conception of the diameter 

of the earth. The concept of the sidereal day/month/year, a measurement with 

respect to the the distant stars, was unknown to Europe at that time. All these 

considerations led them to send men like Mateo Ricci to adopt the knowledge of 

the Indics into their calendrical and navigation systems. The 2 instruments that 

they borrowed from india were the armillary sphere and the Gnomon. Christof

Clavius had written a commentary on the Sphere and it is clear that the Vatican 

had come to know that Asryabhta had an entire chapter devoted to the Gola 

(Armillary sphere) and Vateshwear had a whole book on it. 

It is ironical that today the west makes much of intellectual property rights. In the 

sixteenth century they exhibited none of the delicacy they now show for other 

peoples intellectual property. They simply stole the technology and more 

importantly failed to acknowlege the source in later centuries. One of he major 

conduits in this procfes were the Jesuits . ideally stuated as they were as teachers 

in the new colleges they instituted in india and to camouflage their hidden agenda 

as they evangelized the Indic population 

42 Willchius (1540 CE) Willichius (1540) talks of Zyphrae! Nice, “Indian figures”. [Smith and Karpinski 

(1911) p. 3] 

43 Fr. Thomas Stephens According to Rajesh Kochhar one of the first Englishmen to set foot in India . 

wrote the first Konkani grammar 

44 Roberto Di Nobili(1577- posed as a Brahmana ,posited a counterfeit Veda, called the Romaka Veda. He 

1656),Jesuit Priest, 

tried mightily to convince the Brahmanas of the superiority of the Christian faith, 

going so far as to wearing traditional Brahmana garb, but to no avail. He like Abbe 

Dubois returned dispirited that it was indeed a difficult task. Some interesting 

anecdotes from his life. In India a beginning had been made by Xavier. Before his 

coming, the Portuguese had tried to impose Christianity on the natives with no 

attempt to understand their customs and sensibilities. Christianity had come to be 

identified in the minds of the Indian population with foreign conquest. Xavier had 

59

60 

tried to change all this, but it persisted even after his death. 

The Jesuit Roberto de Nobili (1577 1656) observed and condemned this deplorable 

state of affairs. He was a Roman aristocrat, a grandnephew of Pope Julius III. Sent 

out to India in 1606, he followed the methods of Ricci, learning native languages, 

adopting native ways of life, and condoning the continuance of time-honored 

practices when he felt they were not irreconcilable with Christianity. Though there 

was some opposition within the church to his methods because of what appeared 

to be concessions to idolatry, he was able to gain the approval of Pope Gregory 

XV in 1623 and continue his work. The european account of De Nobili, who it is 

clear from this paasage had high connections in the Vatican having a close 

relationship with a Pope himself 

“This situation radically changed with the arrival of a young Italian Jesuit, 

Roberto Nobili who, in Fernandes Trancoso's opinion, turned the mission upside 

down. Nobili pretended, wrote Fernandes Trancoso in 1610, that "there are some 

or 

even big difference between us in religion".8 Moreover, the Italian denied that he 

was 

a "Portuguese", he donned heathen dress of a sannyasi, ate vegetarian food 

cooked by 

Brahman cooks, conversed only with Brahmans and high castes and dissociated 

himself completely from the Catholic Parava church and its priest. The separation

of 

churches which for the Portuguese missionary veteran amounted to schism was 

finally 

what prompted him to denounce his young coreligionist to the superiors in Cochin 

and 

Goa. It was to his surprise that he discovered that Nobili had powerful support in 

his 

Italian superiors, such as Alberto Laerzio, and that accommodatio was the 

hallmark 

of this particular missionary approach already in practice in China. After furious 

exchanges between the two missionary camps that went on in Madurai and that 

began 

to involve Nobili's few high-cast converts and Fernandes Trancoso's Paravas, the 

war 

of treatises and letters began. Nobili's Latin texts, garnished with theological 

quotations and analogies, started to circulate and be read and discussed among 

the 

Jesuit theologians in Cochin and Goa. 

61

62 

A response to Nobili's rhetorical propaganda for his experimental 

accommodationist mission had to be concocted urgently from Fernandes 

Trancoso's 

side.9 Incidentally, these are the texts that ignited, a long controversy that 

culminated 

in the Malabar rites quarrel in the middle of the eighteenth century. The points of 

disagreement between the two Jesuits were irreconcilable. While Nobili admiringly 

recognized in Brahmans the learned men of European antiquity and tried to imitate 

their life style, or as he would call it their "political customs" in order to gradually 

weaned them over to Christianity, for Fernandes Trancoso, the Brahmans were 

learned in diabolical sacrifices and mantras. The "ceremonies" and the "mode of 

conduct" that he describes in detail in his treaties were geared to prove that the 

Brahman way of life was their religion and he, in fact, gave it a name - the 

Brahmanism (o bramanismo). By adding the suffix ism to an Indian word, 

Fernandes 

Trancoso made it into a concept that comes closer to the later notion of Hinduism

45 John Wallis (1616-1703) John Walls (1616-1703) referred to the nine numerals as Indian figures [Wallis 

(1695), p. 10] 

46 Giovanni Dominique Cassini 

(1650 ?) 

Published the results of his studies in Sanskrit in the Memoires de l’Academie 

Royale des Sciences (the memoires originally appeared in Relation de Siam II 

(1691-1699)The paper contained rules for calculating the mean motions of the sun 

and the moon. He showed that Hindus have determined the length of the year to 

be 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes and 56 seconds (365.258981481) based on 

Aryabhata’s observations. The astronomical constants for the epoch starting on 

Saturday March 2, 638 CE and other information that was specifically mentioned in 

Indian sanskrit literature was also translated by him. Details of the calculation of 

ahargana (typically used by Indian astronomers) were mentioned by him 

47 Abraham Rogers (1651) Translated some of the proverbs of Bhartrihari into Dutch providing Europe with 

the first instance of Sanskrit literary works 

48 François-Marie Arouet, also Francois Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) was born on November 21, 1694 in 

known as Voltaire (1773) Paris. Voltaire's intelligence, wit and style made him one of France's greatest 

writers and philosophers. 

Young Francois Marie received his education at "Louis-le-Grand," a Jesuit college 

in Paris where he said he learned nothing but "Latin and the Stupidities." He left 

school at 17 and soon made friends among the Parisian aristocrats. His humorous 

verses made him a favorite in society circles. In 1717, his sharp wit got him into 

trouble with the authorities. He was imprisoned in the Bastille for eleven months 

for writing a scathing satire of the French government. During his time in prison 

Francois Marie wrote "Oedipe" which was to become his first theatrical success 

and adopted his pen name "Voltaire." 

63

64 

1694 - 1778 

Those who can make 

you believe absurdities 

can make you commit 

atrocities. 

—Voltaire 

In 1726, Voltaire insulted the powerful young nobleman, "Chevalier De Rohan," 

and was given two options: imprisonment or exile. He chose exile and from 1726 

to 1729 lived in England. While in England Voltaire was attracted to the philosophy 

of John Locke and ideas of mathematician and scientist, Sir Isaac Newton. He 

studied England's Constitutional Monarchy and its religious tolerance. Voltaire 

was particularly interested in the philosophical rationalism of the time, and in the 

study of the natural sciences. After returning to Paris he wrote a book praising 

English customs and institutions. It was interpreted as criticism of the French 

government and in 1734, Voltaire was forced to leave Paris again. 

At the invitation of his highly-intelligent woman friend, "Marquise du Chatelet," 

Voltaire moved into her "Chateau de Cirey" near Luneville in eastern France. They 

studied the natural sciences together for several years. In 1746, Voltaire was voted 

into the "Academie Francaise." In 1749, after the death of "Marquise du Chatelet" 

and at the invitation of the King of Prussia, "Frederick the Great," he moved to 

Potsdam (near Berlin in Germany). In 1753, Voltaire left Potsdam to return to 

France. 

In 1759, Voltaire purchased an estate called "Ferney" near the French-Swiss 

border where he lived until just before of his death. Ferney soon became the 

intellectual capital of Europe. Voltaire worked continuously throughout the years, 

producing a constant flow of books, plays and other publications. He wrote 

hundreds of letters to his circle of friends. He was always a voice of reason. 

Voltaire was often an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. 

Towards the end of his life, Voltaire became an avowed enthusiast of the Indic 

philosophic tradition.

If you are aware of books, movies, databases, web sites or other information 

sources about Voltaire and his views on India, or if you would like to comment, 

please send us email: webmaster@indicstudies.us. 

« The "rediscovery" of India in the eighteenth century meant that India formed a 

key part of Enlightenment discourse. Much of India's importance was indirect in 

terms of constituting a challenge to the originality and greatest antiquity of 

Europe's Greco-Roman inheritance. The challenge to Greco-Roman antiquity and 

the superiority of Christianity was particularly embraced by the philosophes of the 

eighteenth century who believed that the discovery of the ancient civilizations of 

India and China would help in better understanding non-Western civilizations. The 

presence of civilizations that predated the Greek and Roman proved that the 

Western world was not the only developed society, nor the most advanced. The 

philosophes thought it especially important to explore ancient Indian civilization to 

discover how it had influenced and taught the Greek and Roman peoples. In this 

sense, the exploration of Indian civilization was part of a concerted attempt at 

what can be termed an emerging trend toward a global history of emphasizing the 

linkages between cultures and civilizations rather than stressing the individual 

achievements of societies. Jyoti Mohan, Univ of Maryland, 

His primary work on India was Fragments sur quelques révolutions dans l'Inde 

and sur le mort du Comte de Lalli, which he wrote as a sort of addendum to his 

work on Annales de l'Empire. 3 In addition, India appeared prominently in his 

lectures on ancient and modern history and on philosophy, and also in his letters 

to other luminaries of the French Enlightenment. Although he never traveled to 

India, he expressed a keen desire to do so in a letter to Paul Gui de Chabonan in 

1767. 4 Voltaire also made frequent references to India in his many operas and 

plays, many of which were set in an Indian context. 

65

66 

Fragments sur l'Inde consists of roughly two sections. One traces the history of 

French activities in India until the loss of most of the French Indian territories 

during the Seven Years War. It deals with the establishment, expansion, and 

decline of French trade in India, from François Martin to Lally. The second part of 

Fragments sur l'Inde is a compendium of all of Voltaire's thoughts and ideas on 

India, which he put together from various articles, letters, and communications 

regarding the discovery of Hinduism in India. Voltaire was also sufficiently 

interested in India to include sections on Vedic religion, the Brahmans, and 

Mughals in his complete works. 

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jwh/16.2/mohan.html 

"We have shown how much we surpass the Indians in courage and wickedness, 

and how inferior to them we are in wisdom. Our European nations have mutually 

destroyed themselves in this land where we only go in search of money, while the 

first Greeks travelled to the same land only to instruct themselves." - Voltaire, 

Fragments historiques sur l'Inde (first published Geneva, 1773), Oeuvres 

Completes (Paris : Hachette, 1893), Vol.29, p.386 

"I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the 

Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc." - Voltaire, Lettres sur 

l'origine des sciences et sur celle des peuples de l'Asie (first published Paris, 

1777), letter of 15 December 1775. 

"No sooner than India begin to be known to the Occident's barbarians than she 

was the object of their greed, and even more so when these barbarians became 

civilized and industrious, and created new needs for themselves.... The 

Albuquerques and their successors succeeded in supplying Europe with pepper 

and paintings only through carnage." - Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'Inde,

49 Fr. Francis J Pons (1698- 

1752) 

50 Abraham Hyacinthe 

Anquetil-Duperron 

(December 7,1731 to 

January 17, 1805) 

op.cit., p.383 

Astronomer, geographer and sanskrit scholar. The first Sanskrit grammar was 

composed by him in 1734 


Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil Du Perron (December 7, 1731–January 17, 1805), 

French orientalist, brother of Louis-Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in 

Paris. He stayed in India for seven years (1755-1761), where Parsi priests taught 

him Persian, and translated the Avesta for him (it is probably not true that he 

mastered the Avestan language). He edited a French translation of that Persian 

translation in 1771, the first printed publication of Zoroastrian texts. He also 

published a Latin translation of the Upanishads in 1804. 

He was educated for the priesthood in Paris and Utrecht, but his taste for Hebrew, 

Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the East caused him to change course to 

devote himself entirely to them. His diligent attendance at the Royal Library 

attracted the attention of the keeper of the manuscripts, the Abbé Sallier, whose 

influence procured for him a small salary as a student of the Oriental languages. 

He first lighted on some fragments of the Vendidad, a portion of the collection of 

texts that make up the Avesta, and formed the project of a voyage to India to 

discover the works of Zoroaster. With this end in view he enlisted as a private 

soldier, on November 2, 1754, on the Indian expedition which was about to depart 

from the port of L'Orient. His friends procured his discharge, and he was granted a 

free passage, a seat at the captain's table, and a salary, the amount of which was 

to be fixed by the governor of the French settlement in India. 

67

68 

After a passage of ten months, Anquetil landed, on August 10, 1755 at 

Pondicherry. Here he remained a short time to master modern Persian, and then 

hastened to Chandernagore to acquire Sanskrit. Just then war was declared 

between France and England; Chandernagore was taken, and Anquetil returned to 

Pondicherry overland. He found one of his brothers at Pondicherry, and embarked 

with him for Surat; but, with a view of exploring the country, he landed at Mah and 

proceeded on foot. At Surat he proceeded, by perseverance and address in his 

discussions with Parsi theologians, in acquiring a sufficient knowledge of ancient 

Persian (Avestan, which Anquetil-Duperron mistakenly called Zend) and middle 

Persian languages to translate the portion of the Zoroastrian texts called the 

Vendidad (or Vendidad Vide) and some other works. 

Thence he proposed going to Benares, to study the language, antiquities, and 

sacred laws of the Hindus; but the capture of Pondicherry obliged him to quit 

India. Returning to Europe in an English vessel, he spent some time in London 

and Oxford, and then set out for France. He arrived in Paris on March 14, 1762 in 

possession of one hundred and eighty oriental manuscripts, besides other 

curiosities. 

The Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy procured for him a pension, with the 

appointment of interpreter of oriental languages at the Royal Library. In 1763 he 

was elected an associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and began to arrange for 

the publication of the materials he had collected during his eastern travels. In 1771 

he published his Zend Avesta (3 vols.), containing collections from the sacred 

writings of the Zoroastrians, a life of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), and fragments of 

works ascribed to Zoroaster. In 1778 he published at Amsterdam his Legislation 

orientale, in which he endeavoured to prove that the nature of oriental despotism 

had been greatly misrepresented. His Recherches historiques et geographiques 

sur L'Inde appeared in 1786, and formed part of Thieffenthaler's Geography of

India. 

The Revolution seems to have greatly affected him. During that period he 

abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day. In 1798 

he published L'Inde en rapport avec l'Europe (Hamburg, 2 vols.). From 1802 to 

1804 he published a Latin translation (2 vols.) from the Persian of the Oupnek'hat 

or Upanishada. It is a curious mixture of Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and 

Sanskrit. 

Arthur Schopenhauer declared that his knowledge of Hindu philosophy, which 

influenced Schopenhauer's own work to an enormous extent, was the result of 

reading Anquetil-Duperron's translations. 

See Biographie universelle; Sir William Jones, Works (vol. x, 1807); and the 

Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (vol. iii, 1856-1857). For a list of his 

scattered writings see Quérard, La France littéraire. 

References 

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh 

Edition, a publication now in the public domain. 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Hyacinthe_Anquetil- 

Duperron" 

69

51 Warren Hastings (December 

6, 1732 - August 22, 1818) 

70 

Warren Hastings (December 6, 1732 - August 22, 1818) was the first governorgeneral 

of British India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously impeached in 1787 for 

corruption, and acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814. 

In many respects Warren Hastings epitomizes the strengths and shortcomings of 

the British conquest and dominion over India. Unlike the Islamic invaders, who 

did not even bother to learn an Indian language till they had been in the land for at 

least half a dozen generations and whose approach to power was to strike terror in 

the population by building pyramids of skulls of the 100,000 civilians they killed in 

a single day, the British personified by such able and brilliant adminstrators such 

as Warren Hastings went about consoilidating their power in a highly systematic 

manner. They realized very early into their rule after they gained control over the 

vast lands of the Gangetic plain with a handful of Britishi officers, that they would 

have to rely on the Indic to administer these vast areas. In so doing, he makes a 

virtue out of necessity by realizing the importance of various forms of knowledge 

to the Colonial power, and in 1784 towards the end of his tenure as Governor 

general, he makes the following remarks about the importance of various forms of 

knowledge , including linguistic, legal and scientific for a colonial power and the 

case that such knowledge could be put to use for the benefit of his country Britain 

“Every application of knowledge and especially such as is obtained in social 

communication with people, over whom we exercise dominion, founded on the 

right of conquest, is usefiul to the state … It attracts and conciliates distant 

affections, it lessens the weight of the chain by which the natives are held in 

subjection (notice there is no talk of removal of the chain, no pretence that they 

will deal with the natives with dignity and respect) and it imprints on the hearts of 

our countrymen the sense of obligation and benevolence … (now we know where 

the expression ‘the white mans burden originated) …Every instance which brings

their real character (i.e. that of the Indians) will impress us with more generous 

sense of feeling for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the 

measure of our own (would that more Englishman had heeded these words to a 

greater extent than we the indics had experienced)… But such instances can only 

be gained in their writings; and these will survive when British domination in India 

shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which once yielded of 

wealth and power are lost to remembrance” i 

Men like Warren hastings are rare in any society be it in England or in India. They 

conbine the ability to work for a higher cause in this case the enrichment of 

Britain while enriching themselves at the public expense. But Britain has never 

been coy about honoring its buccaneers and bandits beginning with sir Francis 

Drake and Robert Clive 

Hastings was born at Churchill, Oxfordshire. He attended Westminster School 

before joining the British East India Company in 1750 as a clerk. In 1757 he was 

made the British Resident (administrative in charge) of Murshidabad. He was 

appointed to the Calcutta council in 1761, but was back in England in 1764. He 

returned to India in 1769 as a member of the Madras council and was made 

governor of Bengal in 1772. In 1773, he was appointed the first Governor-General 

of India. 

After an eventful ten years tenure in which he greatly extended and regularised the 

nascent Raj created by Clive of India, Hastings resigned in 1784. On his return to 

England he was charged with high crimes and misdemeanours by Edmund Burke, 

encouraged by Sir Philip Francis whom he had wounded in a duel in India. He was 

impeached in 1787 but the trial, which began in 1788, ended with his acquittal in 

1795. Hastings spent most of his fortune on his defence, although towards the end 

71

52 Jean Sylvain 

Bailly(September 15, 1736– 

November 12, 1793 

72 

of the trial the East India Company did provide financial support 

Jean-Sylvain Bailly) was a French astronomer and orator, one of the leaders of the 

early part of the French Revolution. He was ultimately guillotined during the Reign 

of Terror. 

Jean Sylvain Bailly. 

Biography 

Born at Paris, he was originally intended for the profession of a painter, but 

preferred writing tragedies, until attracted to science by the influence of Nicolas de 

Lacaille. He calculated an orbit for Halley's Comet when it appeared in 1759, 

reduced Lacaille's observations of 515 zodiacal stars, and was, in 1763, elected a 

member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Essai sur la theorie des satellites 

de Jupiter (Essay on the theory of the satellites of Jupiter, 1766), an expansion of a 

memoir presented to the Academy in 1763, showed much original power; and it 

was followed up in 1771 by a noteworthy dissertation Sur les inegalites de la 

lumiere des satellites de Jupiter (On the inequalities of light of the satellites of 

Jupiter). 

Meantime, he had gained a high literary reputation by his Éloges of King Charles V 

of France, Lacaille, Molière, Pierre Corneille and Gottfried Leibniz, which were 

issued in collected form in 1770 and 1790; he was admitted to the Académie 

française on February 26, 1784, and to the Académie des Inscriptions in 1785, 

when Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle's simultaneous membership of all three

Academies was renewed in him. From then on, he devoted himself to the history of 

science, publishing successively: Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne (A history of 

ancient astronomy, 1775); Histoire de l'astronomie moderne (A history of modern 

astronomy, 3 vols., 1779-1782); Lettres sur l'origine des sciences (Letters on the 

origin of the sciences, 1777); Lettres sur l' Atlantide de Platon (Letters on Plato's 

Atlantide , 1779); and Traite de l'astronomie indienne et orientale (A treatise on 

Indian and Oriental astronomy, 1787). The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica remarks 

that "Their erudition was… marred by speculative extravagances." 

The French Revolution interrupted his studies. Elected deputy from Paris to the 

Estates-General, he was elected president of the Third Estate (May 5, 1789), led the 

famous proceedings in the Tennis Court(June 20), and - immediately after the 

storming of the Bastille - became the first mayor of Paris under the newly adopted 

system of the Commune (July 15, 1789 to November 16, 1791). The dispersal by 

the National Guard, under his orders, of the riotous assembly in the Champ de 

Mars (July 17, 1791) made him unpopular, and he retired to Nantes, where he 

composed his Mémoires d'un témoin (published in 3 vols. by MM. Berville and 

Barrière, 1821-1822), an incomplete narrative of the extraordinary events of his 

public life. Late in 1793, Bailly left Nantes to join his friend Pierre Simon Laplace at 

Melun, but was there recognized, arrested and brought (November 10) before the 

Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris. On November 12 he was guillotined amid the 

insults of a howling mob. In the words of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "He 

met his death with patient dignity; having, indeed, disastrously shared the 

enthusiasms of his age, but taken no share in its crimes."The lunar crater Bailly 

was named in his honor. 

Ed. Note – his friendship with Laplace explains the great admiration Laplace had 

for Indic contributions to Mathematics. 

73

53 Sir William Jones (1746- 

1794) 

74 

The founder of Indology in the modern era, largely responsible for postulating a 

Proto Indo European language for which no speakers have been found and for 

misdating the chronology of ancient India, The real pioneer of Indology, Sir 

William Jones (1746-94), was a gifted linguist and founder of the Royal Asiatic 

Society. Jones was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court and was a confidante 

of Warren Hastings (1732-1818.) Jones ostensibly became an ardent admirer of 

India. He wrote, "I am in love with Gopia, charmed with Crishen (Krishna), an 

enthusiastic admirer of Raama and a devout adorer of Brihma (Brahma), Bishen 

(Vishnu), Mahisher (Maheshwara); not to mention that Judishteir, Arjen, Corno 

(Yudhishtira, Arjuna, Karna) and the other warriors of the Mahabharat appear 

greater in my eyes than Agamemnon, Ajax and Achilles appeared when I first read 

the Iliad" (Mukharji S.N., Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth Century British 

Attitudes to India, Orient Longman, 1987). However, he remained true to the 

Biblical dogma of Genesis which he took to be a literal account. His chronology 

for ancient India, including the dating of Chandragupta Maurya to the period of 

Alexander's invasion of India was dictated at least in part by the Biblical dogma 

that there was no possibility of any civilization existing before 4004 BCE. Jones 

may not have had an ulterior motive in doing this but, his disinclination to go 

against his scriptures renders his conclusions suspect. In 1786, while delivering 

his third lecture, Sir William made the following statement which aroused the 

curiosity of many scholars and finally led to the emergence of comparative 

linguistics. Noticing the similarities between Sanskrit and the Classical Languages 

of Europe such as Greek and Latin he declared: 

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful structure; 

more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely 

refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the 

roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could not possibly have been 

produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them

all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source 

which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so 

forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with 

a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old 

Persian might be added to the same family..." (Jones, Collected Works, Volume 

III : 34-5). 

Thus began the study of Indo European languages as one family. Such a study 

falls under the rubric of a field known as Philology. Wikipedia defines Philology 

as “the study of ancient texts and languages. The term originally meant a love 

(Greek philo-) of learning and literature (Greek -logia). In the academic 

traditions of several nations, a wide sense of the term "philology" describes the 

study of a language together with its literature and the historical and cultural 

contexts which are indispensable for an understanding of the literary works 

and other culturally significant texts. Philology thus comprises the study of the 

grammar, rhetoric, history, interpretation of authors, and critical traditions 

associated to a given language. Such a wide-ranging definition is becoming 

rare nowadays, and "philology" tends to refer to a study of texts from the 

perspective of historical linguistics. 

Thus inadvertently Sir William set in motion a chain of events beginning with 

the search for a Proto Indo European Language or PIE for short. The puzzling 

observation here is that it never occurred to him.or if it did,he apparently gave 

it short schrift, that possibly Sanskrit itself could be the grand ancestor to all 

the languages of the Indo European languages. Till then Europeans had 

assumed that the oldest language related to the European languages was 

Hebrew. Given the anti Semitic feelings that were always simmering 

underneath the surface in Europe, there was general relief that the roots of 

their heritage lay elsewhere than in Hebrew, but Sir William may have realized 

that this discovery raised an equally unpalatable deduction. The notion that 

75

54 John Playfair ,FRSE (March 

10, 1748 – July 20, 1819) 

76 

the heathen millions of India possessed the linguistic technology (in Pannini’s 

Ashtadhyayi) to explain the grammars of their own language would perhaps be 

equally unacceptable. 

Whatever the case may be, there are two major disservices that he did to the 

Indic Civilization. One was the possible misdating of Chandragupta Maurya by 

several centuries and the other was postulating the assumption of a PIE, which 

implied a Urheimat (an ancestral home) from where the Indo Europeans fanned 

out to the 4 corners of the Eurasian landmass. By so doing he laid the seeds 

for a fractured historical narrative for the Indics, which was not supported by 

any Indian legend or folklore. In short he saddled the Indics with perpetually 

having to refute dual falsehoods-a false chronology and an imposed ‘Aryan 

Invasion or what has been light heartedly called the Aryan Tourist theory. 

The hubris with which the colonial overlord rewrote the history of the land with 

which he had little acquaintance, is only to be matched by the cupidity with 

which the Indics accepted such a narrative , without even a whimper . 600 

years of servility to alien emperors and overlords had sapped the self esteem 

and the confidence to question the credentials of the interloper and with rare 

exceptions, this new revised narrative became the accepted norm for most text 

books. 

John Playfair


Professor John Playfair was a Scottish scientist. 

Playfair was professor of mathematics and later professor of natural philosophy at 

the University of Edinburgh. He is perhaps best known for his book Illustrations of 

the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which was a summary of the work of 

James Hutton. It was through this that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, 

later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. 

In 1795 Playfair created an alternative formulation of Euclid's parallel postulate 

called Playfair's axiom. 

Early life 

Born at Benvie, Angus, Scotland, where his father was parish minister, he was 

educated at home until the age of fourteen, when he entered the University of St 

Andrews. In 1766, when only eighteen, he was candidate for the chair of 

mathematics in Marischal College, Aberdeen, and, although he was unsuccessful, 

his claims were admitted to be high. 

Six years later he made application for the chair of natural philosophy in his own 

university, but again without success, and in 1773 he was offered and accepted 

the benefice of the united parishes of Liff and Benvie, vacant by the death of his 

father. He continued, however, to carry on his mathematical and physical studies, 

and in 1782 he resigned his charge in order to become the tutor of Ferguson of 

Raith. By this arrangement he was able to be frequently in Edinburgh and to 

cultivate the literary and scientific society for which it was at that time specially 

distinguished. In particular, he attended the natural history course of John Walker. 

77

78 

Through Nevil Maskelyne, whose acquaintance he had first made in the course of 

the celebrated Schiehallion experiments in 1774, he also gained access to the 

scientific circles of London. In 1785 when Dugald Stewart succeeded Ferguson in 

the Edinburgh chair of moral philosophy, Playfair succeeded the former in that of 

mathematics. 

Mature work 

In 1802, he published his celebrated volume entitled Illustrations of the Huttonian 

Theory of the Earth. The influence exerted by James Hutton on the development of 

geology is thought to be largely due to its publication. In 1805 he exchanged the 

chair of mathematics for that of natural philosophy in succession to John 

Robison, whom also he succeeded as general secretary to the Royal Society of 

Edinburgh. He took a prominent part, on the liberal side, in the ecclesiastical 

controversy that arose in connexion with Sir John Leslie's appointment to the post 

he had vacated, and published a satirical Letter (1806). 

Playfair was an opponent of Gottfried Leibniz's vis viva principle, an early version 

of the conservation of energy. In 1808, he launched an attack [1] on John Smeaton 

and William Hyde Wollaston's work championing the theory. 

He died in Edinburgh. 

Family 

John's brothers were the celebrated architect James Playfair who died in 1794 and 

the engineer William Playfair [2] .

Honours 

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 

• Fellow of the Royal Society of London, 1807 

• Craters on Mars and the Moon were named in his honor. 

Notes 

1. ^ Edinburgh Review, 12, 1808, 120–130 

2. ^ Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1856), reproduced in 

Significant Scots 

Critical bibliography 

A collected edition of Playfair's works, with a memoir by James G. Playfair, 

appeared at Edinburgh in 4 vols. 8vo. 

His writings include a number of essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review from 

1804 onwards, various papers in the Phil. Trans. (including his earliest publication, 

" On the Arithmetic of Impossible Quantities," 1779, and an " Account of the 

Lithological Survey of Schehallion," 1811) and in the Transactions of the Royal 

Society of Edinburgh (" On the Causes which affect the Accuracy of Barometrical 

Measurements," &c.), also the articles "Aepinus" and "Physical Astronomy," and a 

"Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science since the 

Revival of Learning in Europe," in the Encyclopædia Britannica (Supplement to 

fourth, fifth and sixth editions). 

His Elements of Geometry first appeared in 1795 and have passed through many 

editions; his Outlines of Natural Philosophy (2 vols., 1812-1816) consist of the 

79

80 

propositions and formulae which were the basis of his class lectures. Playfair's 

contributions to pure mathematics were not considerable, his paper "On the 

Arithmetic of Impossible Quantities," that " On the Causes which affect the 

Accuracy of Barometrical Measurements," and his Elements of Geometry, all 

already referred to, being the most important. His lives of Matthew Stewart, Hutton, 

Robison, many of his reviews, and above all his "Dissertation" are of the utmost 

value. 

External links 

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography 

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "John Playfair". MacTutor 

History of Mathematics archive. 

• Significant Scots: John Playfair 

• National Portrait Gallery 

References 



Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Playfair" 

In 1790, the mathematician John Playfair demonstrated that the starting-date of the 

astronomical observations recorded in the tables still in use among Hindu 

astrologers (of which three copies had reached Europe between 1687 and 1787) 

had to be 4300 BC. Please refer to- Playfair's argumentation, "Remarks on the 

astronomy of the Brahmins",

55 Pierre Simon de Laplace 

(23 March 1749 in 

Beaumont-en-Auge, 

Normandy, France 

5 March 1827 in Paris, 

France 

Edinburg 1790. 

Playfair's mathematical estimate was objected to by John Bentley in 1825, not by a 

mathematical or astronomical argument, but as following in "John Bentley: Hindu 

Astronomy, republished by Shri Publ., Delhi 1990, p.xxvii;" By his [Playfair's] 

attempt to uphold the antiquity of Hindu books against absolute facts, he thereby 

supports all those horrid abuses and impositions found in them, under the 

pretended 

sanction of antiquity. Nay, his aim goes still deeper, for by the same means he 

endeavours to overturn the Mosaic account, and sap the very foundation of our 

religion: for if we are to believe in the antiquity of Hindu books, as he would 

wish us, 

then the Mosaic account is all a fable, or a fiction." 

So this is the argument that prevailed. Hindu astronomy could not be believed not 

because it was flawed, but that it would overturn the orthodoxy of the Christian 

church. So much for the scientific temper of western scholarship and their much 

vaunted blathering about the importance that they attached to the scientific 

approach and the love of proof they inherited from the Greeks 

P. S. Laplace (1814): “The ingenious method of expressing every possible 

number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an 

absolute value) emerged in India . The idea seems so simple nowadays that its 

significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity 

lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst 

useful inventions. The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated 

when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, 

81

82 

Archimedes and Apollonius.” [Dantzig. p. 26] 

56 John Bentley (1825) Hindu Astronomy. Osnabrück. 1970 

A historical view of the Hindu astronomy from the earliest dawn of that science in 

India to the present time, in two parts : Part I. The ancient astronomy, Part II. The 

modern astronomy, with an explanation of the apparent cause of its introduction, 

and the various impositions that followed : to which are added I. Hindu tables of 

equations, II. Remarks on the Chinese astronomy, III. Translations of certain 

hieroglyphics called the Zodiacs of Dendera / Format: microform : Author: Bentley, 

John. PuThis title can be found in 1 Iowa libraries 

Was one of the first to falsely characterize Indian contributions to astronomy 

Playfair's judicious use of astronomy was countered by John Bentley with a 

Scriptural 

argument which we now must consider invalid. In 1825, Bentley objected: "By his 

[= Playfair's] attempt to uphold the antiquity of Hindu books against absolute 

facts, he thereby supports all those horrid abuses and impositions found in them, 

under the pretended sanction of antiquity. Nay, his aim goes still deeper, for by the 

same means he endeavours to overturn the Mosaic account, and sap the very

8 John Bentley: Hindu Astronomy, republished by Shri Publ., Delhi 1990, p.xxvii; also 

discussed by Richard L. Thompson: "World Views: Vedic vs. Western", The India Times, 

foundation of our religion: for if we are to believe in the antiquity of Hindu books, 

as he would wish us, then the Mosaic account is all a fable, or a fiction." 8 

Bentley did not object to astronomy per se, in so far as it could be helpful in 

showing up the falsehood of Brahmanical scriptures. However, it did precisely the 

reverse. Falsehood in this context could have meant that the Brahmanas falsely 

claimed high antiquity for their texts by presenting as ancient astronomical 

observations recorded in Scripture what were in fact back calculations from a 

much later age. 

But Playfair showed that such a back calculation was impossible. Back-calculation 

of planetary positions is a highly complex affair requiring knowledge of a number 

of physical laws, universal physical constants and actual measurements of 

densities, diameters and distances. Though Vedic astronomy was remarkably 

sophisticated for its time, it could only back-calculate planetary position of the 

presumed Vedic age with an inaccuracy margin of at least several degrees of arc. 

With our modern knowledge, it is easy to determine what the actual positions 

were, and what the results of back-calculations with the Vedic Jyotish formulae 

would have been, e.g.:"Aldebaran was therefore 40' before the point of the vernal 

equinox, according to the Indian astronomy, in the year 3102 before Christ. (...) 

[Modern astronomy] gives the longitude of that star 13' from the vernal equinox, at 

the time of the Calyougham, agreeing, within 53', with the determination of the 

Indian astronomy. This agreement is the more remarkable, that the Brahmins, by 

their own rules for computing the motion of the fixed stars, could not have 

assigned this place to Aldebaran for the beginning of Calyougham, had they 

calculated it from a modern observation. For as they make the motion of the fixed 

83

84 

stars too great by more than 3'' annually, if they had calculated backward from 

1491, they would have placed the fixed stars less advanced by 4° or 5°, at their 

ancient epoch, than they have actually done."5 So, it turns out that the data given 

by the Brahmins corresponded not with the results deduced from their formulae, 

but with the actual positions, and this, according to Playfair, for nine different 

astronomical parameters. This is a bit much to explain away as coincidence or 

sheer luck. 

The accusation that the ancient Vedics falsified the evidence on order to claim 

greater antiquity is ironic and flies in the face of all available evidence. It is ironic 

because the Indologists have always maintained that the ancient Indic was 

lackadaisical about historical dates and generally indifferent to precision in 

Historical dating. In this as in other statements of this nature they fail to offer any 

standards of comparison since prior to the Roman era there was little recording of 

history in Europe and even thereafter there was very little recording of Births and 

deaths, except in the case of famous celebrities such as Kings and Queens. 

Despite the fact that India has the single most ancient dynastic record in the many 

Puranas anywhere in the known Galaxy, the charge is often made mainly by 

European historians (and parroted faithfully by a section of the Indians) that 

Indians were indifferent to History. We find such a viewpoint to be without any 

merit’ 

2.2. Ancient observation, modern confirmation 

That Hindu astronomical lore about ancient times cannot be based on later 

backcalculation, was also argued by Playfair's contemporary, the French 

astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly: "the motions of the stars calculated by the Hindus 

before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the [modern] tables of

57 Sir Charles Wilkins (1749- 

1836) 

58 

59 Nathaniel Brassey 

Halhead(1761-1830) 

60 German Indology (1700 

1900) 

Cassini and Meyer. The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon 

as that discovered by Tycho Brahe -- a variation unknown to the school of 

Alexandria and also to the Arabs".6 

4 John Bentley: Hindu Astronomy, republished by Shri Publ., Delhi 1990, p.xxvii; 

also 

discussed by Richard L. Thompson: "World Views: Vedic vs. Western", The India 

Times, 

31-3-1993. On p.111, we find that Bentley has "proven" that Krishna was born on 7 

August 

in AD 600 (the most conservative estimate elsewhere is the 9th century BC), and 

on p.158 

ff., that Varaha Mihira (AD 510-587) was a contemporary of the Moghul emperor 

Akbar 

(r.1556-1605). 

5 J. Playfair in Dharampal: Indian Science and Technology, p.87. 

Translated the Bhagavad Gita in 1785, the Hitopadesa in 1787, and the Shakuntala 

episode in the M’Bharata in 1795. Was the first British officer of the East India 

Company to acquire adequate proficiency in the Sanskrit language. 

Published a Code of Gentoo Laws in 1776 subtitled Ordinations of the Pundits. In 

1787 Halhead also translated the Dara Shikoh (Aurangzebs brother brutally 

murdered by him) version of the Upanishads into English. But Sir William did not 

find his effort very useful, as it had too many errors. 

The Bhagavad-Gita, helped to shape the world view of Germany. 

When they became aware of the vast wealth of literature awaiting their perusal, 

85

9 Schwab, Raymond. 1984. The Oriental Renaissance. New York: Columbia University 

Press 

86 

German scholars like Friedrich von Schlegel and Baron Ferdinand Eckstein 

became Sanskrit scholars. German schools and Universities quickly established 

departments of sanskrit studies, long before they showed up in England 

The "native land" of Indic studies may have been England, but it is German 

philosophers,linguists and mathematicians that were awed by the European 

discovery of India’s vast and stunning literature in the various arts an sciences. In 

Jena, Weimar and Heidelberg, then at Bonn, Berlin and Tübingen oriental studies 

were established during the 1790s "like a rapid-fire series of explosions." 9 

(Raymond Schwab in Oriental Renaissance, p. 53). The many translations of Indian 

texts produced by the English in India were available to German philosophers 

when their interest in India's spiritual philosophy was awakened. Charles Wilkins' 

translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, had become a favourite book among Westerners 

throughout Europe, and together with other translations, found its widest audience 

in Germany. 

The brothers Friedrich von Schlegel and August Wilhelm von Schlegel used their 

own printing press in 1823 to publish August Wilhelm's Latin translation of the 

Bhagavad-Gita, with the original Sanskrit text. European scholars commended it. 

This translation was to be an important resource for Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-- 

1835) and, later, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770--1831), both of whom gave 

it their undivided attention. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt claimed that his familiarity with the Oupnek'hat [Upanishads], the 

Manusmriti, Burnouf's extracts from the Padmapurana and Colebrooke's essay, "On the Religion 

and Philosophy of the Indians," enabled him to comprehend the philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita.

(Hiltrud Rüstao, "From Indology to Indian Studies: Some Considerations," Bulletin of the 

Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, March 1998, p. 126. [Hereafter: "From Indology to Indian 

Studies"]) He wrote that "this episode of the Mahabharata is the most beautiful, nay, perhaps even 

the only true philosophical poem which we can find in all the literatures known to us," (Quotation 

from Maurice Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, Vol. 1, part 2, Second ed. (Calcutta: 

University of Calcutta, 1963) p. 375, Citation from India's Contribution, p. 166) and ranked the Gita 

above the works of Lucretius, Parmenides and Empedocles." (India's Contribution, p. 166) After 

looking into the Gita, he wrote to his friend, statesman Frederick von Gentz in 1827: 

I read the Indian poem for the first time when I was in my country estate in Silesia and, while doing 

so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me live to be acquainted with this 

work. It must be the most profound and sublime thing to be found in the, world. (Citation from P. 

Nagaraja Rao, The Bhagavad Gita (The Quest for the Moral Ideal, Religious Values and the 

Affirmation of Faith), (Madras: -- The Author, 1986), p. 20.) 

Humboldt wanted to inform the world of the concept of God that he found and 

appreciated in the Bhagavad-Gita. With as much capacity to plumb the scripture's 

depths as could be cultivated at that time, he set himself to broadcast its 

teachings with an open mind. His lecture on the Bhagavad-Gita. at Berlin's Royal 

Academy of Sciences to Prussia's intellectual elite in 1825 (Art, Culture and 

Spirituality, p. 359) stirs the reader's mind to this day. It was published in 1826. He 

appeared again at the Academy one year later, this time with his analysis of the 

Gita's Advaitic structure founded on Samkhya philosophy, and summarized the 

Gita's discourses and poetic value in great detail. (From Indology to Indian 

Studies, pp. 126-127) 

The first Humboldt lecture on the Bhagavad Gita caught the attention of George 

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He published a review of it in 1827 that contributed a 

critical and appreciative analysis. Hegel felt Humboldt's lecture to be "an essential 

enrichment of the knowledge of the Indian way of concepts of the highest spiritual 

interests". (G. W. F. HegeL Werke (Works), Vol. 20, 59. Citation from "From 

87

88 

Indology to Indian Studies," p. 128) and his penetrating review served to promote 

Humboldt's work. 

Freidrich von Schlegel (1772--1829) was the first German to study Sanskrit and 

Indian religion and philosophy in depth.(Swami Ashokananda, The Influence of 

Indian Thought on the Thought of the West (Mayavati, Advaita Ashrama, 1931), p. 

20). His interest in India was greatly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita. Schlegel 

produced his eminent pioneering work, On the Language and Wisdom of the 

Indians: A Contribution to the Foundation of Antiquity (Über die Sprache und 

Weisheit der Indier), in 1808. it was the primary publication of nineteenth-century 

European Indology in the German language, acknowledged for its scholarly 

translations of extracts from the Sanskrit texts of the Bhagavad Gita and the 

Ramayana. His words in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier hailed the 

contribution of Vedanta, and were later brought to life by Max Müller in his lecture, 

"Origin of the Vedanta": 

It cannot be denied that the early Indians possessed a knowledge of 

the true God; all their writings are replete with sentiments and 

expressions, noble, clear, and severely grand; as deeply conceived 

and reverentially expressed as in any human language in which men 

have spoken of their God. . . The divine origin of man, as taught in 

Vedanta, is continually inculcated, to stimulate his efforts to return, to 

animate him in the struggle, and incite him to consider a reunion and 

reincorporating with Divinity as the one primary object of every action 

and reaction. Even the highest form of European philosophy, the 

idealism of reason as it is set forth by the Greek philosophers, seems, 

when compared to the bounteous light and force of oriental idealism, 

to be no more than a feeble Promethean spark within the full celestial 

splendor of the noonday sun, a thin flickering spark always on the

point of burning out. (Friedrich von Schlegel, Indian Language, 

Literature and Philosophy, p. 471). 

August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767--1845) hoped to inspire a new ethics and 

was the first to publish standard text editions with penetrating commentaries and 

translations in classical Latin of the Bhagavad Gita, Hitopadesha and the 

Ramayana. (Influence of Indian Thought, p. 20). Between 1820 and 1830 he 

published Indische Bibliothek, a collection of Indian texts. He is considered the 

founder of Sanskrit philology in Germany. His unrestrained praise for the 

Bhagavad Gita elicited this fervent remark: 

If the study of Sanskrit had brought nothing more than the 

satisfaction of being able to read this superb poem in the original, I 

would have been amply compensated for all my labours. It is a 

sublime reunion of poetic and philosophical genius. (Oriental 

Renaissance, p. 90. 

In 1932, the German scholar and Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto (1869--1937) 

wrote a ground breaking work on the subject of mysticism in comparative religion. 

Otto regarded the Bhagavad Gita as an excellent example of mysterium 

tremendum and understood the significance of Vedanta for the West. Otto's 

premise was that within the vast diversity of mystical expression a "deep-rooted 

kinship. . . . unquestionably exists between the souls of Oriental and Occidental." 

(Bhimsen Gupta, The Glassy Essence: A Study of E. M. Forster, L. H. Myers and 

Aldous Huxley in Relation to Indian Thought (Kurukshetra: Kurukshetra 

University, 1976), p. 20) 

Part 4 of this article. For other parts of this article, see How Vedanta Came 

89

90 

to the West 

Comments on this article can be sent to: VedantaSoc@aol.com 

Books by Swami Tathagatananda (organized by the year of publication): 

1. The Vedanta Society of New York -- A Brief History, 2000 

2. Mahabharat--Katha (Bengali), 1998 

3. Ramayan Anudhyan (Bengali), 1996 

4. Healthy Values of Living, 1996 

5. Meditation on Swami Vivekananda, 1994 

6. Meditation on Shri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, 1993 

7. Albert Einstein and His Human Face, 1993 

8. Glimpses of Great Lives, 1989 

9. Shubha Chinta (Bengali), 1988 

10. Smaran--Manan (Bengali), 1987 

Please contact Vedanta Society of New York for these and other books on 

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61 Abbe Parraud (173X ?). In 

fact it is his work that was 

influential in the subsequent 

interest that the French 

sahowed in Indiligy 

62 Colonel Colin Mackenzie 

(1753-1821) From Bernard Cohn 

« Le premier ouvrage traduit est la Bhagavad-Gîtâ en 1785 en anglais à Londres 

par Wilkins, puis en français en 1787 par l’abbé Parraud. » 

http://www.europsy.org/marc-alain/histyog.html 

In 1787, Abbé Parraud retranslated Wilkins' English version [of the Bhagavad- 

Gita] into French. Within a short span of time, other brilliant translations of 

Sanskrit books from the Asiatic Society of Bengal became well known in 

revolutionary France. Louis Matthieu Langlès, curator of oriental manuscripts at 

the Bibliothèque Nationale and its provisional specialist on India, documented 

Indic research. Langlès was well aware of the importance of the Asiatic Society. 

For the benefit of scholars everywhere, he included the history and bibliography of 

the early publications of the Society in the third volume of the Magasin 

Encyclopédique. (Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's 

Discovery of India and the East, 1836--1886, New York: Columbia University Press, 

1984), 55) 

91

63 Sir Thomas Munro (27 May 

1761-6 July 1827), Scottish 

soldier and statesman, was 

born at Glasgow, the son of 

a merchant called Alexander 

Munro. Thomas's 

grandfather was Alexander 

Munro III, a professor of 

anatomy at Edinburgh 

University. 

92 

Sir Thomas Munro was one of the British colonialists(a Scot to boot) who served 

his country with honor and integrity, while being well versed in the sacred books 

of India 

Thomas was educated at the University of Glasgow. While at school, Thomas was 

distinguished for a singular openness of temper, a mild and generous disposition, 

with great personal courage and presence of mind. Being naturally of a robust 

frame of body, he surpassed all his school-fellows in athletic exercises, and was 

particularly eminent as a boxer. He was at first intended to enter his father's 

business, but in 1789 was appointed to an infantry cadetship in Madras. 

He served with his regiment during the hard-fought war against Haidar Ali (1780- 

1783), and again in the first campaign against Tipu Sultan (1790-1792). He was 

then chosen as one of four military officers to administer the Baramahal, part of 

the territory acquired from Tipu, where he remained for seven years learning the 

principles of revenue survey and assessment which he afterwards applied 

throughout the presidency of Madras. 

After the final downfall of Tipu in 1799, he spent a short time restoring order in 

Kanara; and then for another seven years (1800-1807) he was placed in charge of 

the northern district "ceded" by the Nizam of Hyderabad, where he introduced the 

ryotwari system of land revenue. 

After a long furlough in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, during which he 

gave valuable evidence upon matters connected with the renewal of the British 

East India Company's charter, he returned to Madras in 1814 with special 

instructions to reform the judicial and police systems. 

In 1820, he was appointed governor of Madras, where he founded the systems of

evenue assessment and general administration which substantially remain to the 

present day. His official minutes, published by Sir A. Arbuthnot, form a manual of 

experience and advice for the modern civilian. He died of cholera while on tour in 

the "ceded" districts, where his name is preserved by more than one memorial. An 

equestrian statue of him, by Francis Legatt Chantrey, stands in Madras city. 

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams still hold a huge cauldron gifted by him 

called MUNRO GANGALAM in which food for the Lord Venkateswara is prepared 

even though Lord Munro never visited the temple. 

Quote 

In asserting that Europe could learn a lot from India,Sir Thomas was quite 

emphatic 

"If a good system of agriculture, unrivalled manufacturing skill, a capacity to 

produce whatever can contribute to convenience or luxury, schools established in 

every village for teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic; the general practice of 

hospitality and charity among each other; and above all, a treatment of the female 

sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, (if all these) are among the signs 

which denote a civilized people, then the Hindus, are not inferior to the nations of 

Europe; and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and 

India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo." 

(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland 

p.324-325) and The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino p. 13). 

93

94 

Statue 

Sculpted by Francis Chanterey, and sitting proud and straight on his horse, in the 

middle of Chennai's famed Island, is The Stirrupless Majesty [1] . Either due to an 

oversight, or depicting his affinity for bareback riding, Sir Thomas Munro's statue 

shows him without saddle and stirrup. [2] 

References 

1. ^ 

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2003/06/04/stories/2003060400180300.htm 

S. Muthiah, " Relics of Company times", The Hindu, June 4, 2003. 

2. ^ ChandraChoodan Gopalakrishnan, "The stirrup-less majesty" Chennai 

Metblogs.com (March 23, 2006) 


Edition, a publication now in the public domain 

External Links 

• http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/munro_thomas.htm 

• Thomas Munro Statue 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Munro"

64 William Carey (1761-1834) 

Missionary William Carey (1761-1834) was the pioneer of the modern missionary 

enterprise in India, and of western (missionary) scholarship in oriental studies. 

Carey was an English oriental scholar and the founder of the Baptist Missionary 

Society. From 1801 onward, as Professor of Oriental Languages, he composed 

numerous philosophical works, consisting of 'grammars and dictionaries in the 

Marathi, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Telugu, Bengali and Bhatanta dialects. From the 

Serampor press, there issued in his life time, over 200,000 Bibles and portions in 

nearly 40 different languages and dialects, Carey himself undertaking most of 

the literary work. 3 

Carey and his colleagues experimented with what came to be known as Church 

Sanskrit. He wanted to train a group of 'Christian Pandits' who would probe "these 

mysterious sacred nothings" and expose them as worthless. He was distressed 

that this "golden casket (of Sanskrit) exquisitely wrought" had remained "filled 

with nothing but pebbles and trash." He was determined to fill it with "riches - 

beyond all price," that is, the doctrine of Christianity. 4 

In fact, Carey smuggled himself into India and caused so much trouble that the 

British government labeled him as a political danger. After confiscating a batch of 

Bengali pamphlets printed by Carey, the Governor-general Lord Minto described 

them as – 

"Scurrilous invective…Without arguments of any kind, they were filled 

with hell fire and still hotter fire, denounced against a whole race of 

men merely for believing the religion they were taught by their 

fathers." 

Unfortunately Carey and other preachers of his ilk finally gained permission to 

continue their campaigns without government approval. 

95

96 

Other Preachers 

65 Indology in France France Becomes a Center for Indian Studies 

In 1787, Abbé Parraud retranslated Wilkins' English version [of the Bhagavad-Gita] 

into French. Within a short span of time, other brilliant translations of Sanskrit 

books from the Asiatic Society of Bengal became well known in revolutionary 

France. Louis Matthieu Langlès, curator of oriental manuscripts at the 

Bibliothèque Nationale and its provisional specialist on India, documented Indic 

research. Langlès was well aware of the importance of the Asiatic Society. For the 

benefit of scholars everywhere, he included the history and bibliography of the 

early publications of the Society in the third volume of the Magasin 

Encyclopédique. (Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's 

Discovery of India and the East, 1836--1886, New York: Columbia University Press, 

1984), 55) 

Beginning in 1800, France became a center for Indian studies when the 

accumulated Indian manuscripts languishing in the Bibliothèque Nationale began 

to be prepared for inventory. The Asiatic Researches: Transactions of the Society 

(published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1788) (Ibid., 39) had been 

published in Calcutta in 1805 and were being translated into French along with the 

works of both Wilkins and Sir William Jones. 

In 1832, a French translation of the Bhagavad-Gila was made directly from the 

Sanskrit by Jean-Denis Languinais and published posthumously. Languinais had 

written of the "great surprise" it was "to find among these fragments of an 

extremely ancient epic poem from India. . . a completely spiritual pantheism. . . 

and. . . the vision of all-in-God . . ."(Art, Culture and Spirituality: A Prabuddha

Bharata Centenary Perspective (1896--1996), Swami Atmaramanananda and M. 

Sivaramakrishna, comps. and eds. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1997), 161) 

By the late eighteenth century, French writers acquired intimate knowledge of 

Indian literature. Sensing that India possessed a great richness of spiritual unity, 

Henri Frédéric Amiel, a contemporary of Victor Hugo, saw the need of 

"Brahmanising souls" for the spiritual welfare of humanity. (Sisir Kumar Mitra, 

Vision of India, New Delhi: Crest Publishing House, 1984, 202) 

The Significance of France in German Indology 

France played a unique role in the advancement of Indic studies in Germany when 

Paris became the "capital of nascent Indology." Together with Wilkins, Jones and 

others, British Lieutenant Alexander Hamilton (an employee of the East India 

Company) was among the first twenty-four charter members of the Asiatic Society 

of Bengal (The Oriental Renaissance, 39) and played a very important role in the 

focus of Sanskrit studies in Germany. 

While serving in the British Navy, Lt. Hamilton was sent to Paris to collate Sanskrit 

manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale for a new edition of Wilkins' translation 

of the Hitopadesha. Hamilton was the only one apart from Wilkins who knew 

Sanskrit and who lived in Europe at the time. In 1803, during the war between 

France and England, the orientalist Claude de Saint-Martin expressed his 

enthusiasm for "the numerous treasures that the literature of India is beginning to 

offer us," in his Le ministère de l'homme-esprit. (op. cit., 236). In the same year 

Hamilton became a paroled prisoner in Paris, but received special treatment due to 

his scholarly associations. Orientalist Constantine Volney was interested in 

Hamilton's work and protected Hamilton's right to continue cataloguing the 

manuscripts. (Ibid., 67). Hamilton expresses his gratitude by teaching Sanskrit to 

97

66 Henry Thomas Colebrook 

(1765-1837) 

(June 15, 1765 - March 18, 

1837) 

98 

Volney and few others. Among them were the father of Eugène Burnouf (a Latin 

scholar), Louis Matthieu Langlés, Claude Fauriel---and Friedrich von Schlegel. 

Schlegel was in Paris at the time and began studying Sanskrit three hours a day 

with Hamilton (he continued to study it on his own for four years). Between 1803 

and 1804, Friedrich von Schlegel used the Sanskrit he learned from Hamilton to 

translate excerpts from the Indian epics and the Laws of Manu. In 1804 he taught a 

private course on world literature in Paris and included Indian works. (Ibid., 67-- 

70). His influence on his brother, August Wilhelm who surpassed him in Sanskrit, 

occurred at this time. 

Part 3 of this article. For other parts of this article, see How Vedanta Came to the West 

Comments on this article can be sent to: VedantaSoc@aol.com 

Studied Sanskrit from the Pundits and wrote on the Vedas 

August Wilhelm von Schlegel, indologist: letters to Henry Thomas 

Colebrooke, Sanskrit scholar 1821-28 (Mss Eur C841) 

Colebrooke's essay, "On the Religion and Philosophy of the Indians," 

Henry Thomas Colebrooke (June 15, 1765 - March 18, 1837) was an English 

orientalist. 

Henry Thomas Colebrooke, third son of Sir George Colebrooke, a Second Baronet, 

was born in London. He was educated at home; and when only fifteen he had 

made considerable attainments in classics and mathematics. From the age of 

twelve to sixteen he resided in France, and in 1782 was appointed to a writership

in India. About a year after his arrival there he was placed in the board of accounts 

in Calcutta; and three years later he was removed to a situation in the revenue 

department at Tirhut. In 1789 he was removed to Purneah, where he investigated 

the resources of that part of the country, and published his Remarks on the 

Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal, privately printed in 1795, in which he 

advocated free trade between Great Britain and India. 

After eleven years' residence in India, Colebrooke began the study of the Sanskrit 

language; and to him was confided the translation of the great Digest of Hindu 

Laws, a monumental study of Hindu law which had been left unfinished by Sir 

William Jones. He translated the two treatises, the Mitacshara of Vijnaneshwara 

and the Dayabhaga of Jimutavahana, under the title Law of Inheritance. He was 

sent to Nagpur in 1799 on a special mission, and on his return was made a judge 

of the new court of appeal, over which he afterwards presided. 

In 1805 Lord Wellesley appointed him professor of Hindu law and Sanskrit at the 

college of Fort William. During his residence at Calcutta he wrote his Sanskrit 

Grammar (1805), some papers on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus, and his 

Essay on the Vedas (1805), for a long time the standard work in English on the 

subject. He became member of council in 1807 and returned to England seven 

years later. He was a director of the Royal Asiatic Society, and many of the most 

valuable papers in the society's Transactions were communicated by him. 

His life was written by his son, Sir T.E. Colebrooke, in 1873. 

Works 

99

67 Abbe Dubois, Jean Antoine 

(1765-1848) 

100 

• On the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus By Henry Thomas Colebrooke 

• Miscellaneous Essays By Henry Thomas Colebrooke 

went to India to convert the heathen returned discouraged that it was very difficult 

too accomplish 

Jean-Antoine Abbe Dubois 

French missionary in India, b. in 1765 at St. Remèze (Ardèche); d. in Paris, 17 Feb., 

1848. The Abbé Dubois was a director of the Seminary of the Foreign Missions, a 

member of the Royal Societies of Great Britain and Paris, and of the Literary 

Society of Madras. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he went to India to 

preach Christianity to the natives, whose favor he soon won by his affability and 

patience. For their instruction he composed elementary treatises on Christian 

doctrine which won general commendation. Though he remained thirty-two years 

in that arduous field, his labors were all fruitless and he returned convinced that 

the conversion of the Hindus with the deep-rooted prejudices of centuries was 

impossible under the existing conditions. This opinion which he broached in 

"Letters on the State of Christianity in India" etc. (London, 1823), was vigorously 

attacked in England. Two Anglican ministers, James Hough and H. Townley, 

published, respectively, "A Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois" etc. (London, 

1824) and "An Answer to the Abbé Dubois" (London, 1824). "The Friend of India", 

a journal of Calcutta (1825), contained a refutation of his letters, to which the abbe 

rejoined in a letter of much gravity and moderation. It found its way into the 

"Bulletin des Sciences", May, 1825, and the first volume of the "Asiatic Journal" 

(1841). Besides these letters he wrote: "Description of the Character, Manners and 

Customs of the People of India, and of their Institutions, religious and civil"

(London, 1816). This work was bought by the East India Company for twenty 

thousand francs and printed at their expense. The author published an enlarged 

edition in French under the title "Moeurs, institutions, et cérémonies des peuples 

de l'Inde" (Paris, 1825, 2 vols.), which is considered the best and most complete 

work on the subject. "Exposé de quelques-uns des principaux articles de la 

théologie des Brahmes" (Paris, 1825); "Le Pantcha-tantra ou les cinq ruses, fables 

du Brahme Vichnou-Sarma" (Paris, 1826). Abbé Dubois was one of the 

collaborators of the "Bulletin Universel des Sciences" of the Baron de Férussac 

Mantras of Anti-Brahminism 

QUOTE 

Secondly, regarding their secret books, Grant claimed that ‘[w]ith respect to the 

real tenets of the Hindus…they are to be taken from their ancient books…’ (cited in 

Mill 1817: 410 ff). However, when Rammohun Roy later translated the Upanishads 

a contemporary pundit charged him with having fabricated them himself (Hay 

1963: 46 ff). Moreover, on the subject of Bengal, Fitzedward Hall wrote in 1868 that 

‘[u]ntil very recently, the learned Bengali has long been satisfied, substantially, to 

do without the Veda’ (cited in Kejariwal 1988: 3). A strange state of affairs, 

suggesting that brahmanas didn’t really know what Europeans were talking about 

when they enquired about their sacred books. Even more, those who did seem to 

know about the texts didn’t seem to understand them. Regarding their secret 

language, Abbé Dubois, for example, had the following observation to make: 

It is true…that those who devote themselves to the study of these books (the 

Vedas) cannot hope to extract any instruction from them, for they are written in 

ancient Sanskrit, which has become almost wholly unintelligible; and such 

numberless mistakes have been introduced by copyists, either through 

carelessness or ignorance, that the most learned find themselves quite unable to 

interpret the original text. Out of 20,000 brahmanas I do not believe that one could 

be found who even partially understood the real Vedas [Dubois 1816: 173-74]. 

101

102 

What Dubois saw was not the exception but the rule. When talking of the prayers 

in the Vedas, Horace Hayman Wilson discovered that they were hardly studied at 

all. Besides, ‘when they are studied it is merely for the sake of repeating the 

words; the sense is regarded as a matter of no importance, and is not understood 

even by the Brahmana who recites or chants the expressions’ (1840: 49). 

There were other elements as well that did not fit the picture of a class of priests 

that controlled the laity through the corruption of original beliefs. Wilson, for 

example, felt it necessary to nuance Jones’ views as based on Manu’s text, stating 

that brahmanas were not ‘in great measure the ghostly advisers of the 

people…This office is now filled by various persons…Many of these are 

brahmanas, but they are not necessarily so, and it is not as Brahmanas that they 

receive the veneration of their lay followers…’ (1832: 311). 

However, when Indian intellectuals began to write their own story, they did not 

start from those experiences. Neither did they try to make them intelligible: India, 

as they saw it, had its own religion of priests and the hierarchy of caste system 

was due to priestly despotism. The implication of this account is the unconditional 

acceptance of Christianity’s theological conception of religion by Indian 

intellectuals. 

] 

IX

103

68 August Wilhelm Schlegel 

(1767-1845) one of two 

Schlegel brothers , the other 

was Freidrich von Schlegel 

(1772--1829) 

104 

Lecturer in Sanskrit , Bonn University 








Freidrich von Schlegel (1772--1829) was the first German to study Sanskrit and 

Indian religion and philosophy in depth.(Swami Ashokananda, The Influence of 

Indian Thought on the Thought of the West (Mayavati, Advaita Ashrama, 1931), p. 

20). His interest in India was greatly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita. Schlegel 

produced his eminent pioneering work, On the Language and Wisdom of the 

Indians: A Contribution to the Foundation of Antiquity (Über die Sprache und 

Weisheit der Indier), in 1808. it was the primary publication of nineteenth-century 

European Indology in the German language, acknowledged for its scholarly 

translations of extracts from the Sanskrit texts of the Bhagavad Gita and the 

Ramayana. His words in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier hailed the 

contribution of Vedanta, and were later brought to life by Max Müller in his lecture, 

"Origin of the Vedanta": 

It cannot be denied that the early Indians possessed a knowledge of the true God; 

all their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions, noble, clear, and 

severely grand; as deeply conceived and reverentially expressed as in any human 

language in which men have spoken of their God. . . The divine origin of man, as

taught in Vedanta, is continually inculcated, to stimulate his efforts to return, to 

animate him in the struggle, and incite him to consider a reunion and 

reincorporating with Divinity as the one primary object of every action and 

reaction. Even the highest form of European philosophy, the idealism of reason as 

it is set forth by the Greek philosophers, seems, when compared to the bounteous 

light and force of oriental idealism, to be no more than a feeble Promethean spark 

within the full celestial splendor of the noonday sun, a thin flickering spark always 

on the point of burning out. (Friedrich von Schlegel, Indian Language, Literature 

and Philosophy, p. 471). 

August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767--1845) hoped to inspire a new ethics and 

was the first to publish standard text editions with penetrating commentaries and 

translations in classical Latin of the Bhagavad Gita, Hitopadesha and the 

Ramayana. (Influence of Indian Thought, p. 20). Between 1820 and 1830 he 

published Indische Bibliothek, a collection of Indian texts. He is considered the 

founder of Sanskrit philology in Germany. His unrestrained praise for the 

Bhagavad Gita elicited this fervent remark: 

If the study of Sanskrit had brought nothing more than the satisfaction of being 

able to read this superb poem in the original, I would have been amply 

compensated for all my labours. It is a sublime reunion of poetic and philosophical 

genius. (Oriental Renaissance, p. 90. 

105

69 Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich 

Alexander Freiherr von 

Humboldt (help·info) 

(September 14, 1769, Berlin 

– May 6, 1859, Berlin) 

70 Friedrich Wilhelm Christian 

Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von 

Humboldt (June 22, 1767 – 

April 8, 1835), government 

functionary, diplomat, 

philosopher, founder of 

Humboldt Universität in 

106 

Wilhelm von Humboldt claimed that his familiarity with the Oupnek'hat 

[Upanishads], the Manusmriti, Burnouf's extracts from the Padmapurana and 

Colebrooke's essay, "On the Religion and Philosophy of the Indians," enabled him 

to comprehend the philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita. (Hiltrud Rüstao, "From 

Indology to Indian Studies: Some Considerations," Bulletin of the Ramakrishna 

Mission Institute of Culture, March 1998, p. 126. [Hereafter: "From Indology to 

Indian Studies"]) He wrote that "this episode of the Mahabharata is the most

Berlin, friend of Goethe and 

especially of Schiller, is 

especially remembered as a 

German linguist who 

introduced a knowledge of 

the Basque language to 

European intellectuals. 

beautiful, nay, perhaps even the only true philosophical poem which we can find in 

all the literatures known to us," (Quotation from Maurice Winternitz, A History of 

Indian Literature, Vol. 1, part 2, Second ed. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1963) 

p. 375, Citation from India's Contribution, p. 166) and ranked the Gita above the 

works of Lucretius, Parmenides and Empedocles." (India's Contribution, p. 166) 

After looking into the Gita, he wrote to his friend, statesman Frederick von Gentz 

in 1827: 

I read the Indian poem for the first time when I was in my country estate in Silesia 

and, while doing so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let 

me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and sublime 

thing to be found in the, world. (Citation from P. Nagaraja Rao, The Bhagavad Gita 

(The Quest for the Moral Ideal, Religious Values and the Affirmation of Faith), 

(Madras: -- The Author, 1986), p. 20.) 

Humboldt wanted to inform the world of the concept of God that he found and 

appreciated in the Bhagavad-Gita. With as much capacity to plumb the scripture's 

depths as could be cultivated at that time, he set himself to broadcast its 

teachings with an open mind. His lecture on the Bhagavad-Gita. at Berlin's Royal 

Academy of Sciences to Prussia's intellectual elite in 1825 (Art, Culture and 

Spirituality, p. 359) stirs the reader's mind to this day. It was published in 1826. He 

appeared again at the Academy one year later, this time with his analysis of the 

Gita's Advaitic structure founded on Samkhya philosophy, and summarized the 

Gita's discourses and poetic value in great detail. (From Indology to Indian 

Studies, pp. 126-127) 




107

71 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 

Hegel (August 27, 1770 – 

November 14, 1831) 

108 





was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, 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 Küng, 

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 selfawareness 

(see master-slave dialectic). 

We are primarily concrned 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.

72 

73 James Mill (1773-1836). 

(father of the philosopher 

John Stuart Mill) 

Completed The History of British India in 1817. Had an extremely jaundiced view 

of Indic traditions. 

The eminent British historian James Mill who had published his voluminous 

History of British India in 1818 heavily criticized Jones. Although Mill spoke no 

Indian languages, had never studied Sanskrit, and had never been to India, his 

damning indictment of Indian culture and religion had become a standard work for 

all Britishers who would serve in India. Mill vehemently believed that India had 

never had a glorious past and treated this as an historical fantasy. To him, Indian 

religion meant, ‘The worship of the emblems of generative organs’ and ascribing 

to God, ‘…an immense train of obscene acts.’ Suffice to say that he disagreed 

violently with Jones for his ‘Hypothesis of a high state of civilization.’ Mill’s 

History of British India was greatly influenced by the famous French missionary 

Abbe Dubois’s book Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies. This work, which 

still enjoys a considerable amount of popularity to this day, contains one chapter 

on Hindu temples, wherein the Abbe writes: 

"Hindu imagination is such that it cannot be excited except by what is 

monstrous and extravagant." 

109

74 Montstuart 

Elphinstone 

110 

Born: October 6, 1779, 

Dumbarton, 

Dumbartonshire, 

Scotland. 

Died: November 20, 

1859, Surrey, England. 

James Mill is one of the key British indologists who deserves the credit for the 

low esteem that the indic civilization Is held in today. It is also legitimate to 

question the shoddiness of British scholarship during that era, that such a 

blatantly racist view was tolerated and even encouraged by the elite of Britain 

Montstuart Elphinstone was born on October 6, 1779, in Dumbarton, 

Dumbartonshire. He entered the Civil Service with the East India Company at 

Calcutta in 1795. In 1801, he escaped massacre in Benaras by the followers of 

the deposed Wajid Ali Shah. He transferred to the Diplomatic Service in 1801 

and was posted to the court of Peshwa Baji Rao II, became resident at Nagpur 

in 1804, was sent to the Maratha court at Gwalior in 1807, concluded 

negotiations with Shah Shuja of Afghanistan about Napoleon's planned 

advance on India in 1808, and was sent back to the court in Pune in 1811. He 

was responsible for the defeat of the Peshwa at the Battle of Kirki in November 

1817. 

He became the Commissioner of the Deccan in 1818 and was the Governor of 

Bombay between 1819 and 1827. He was reputed to be an enlightened man 

for his times. Elphinstone returned his kingdom to the Raja of Satara, and their 

lands to many landowners and temples. He was responsible for the beginning 

of higher education in Bombay at a time when the opinion in Britain was 

against educating the "native". Elphinstone College in Bombay was named 

after him. 

He returned to Europe in 1827, and twice refused the Governor Generalship of 

India, preferring to finish his two-volume work, "History of India" (1841). He 

died in Surrey on November 20, 1859. What is relevant ot Indology is that 

Montstuart Elphinstone was highly skeptical of the later dating of the sacred

75 Horace Hayman Wilson 

(1786-1860) 

books which was increasingly being propounded in Europe, and expressed his 

confidence that Indic culture was essentially a continuous one from a period of 

great antiquity. He was of the opinion that the Indic civilization was to be 

regarded as a great civilization. Unfortunately his history of India did not 

receive as great a publicity as that of Mill, whichh was clearly a racist account 

by today’s standards 

First Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford U.wrote extensively on the Puranas. 

Has been described as ‘the greatest Sanskrit scholar of his time’. He received his 

education in London and traveled to India in the East India Companies medical 

service. He became the secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1811 to 

1833 and published a Sanskrit to English dictionary. He became Boden professor 

of Sanskrit at Oxford in 1833 and the director of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1837. 

He translated the Visnu Purana, Rg Veda and wrote books such as Lectures on the 

Religious and Philosophical Systems of the Hindus. He edited a number of 

translations of eastern texts and helped Mill compile his History of India, although 

later Wilson criticized Mill’s historiography, stating 

“Mill’s view of Hindu religion is full of very serious defects, arising from inveterate 

prejudices and imperfect knowledge. Every text, every circumstance, that makes 

against the Hindu character, is most assiduously cited, and everything in its favor 

as carefully kept out of sight, whilst a total neglect is displayed of the history of 

Hindu belief.”7 

111

112 

Wilson seemed somewhat of an enigma; on the one hand he proposed that Britain 

should restrain herself from forcing Christianity upon the Indians and forcing them 

to reject their old traditions. Yet in the same breath he exclaimed: 

“From the survey which has been submitted to you, you will perceive that the 

practical religion of the Hindus is by no means a concentrated and compact 

system, but a heterogeneous compound made up of various and not infrequently 

incompatible ingredients, and that to a few ancient fragments it has made large 

and unauthorized additions, most of which are of an exceedingly mischievous and 

disgraceful nature. It is, however, of little avail yet to attempt to undeceive the 

multitude; their superstition is based upon ignorance, and until the foundation is 

taken away, the superstructure, however crazy and rotten, will hold together. 

Wilson’s view was that Christianity should replace the Vedic culture, and he 

believed that full knowledge of Indian traditions would help effect that conversion. 

Aware that the Indians would be reluctant to give up their culture and religion, 

Wilson made the following remark: 

“The whole tendency of brahminical education is to enforce dependence upon 

authority – in the first instance upon the guru, the next upon the books. A learned 

brahmana trusts solely to his learning; he never ventures upon independent 

thought; he appeals to memory; he quotes texts without measure and in 

unquestioning trust. It will be difficult to persuade him that the Vedas are human 

and very ordinary writings, that the puranas are modern and unauthentic, or even 

that the tantras are not entitled to respect. As long as he opposes authority to 

reason, and stifles the workings of conviction by the dicta of a reputed sage, little 

impression can be made upon his understanding. Certain it is, therefore, that he 

will have recourse to his authorities, and it is therefore important to show that his

76 Arthur Schopenhauer 

(February 22, 1788 – 

September 21, 1860), 

German philosopher 

authorities are worthless.” 

Wilson felt hopeful that by inspired, diligent effort the “specious” system of Vedic 

thought would be “shown to be fallacious and false by the Ithuriel spear of 

Christian truth. He also was ready to award a prize of two hundred pounds “…for 

the best refutation of the Hindu religious system.” Wilson also wrote a detailed 

method for exploiting the native Vedic psychology by use of a bogus guru-disciple 

relationship. 

Recently Wilson has been accused of invalid scholarship. Natalie P.R. Sirkin has 

presented documented evidence, which shows that Wilson was a plagiarist. Most 

of his most important works were collected manuscripts of deceased an author 

that he published under his own names, as well as works done without research. 

Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in Stutthof (Sztutowo), in the Kingdom of 

Prussia. [1] He was the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and Johanna 

Schopenhauer, who were both descendants of wealthy German middle class 

mercantile families from Danzig, Royal Prussia, (now Gdańsk, Poland). [1] 

Schopenhauer's father had strong feelings against any kind of nationalism. 

Indeed, the name "Arthur" was selected by his father especially because it was the 

same in English, German, and French. [1] 

His parents were both from the city, and Johanna was an author as well. After 

Danzig was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the Second Partition of 

Poland, in 1793, the Schopenhauer family moved to Hamburg. [1] 

In 1805, 

Schopenhauer's father died (some speculate he committed suicide), and Johanna 

moved to Weimar. Because of a promise to pursue a business career, 

Schopenhauer remained in Hamburg. His disgust with this career, however, drove 

him away to join his mother in Weimar after only a year. He never got along with 

his mother; when the writer Goethe, who was a friend of Johanna Schopenhauer, 

113

77 Charles Whish (1790 ? – 

1870 ?) 

114 

told her that he thought her son was destined for great things, Johanna objected: 

she had never heard there could be two geniuses in a single family. 

Schopenhauer studied at the University of Göttingen. There he studied 

metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, who advised him to 

concentrate exclusively on Plato and Kant. He was awarded a PhD from the 

University of Jena in absentia. In 1820, Schopenhauer became a lecturer at the 

University of Berlin; it was there that his opposition to G. W. F. Hegel began. He 

attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher J. G. Fichte and the 

theologian Schleiermacher, though Schopenhauer would start to react to the 

extreme idealism of Fichte. Schopenhauer daringly scheduled his own lectures at 

exactly the same time as his nemesis Hegel, in the hope of attracting students to 

come to his own lectures instead of Hegel. However, no students turned up to 

Schopenhauer's course of lectures, and subsequently he left, never to teach at a 

university again. An essay expressing his resentment towards this and his 

negative attitude towards university philosophy was later written with the title On 

University Philosophy. In 1831, a cholera epidemic broke out in Berlin and both 

Hegel and Schopenhauer fled; but Hegel returned prematurely, caught the 

infection, and died a few days later. Schopenhauer instead moved south, settling 

permanently in Frankfurt in 1833, where he remained for the next twenty-seven 

years, living alone with a succession of pet poodles named Atma and Butz. 

In 1835, Charles M Whish published in Vol.3 (pp 509 – 23) of the Transactions of 

the Royal society of Great Britain and Ireland an article with the title “ On the 

Hindu Quadrature of the circle…. Whish was an officer of the east india 

Company Civil Service in Madras> He refers in hs article to 4 works, the Tantra 

sangraaham, Yukti has, Kasrana Paddhat, and the Sadratna Mala. At that time 

they did not make an impact for almost a century when C Rajagopal and his

associates began publishing their findings from astudy of their manuscripts. 

The contributions of medieval Indian mathematicians are now beginning to be 

recognized and discussed by authorities in the field of history of mathematics. 

According to Charles Whish , the Kerala mathematicians had "laid the foundation 

for a complete system of fluxions" and these works were "abound with fluxional 

forms and series to be found in no work of foreign countries." 

The original article by Charles Whish is reproduced in “A Modern introduction to 

ancient Indian Mathematics “ by IS Bhanu Murthy in the appendix of the book 

Astronomy 

• A procedure to determine the positions of the Moon every 36 minutes. 

• Methods to estimate the motions of the planets. 

• The correct formulation for the equation of the center of the planets. 

• A true heliocentric model of the solar system. 

Linguistics 

The Kerala School also contributed much to linguistics: 

• The ayurvedic and poetic traditions of Kerala were founded by this school. 

• The famous poem, Narayaneeyam, was composed by Narayana Bhattathiri. 

115

78 Franz Bopp (1791-1867) Did detailed research leading to postulation of Proto Indo European (PIE)…Was 

Max Mullers teacher Pl. .read Max Mullers remarks on the extreme prejudice 

towards treating Sanskrit as another Indo-European Language 

79 J F Montucla (1798) J. F. Montucla (1798): “The ingenious number-system, which serves as the basis 

for modern arithmetic, was used by the Arabs long before it reached Europe. It 

would be a mistake, however, to believe that this invention is Arabic. There is a 

great deal of evidence, much of it provided by the Arabs themselves that this 

80 James Prinsep 

(1799-1840), Architect and 

orientalist 

116 

arithmetic originated in India .” [Montucla, I, p. 375J 

James Prinsep 

James Prinsep (20 August 1799 - 22 April 1840) was an Anglo-Indian scholar and 

antiquary. In 1819 he was given an appointment in the Calcutta mint, where he 

ultimately became assay-master in 1832, succeeding H. H. Wilson, whom he 

likewise succeeded as secretary of the Asiatic Society. 

During James Prinsep's years in the mint he reformed weights and measures, 

introduced a uniform coinage and devised a balance so delicate as to indicate the 

three-thousandth part of a grain. Prinsep was indeed a many-sided genius. He was 

an excellent architect as well. While at Banaras he completed the mint building 

according to his own plan and also built a church. He was on the committee for 

municipal improvements and improved the drainage system of the city by 

constructing a tunnel. 

Apart from architectural work (chiefly at Benares), his leisure was devoted to 

Indian inscriptions and numismatics, and he is remembered as the first to 

decipher and translate the rock edicts of Asoka from Brahmi. Returning to 

England in 1838 in broken health, he died in London in 1840. 

He succeeded to the Secretaryship of the Asiatic Society on H. H. Wilson's return

to England and started his own journal in 1832: The Journal of the Asiatic Society 

of Bengal. Prinsep at once appealed to all those officers who had 'opportunities of 

forming collections in the upper provinces' for more coins and inscriptions. He 

was endowed with the rare capacity of instilling some of his own enthusiasm and 

ardour into others. Prinsep's appeal was enormously successful. He was in no 

time flooded with coins and inscriptions - materials which changed the very trend 

of the Indian antiquarian researches. 

Appropriately for the assay-master of the Calcutta mint, coins always remained 

Prinsep's first interest. He interpreted Bactrian and Kusana coins. Also all the 

indigenous Indian series, including the punch-marked ones — indeed the term 

was coined by Prinsep himself — the series of the autonomous republics, the 

Gupta series and so on. It was Prinsep who propounded the theory of the descent 

of the Gupta coins from the Kusana prototypes and this discussion also brought 

him to the question of the different stages in the technique of coin manufacture in 

India. He recognized the three stages represented by the punch-marked, the diestruck 

and the cast coins. 

But the crowning achievement of all his labors over the decade was the 

decipherment of the Brahmi script in 1837 and the consequent clearing up of 

many of the mysteries of ancient Indian history. This is described in great detail in 

Chapter II of Vol I of the History and Cultureof the Indian People (HCIP) , the 

general editor of which is RC Majumdar himself. The script is shown in Appendix 

A 

Thus more than forty years after 1788, Sir William Jones's hope was realised when 

Prinsep was able to produce the key to unlock all the remaining secrets of the 

Brahmi script. However, it is only fair to remember that much of the Brahmi script 

had already been deciphered before the final achievement of Prinsep. Furthermore 

117

118 

it is difficult to conceive of a situation where the Brahmi script was unknown to the 

small but ever present group of Indian pandits (scholars) who had studied such 

matters before his arrival on the scene in India. Prinsep followed clues provided 

by others regarding the decipherment of Kharosthi and after some mistaken 

readings he was finally able, before his departure, to find the values of nineteen 

single letters and one compound of Kharosthi as well. It may also be mentioned 

that the idea of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum also goes back to the time of 

Prinsep and to his idea. 

Prinsep literally worked himself to death. Desperately ill as he became, he had to 

leave unexpectedly in the midst of his labors and hence much of his work 

remained unfinished. As the new editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

Bengal commented: '... collectors in all parts of India were in the habit of 

submitting to his inspection whatever they lighted upon as unusual, and sought 

his reading and interpretation - but the study and exertions required were too 

severe for the climate of India, and the Editor's robust constitution sank at last 

under the incessant labour...' Yet before taking leave he had managed to set forth 

the main lines of Indian archaeological research for at least the next fifty years. 

Prinsep's Ghat, an archway on the bank of the Hooghly River, was erected to his 

memory by the citizens of Calcutta. 

References 



• Biography of Prinsep,James in Banglapedia published by the Asiatic

Society of Bangladesh. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not 

have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer) 

James Prinsep 

James Prinsep (20 August 1799 - 22 April 1840) was an Anglo-Indian scholar and 

antiquary. In 1819 he was given an appointment in the Calcutta mint, where he 

ultimately became assay-master in 1832, succeeding H. H. Wilson, whom he 

likewise succeeded as secretary of the Asiatic Society. 

During James Prinsep's years in the mint he reformed weights and measures, 

introduced a uniform coinage and devised a balance so delicate as to indicate the 

three-thousandth part of a grain. Prinsep was indeed a many-sided genius. He was 

an excellent architect as well. While at Banaras he completed the mint building 

according to his own plan and also built a church. He was on the committee for 

municipal improvements and improved the drainage system of the city by 

constructing a tunnel. 

Apart from architectural work (chiefly at Benares), his leisure was devoted to 

119

120 

Indian inscriptions and numismatics, and he is remembered as the first to 

decipher and translate the rock edicts of Asoka from Brahmi. Returning to 

England in 1838 in broken health, he died in London in 1840. 

He succeeded to the Secretaryship of the Asiatic Society on H. H. Wilson's return 

to England and started his own journal in 1832: The Journal of the Asiatic Society 

of Bengal. Prinsep at once appealed to all those officers who had 'opportunities of 

forming collections in the upper provinces' for more coins and inscriptions. He 

was endowed with the rare capacity of instilling some of his own enthusiasm and 

ardour into others. Prinsep's appeal was enormously successful. He was in no 

time flooded with coins and inscriptions - materials which changed the very trend 

of the Indian antiquarian researches. 

Appropriately for the assay-master of the Calcutta mint, coins always remained 

Prinsep's first interest. He interpreted Bactrian and Kusana coins. Also all the 

indigenous Indian series, including the punch-marked ones — indeed the term 

was coined by Prinsep himself — the series of the autonomous republics, the 

Gupta series and so on. It was Prinsep who propounded the theory of the descent 

of the Gupta coins from the Kusana prototypes and this discussion also brought 

him to the question of the different stages in the technique of coin manufacture in 

India. He recognized the three stages represented by the punch-marked, the diestruck 

and the cast coins. 

But the crowning achievement of all his labors over the decade was the 

decipherment of the Brahmi script in 1837 and the consequent clearing up of 

many of the mysteries of ancient Indian history. This is described in great detail in 

Chapter II of Vol I of the History and Cultureof the Indian People (HCIP) , the 

general editor of which is RC Majumdar himself. The script is shown in Appendix 

A

Thus more than forty years after 1788, Sir William Jones's hope was realised when 

Prinsep was able to produce the key to unlock all the remaining secrets of the 

Brahmi script. However, it is only fair to remember that much of the Brahmi script 

had already been deciphered before the final achievement of Prinsep. Furthermore 

it is difficult to conceive of a situation where the Brahmi script was unknown to the 

small but ever present group of Indian pandits (scholars) who had studied such 

matters before his arrival on the scene in India. Prinsep followed clues provided 

by others regarding the decipherment of Kharosthi and after some mistaken 

readings he was finally able, before his departure, to find the values of nineteen 

single letters and one compound of Kharosthi as well. It may also be mentioned 

that the idea of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum also goes back to the time of 

Prinsep and to his idea. 

Prinsep literally worked himself to death. Desperately ill as he became, he had to 

leave unexpectedly in the midst of his labors and hence much of his work 

remained unfinished. As the new editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

Bengal commented: '... collectors in all parts of India were in the habit of 

submitting to his inspection whatever they lighted upon as unusual, and sought 

his reading and interpretation - but the study and exertions required were too 

severe for the climate of India, and the Editor's robust constitution sank at last 

under the incessant labour...' Yet before taking leave he had managed to set forth 

the main lines of Indian archaeological research for at least the next fifty years. 

Prinsep's Ghat, an archway on the bank of the Hooghly River, was erected to his 

memory by the citizens of Calcutta. 

References 

121

122 



• Biography of Prinsep,James in Banglapedia published by the Asiatic 

Society of Bangladesh. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not 

have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer) 

The Brahmi Script 

The alphabet

123

81 Thomas Babington 

Macaulay (1800-1859) 

82 Eugene Burnouf 

124 

born Aug. 12, 1801, Paris, 

France 

died May 28, 1852, Paris 

decreed English to be the medium of instruction, drafted the Indian Penal 

Code.architect of plan to create a new breed of Indian. It is a testament to the 

farsightedness of the British, that Macaulay has in large measure succeeded in 

his stated mission 

French Orientalist who acquainted Europe with the religious tenets and Old Iranian 

language of the Avesta, the ancient sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism. 

Burnouf's father, Jean-Louis Burnouf (1775–1844), was a noted classical 

scholar who translated the works of Tacitus and other ancients. The young 

Burnouf studied at the School of Chartres, the… 

Eugène Burnouf (April 8, 1801–May 28, 1852) was a French orientalist. 

He was born in Paris. His father, Professor Jean Louis Burnouf (1775-1844), was a 

classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of an 

excellent translation of Tacitus (6 vols., 1827-1833). Eugène Burnouf published in 

1826 an Essai sur le Pali ..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in 

the following year Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'essai 

sur le Pali. 

The next great work he undertook was the deciphering of the Zend manuscripts 

brought to France by Anquetil-Duperron. By his labours a knowledge of the Zend 

language was first brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused the 

Vendidad Sade, part of one of the books bearing the name of Zoroaster, to be 

lithographed with the utmost care from the Zend manuscript in the Bibliothèque 

Nationale, and published it in folio parts, 1829-1843. 

From 1833 to 1835 he published his Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres 

liturgiques des Parses; he also published the Sanskrit text and French translation 

of the Bhagavata Purana ou histoire poétique de Krichna in three folio volumes

83 Jean Baptiste Biot, (1803- 

1860) 

(1840-1847). His last works were Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien 

(1844), and a translation of Le lotus de la bonne loi (The Lotus Sutra, 1852). He had 

been for twenty years a member of the Academie des Inscriptions and professor of 

Sanskrit in the Collège de France. 

See a notice of Burnouf's works by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, prefixed to the 

second edition (1876) of the Introd. à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien; also 

Naudet, Notice historique sur MM. Burnouf, père et fils, in Mém. de l'Acad. des 

Inscriptions, xx. A list of his valuable contributions to the Journal asiatique and of 

his manuscript writings, is given in the appendix to the Choix de lettres d'Eugène 

Burnouf (1891). 

References 



Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Burnouf" 

Categories: Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia 

Britannica | 1801 births | 1852 deaths | French Indologists | French orientalists | 

Pāli 

Etudes sur lastronomie indienne et sur lastronomie chinoise microform / par 

J.B. Biot. 

Dhruv Raina, 'Jean-Baptiste Biot on the History of Indian Astronomy (1830- 

1860): The Nation in the Post-Enlightenment Historiography of Science', 

125

126 

appearing in Indian Journal of History of Science , 35, 4 2000, 319-346. 

84 Colonel Boden in 1811 endowed the Boden Chair of Sanskrit Studies in 1811 with the purpose of 

debunking the Vedas. 

An interesting personality who championed the cause of Oriental Studies, with 

profound 

implications for the future of India was a Lt. Col. Boden of the Bombay Native 

Infantry who bequeathed his estates of about 25,000 Pounds to the University of 

Oxford to enable them to found a Chair of Sanskrit which the University named 

after him. In his will dated August 15, 1811, Boden stated most explicitly that the 

special object of his munificent bequest was to promote the translation of the 

scriptures into Sanskrit, so as "to enable his countrymen to proceed in the 

conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion" (Preface to Sanskrit- 

English Dictionary by Sir Monier-Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, 1899, 

p.ix). It would not be out of place to state that Sir Monier-Williams mentions in this 

Preface, "he (Monier-Williams) has made it the chief aim of his professional life to 

provide facilities for the translation of our sacred scriptures into Sanskrit". It may 

be mentioned that Prof. H.H. Wilson, the eminent Sanskritist and first occupant of 

the Boden Chair, wrote a book, "The Religion and Philosophical Systems of the 

Hindus." Explaining the reasons for undertaking this work, he said,” These 

lectures were written to help candidates for a prize...for a best refutation of the 

Hindu Religious System." To think that the man who wrote these words held one 

of the most prestigious professorships at Oxford! Monier Monier-Williams, the 

second holder of the Boden chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University and whose 

Sanskrit-English dictionary is still used, wrote in its preface that "the Boden chair 

of Sanskrit was set up by Colonel Boden to promote the translation of Christian 

Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the 

conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion." He told the Missionary

85 Major General Sir Alexander 

Cunningham 

(23 January 1814–28 

November 1893) 

Congress held at Oxford on 2 May 1877, "The chief obstacle to the spread of 

Christianity in India is that these people are proud of their tradition and religion." 

His dictionary, he hoped, would enable the translation of the Bible into Sanskrit 

and "when the walls, of the mighty fortress of Brahmanism are encircled, 

undermined, and finally stormed by the soldiers of the Cross, the victory of 

Christianity must be signal and complete." 

One can begin to see why under this constant barrage of anti-Brahmanism by the 

colonial overlord for almost 2 centuries, that many Indics have internalized this 

fear and loathing of Brahmanas to such a degree, leading to such grotesque 

legislative remedies as the Draconian anti Brahmana quota based affirmative 

action programs which are now in place in the country. It becomes increasingly 

clear why even conservative groups in countries such as America support such 

programs even though they would oppose them vociferously in their own country. 

So much for ideological consistency 

2.8 Discovery of Saraswathi Sindhu civilization 

Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814–28 November 1893) was an English 

archaeologist and army engineer, known as the father of the Archaeological 

Survey of India. He was born into a family of distinguished Scottish aristocrats. 

His significant accomplishments and views 

In 1834, excavated the stupa at Sarnath. 

In 1867, he set up the Archaeological Survey of India as a small organisation. He 

located many ancient sites such as Kausambhi, a Buddhist centre and discovered 

the Asoka pillar at Kausambhi, the Buddhist site of Takshashila and a large 

127

128 

number of Buddhist monuments in northern and central India. 

Born in London to the Scottish poet Allan Cunningham, he joined the Bengal 

Engineers at the age of 19 and spent the next 28 years in the service of British 

Government of India. Soon after arriving in India, a meeting with James Prinsep 

sparked his lifelong interest in Indian archaeology and antiquity. Cunningham 

retired in 1861, having attained the rank of Major General. 

The Archaeological Survey of India was set up following a correspondence 

between Cunningham and Charles John Canning, then the viceroy of India. 

Cunningham was appointed the first director of the project, which operated from 

1861 to 1865. In 1865 the Archaeological Survey was halted. In the year 1867, 

Cunningham was knighted. Upon the resumption of the Archaeological Survey in 

1870, he returned to the directorship, maintaining his post until 1885. 

Cunningham died in London in 1893; today, his collection of rare Indian coins is 

displayed in the British Museum. 

Cunningham was associated with the excavation of many sites in India, including 

Sarnath, Sanchi, and the Mahabodhi Temple. 

The Mahabodhi Temple is located in Bodh Gaya, India. [1] The Mahabodhi Temple 

was almost completely destroyed by the invading muslim forces. [2] General Ikhtiar 

Uddin Muhammad Bin Bakhtiyar Khilji invaded Magadha and destroyed the great 

Buddhist shrines at Nalanda. [3] The Buddhism of Magadha suffered a tremendous 

decline under Khilji. [4] 

Cunningham's work of restoring the Mahabodhi Temple was completed by the

86 Edward Elbridge Salisbury 

(1814-1901) 

pioneer of Buddhist revival in India, Anagarika Dharmapala. 

Cunningham believed that writing had been known in India since the earliest 

times, and that the earliest alphabet was pictographic. He suggested that the 

Brahmi script was derived from a the early pictographic writing.The theory is 

evidently capable fo being extended to numerical signs. Cunninghams bold 

hypothesis regarding th antiquity of wrriting in India has been more than justified 

by the later discoveries of the quasipictographic writing found in the seals of the 

Indus Valley 

Books written by him include 

• Bhilsa Topes (1854), a history of Buddhism 

• The Ancient Geography of India (1871) 

• The Book of Indian Eras (1883) 

• Coins of Ancient India (1891) 


• Sir Alexander Cunningham at Banglapedia 

References 

The American Oriental Society, founded in 1842 though the study of Sanskrit itself, 

did not start in American universities until some years later. The first American 

Sanskrit scholar of any repute was Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901) who 

taught at Yale (Elihu Yale was himself ultimately connected with India and had 

profound respect for Vedic philosophy). Another early Sanskritist, Fitz Edward Hall 

129

87 

130 

(1825-1901) was in the Harvard class of 1846 but left college to search for a 

runaway brother in-of all places-India, where he continued his studies of Indian 

languages and even became tutor and professor of Sanskrit at Banaras. He was 

the first American scholar to edit a Sanskrit text-the Vishnu Purana. 

One of Salisbury's students at Yale, William Dwight Whitney (1827-1901) went on 

to become a distinguished Sanskritist in his own right having studied in Berlin 

under such distinguished German scholars as Bopp and Weber. Whitney became 

a full professor of Sanskrit language and literature at Yale in 1854, wrote his 

classic Sanskrit Grammar (1879) and was the doyen of Indologists of his period. 

Whitney was succeeded in the Chair of Sanskrit Studies of Yale by Edward 

Washburn Hopkins (1857-1932). Hopkins was an excellent scholar but made his 

name principally as an exponent of India's religions. His book The Religions of 

India (1895) was for many years one of the principal works on the subject available 

in America and his Origins and Evolution of Religion published in 1923, sold well. 

With Yale leading the way, Harvard caught up and beginning with James 

Bradstreet Greenough (1833-1900), had a succession of great Sanskrit teachers, 

the most distinguished among them was Charles Rockwell Lanman who taught for 

over forty years, publishing such works as Sanskrit Reader and Beginnings of 

Hindu Pantheism. But his greatest contribution was planning and editing of the 

Harvard Oriental Series. In his time he was responsible for influencing such 

students of his who were later to achieve literary renown as T. S. Eliot, Paul Elmer 

More and Irving Babbitt. The tradition of American Indologists has been nobly kept 

up by those who followed: to mention only a few names, A.V. William Jackson, 

Franklin Edgerton, W. Norman Brown, and Joseph Campbell.

88 Otto von Bohtlingk, 

(May 30, 1815 - April 1, 1904) 


Otto von Böhtlingk was a German Indologist and Sanskrit scholar, born in Saint 

Petersburg, Russia. 

Having studied Oriental languages, particularly Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, at 

the university of St. Petersburg, he continued his studies in Germany, first in 

Berlin and then (1839-1842) in Bonn. Returning to St Petersburg in 1842, he was 

attached to the Royal Academy of Sciences, and was elected an ordinary member 

of that society in 1855. In 1860 he was made Russian state councillor, and later 

privy councillor with a title of nobility. In 1868 he settled at Jena, and in 1885 

removed to Leipzig, where he resided until his death there. 

Bohtlingk was one of the most distinguished scholars of the nineteenth century, 

and his works are of pre-eminent value in the field of Indian and comparative 

philology. His first great work was an edition of Panini's Grammatik 

Aṣhṭaadhyaayi, with a German commentary. (Bonn, 1839-1840). 

This book Bohtlingk again took up forty-seven years later, when he republished it 

with a complete translation under the title Panini's Grammatik mit Übersetzung 

(Leipzig, 1887). The earlier edition was followed by: 

• Vopadevas Grammatik (St Petersburg, 1847) 

• Über die Sprache der Jakuten (St Petersburg, 1851) 

• Indische Sprache (2nd ed. in 3 parts, St Petersburg, 1870-1873, to which an 

index was published by Blau, Leipzig, 1893) 

• a critical examination and translation of Chandogya-upanishad (St 

Petersburg, 1889) 

131

132 

• a translation of Brihad-Aranyaka-upanishad (St. Petersburg, 1889) 

In addition to these he published several smaller treatises, notably one on Vedic 

accent, Über den Accent im Sanskrit (1843). 

But his magnum opus is his great Sanskrit dictionary, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch (7 

vols., St Petersburg, 1853-1875; new ed. 7 vols, St Petersburg, 1879-1889), which 

with the assistance of his two friends, Rudolf Roth (d. 1895) and Albrecht Weber 

(b. 1825), was completed in twenty-three years. 

Bibliography 

• with Rudolph Roth, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch St. Petersburg 1855-1875. 

• Sanskrit-Wörterbuch In kürzerer Fassung 1879-1889, repring Buske Verlag, 

1998, 2003, ISBN 3-87548-199-2 

• Panini's Grammatik 1887, reprint 1998 ISBN 3-87548-198-4 

• Indische Sprüche 3 volumes, St. Petersburg, Akad. d. Wissenschaften, 1863- 

65. 

• Sanskrit-Chrestomathie reprint 1967, ISBN B0000BUGAE 

http://www.salagram.net/WesternIndologists-page.htm 

“WEBER AND GOLDSTUCKER: Weber and Boehtlingk prepared a dictionary of the 

Sanskrit language called the 'Sanskrit Worterbuch. Prof. Kuhn was also one of 

their assistants. Being mainly based on the wrong and imaginary principles of 

philology, the work is full of wrong meanings in many places and is, therefore, 

unreliable and misleading. It is a pity that so much labour was wasted on account

of sheer prejudice. Th dictionary was subject of severe criticism by Prof. 

Goldstuker which annoyed the two editors. Weber was so much upset that he 

stooped to use abusive language of the coarsest kind against Prof. Goldstucker. 

He said that the views of Prof. Goldstucker about the Worterbuch showed 'a 

perfect derangement of his mental faculties', since he did not reject the authority 

of the greatest Hindu scholars freely and easily. Replying to their undignified 

attacks Prof. Goldstucker exposed the conspiracy of Professors Roth, Boehtlingk, 

Weber and Kahn which they had formed to undermine the greatness of ancient 

Bharatvarsha. He wrote: 

'It will, of course, be my duty to show, at the earliest opportunity, that Dr. 

Boehtlingk is incapable of understanding even easy rules of Panini, much less 

those of Katyayana and still less is he capable of making use of them in the 

understanding of Classical texts. The errors in his department of the Dictionary 

are so numerous........ that it will fill every serious Sanskritist with dismay, when he 

calculates the mischievous influence which they must exercise on the study of 

Sanskrit philology'. 

He further remarks: '....that questions which ought to have been decided with the 

very utmost circumspection and which could not be decided without very 

laborious research have been trifled with in the Worterbuch in the most 

unwarranted manner.' 

Goldstucker was called upon by one of Boehtlingk's men not only to have respect 

for 'the editor of Panini.....'(i.e. Boehtlingk) but even for the hidden reasons for 

foisting on the public his blunders of ever kind. 

We know that there were no other 'hidden reasons' than their Christian bias which 

impelled them to suppress the correct information of the Hindu grammarians and 

underrate and vilify Aryan civilization and culture, and at the same time to serve as 

133

134 

tools of the British Government towards the same end. 

Professor Kuhn, who 'gave his opinion on the Worterbuch' was 'an individual 

whose sole connection with Sanskrit studies consisted in handling Sanskrit books 

to those who could read them, a litery naught, wholly unknown, but assuming the 

airs of a quantity, because it had figures before it that prompted it on, a personage 

who, according to his own friends, was perfectly ignorant of Sanskrit'. 

Provoked by the unwarranted flouting of the authentic Hindu tradition, Professor 

Goldstucker was compelled to raise his 'feeble but solitary voice' against the 

coterie of mischievous propagandists masquerading under the garb of 'scientific' 

scholars. He concludes his laborious work with the following significant remarks: 

'When I see that the most distinguished and most learned Hindu scholars and 

divines - the most valuable and sometimes the only source of all our knowledge of 

ancient India - are scorned in theory, mutilated in print, and, as consequence, set 

aside in the interpretation of Vaidik texts; .......when a clique of Sanskritists of this 

description vapors about giving us the sense of the Veda as it existed at the 

commencement of Hindu antiquity; ......when I consider that those whose words 

apparently derive weight and influence from the professional position they hold; 

........then I hold that it would be a want of courage and a dereliction of duty, if I did 

not make a stand against these Saturnalia of Sanskrit Philology.” 

89 Robert Caldwell (1815-1891) Collected Sanskrit manuscripts, a British missionary 

90 Karl Marx, It is not well known except perhaps in India and in scholarly circles, that Karl Marx 

had a keen interest in India and wrote extensively (partly to pay his bills) on the 

economics, politics and history of India.. Notwthstanding his immense intellectual

Born May 5, 1818 

Died March 17 1883 

powers, his iconoclastic pedigree and perceptive capabilities, Marx remains a 

prisoner of his own prejudices and exhibits the ‘loin cloth syndrome ‘ of his fellow 

Indologists in great abundance when writing about India . What, pray is the loin 

cloth syndrome. It is the propensity of western observers of the Indian scene to 

make superficial judgements based on the most visible characteristics of the 

Hindu 

135

91 Sir Monier Monier-Williams 

(1819-1899) 

136 

Second Boden Professor of Sanskrit. Published one of the most famous dictionaries 

in the world, namely the Sanskrit English dictionary , which is widely used 

throughout the world and not surprisingly in India . 

Sir Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1899) studied, documented and taught Asian 

languages in England, and compiled one of the most widely-used Sanskrit-English 

dictionaries. 

Monier-Williams was the son of Colonel Monier Williams, surveyor-general in the 

Bombay presidency, and was born at Bombay on 12 November 1819. He was 

educated at University College, Oxford from 1837 and taught Asian languages at the 

East India Company College from 1844 until 1858, when company rule in India ended 

after the mutiny. 

Monier-Williams was the second occupant of the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford 

University, following Horace Hayman Wilson, who had started the University's 

collection of Sanskrit manuscripts upon taking the Chair in 1831. Indian studies in 

England were dominated by the demands of government and Christian evangelism, 

in ways that might be considered unacceptable in an academic environment today. 

Indeed, Max Müller, the most obvious candidate for the chair, was passed over 

because his religious views were deemed too liberal. Monier-Williams declared from 

the outset that the conversion of India to the Christian religion should be one of the 

aims of orientalist scholarship. 

He returned to India in 1875 and collected substantial funds for the proposed Indian 

institute at Oxford. When Monier-Williams founded the University's Indian Institute in 

1883, it provided both an academic focus and also a training ground for the Indian 

Civil Service. The Institute closed on Indian independence in 1947.Monier-Williams 

created a Sanskrit-English dictionary that is still in print. It is also now available on 

CD-ROM and is the basis of the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon. 

Monier-Williams has drawn the attention of scholars to the object of the 

establishment of that chair in the following words ;- 

"I must draw attention to the fact that I am only the second occupant of the Boden 

Chair, and that its Founder, Colonel Boden, stated most explicitly in his will (dated 

August 15, 1811 A.D.) that the special object of his munificent bequest was to 

promote the translation of Scriptures into Sanskrit; so as to enable his countrymen 

to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion." 

Prejudiced Sanskrit Professors

92 

93 

137

94 Rudolf Roth(1821-1893) 

138 

studied rare manuscripts in Sanskrit. Rudolph Roth, the German indologist, was a 

fellow student of Mueller’s. Both Roth and Mueller studied together under the 

tutelage of Eugene Burnouf, the eminent French Sanskrit Professor. Roth wrote a 

thesis on the Vedic literatures called, Zur Literatur und Geschichte des Veda, and in 

1909 he published his edition of Yaska’s Nirukta dictionary. However, Roth’s works 

were peppered with German ultra-nationalism and he asserted that by means of the 

German science of philology, Vedic mantras could be interpreted much better than 

with the help of Nirukta. Roth wrote many other things in this haughty vein. One 

such disdainful statement he made was: ‘A qualified European is better off to arrive 

at the true meaning of the Rg Veda than a Brahmana’s interpretation.’ Of course, for 

European, one should read ‘German’. By today’s standards , Rudolf Roth would be 

classed as a rank racist’. In the cognitive dissonance that is exhibited by a large 

proportion of the English educated elite of India, they accept that the conclusions of 

European indologists may be incorrect, but at the same time are reluctant to admit 

that the scholarship of the European indologist in the sanskrit language was far 

inferior to the rigorous training that a Brahmana pundit receives during the many 

years of a Veda patashala

95 Bhau Daji (1822 -1874) Manuscripts of Aryabhatiya might not be available in North India for about the last 

thousand years, but they continued to exist in South India, particularly in Kerala, and 

in modern times some of them had been taken to Europe also. Attempts by some 

European scholars to decide the date and contents of the Aryabhatiya failed. It was 

then that the Aryabhatiya was 'rediscovered' in 1864 by the famous physician and 

indologist of Maharashtra Dr. Bhau Daji (1822-74). He writes : "In a diligent and 

expensive search for old and rare Sanskrit, Prakrit, Arabic, and Persian manuscripts, 

noiselessly conducted for many years past, I have succeeded in procuring the works 

whose authorship is attributed to A" He further states : "To the friendly offices of Mr. 

Gundert, a German missionary in India, I am indebted for a copy of this work, from a 

MS. in the possession of the Raja of Kerkal, in Malabar. It is here called Dasagitika 

Sutra .I have also received from him a copy of the Aryabhatiya." 

After a thorough study of the Aryabhatiya, Dr. Bhau Daji wrote a paper on Aryabhata 

which was published in 1865 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. It 

was in this paper, for the first time, the name of Aryabhata, his date of birth and the 

contents of his work were correctly interpreted. 

The name of Aryabhata, says Dr. Bhau Daji in his paper, is to be written with one t 

only; and a double cannot be introduced without violating the srya metre. 

Varahamihira, his commentator Bhattotpala, Brahmagupta, and all those who wrote 

commentaries on the Aryabhatiya spell his name as Aryabhata, and not Aryabhatta.. 

139 

It was also Dr. Bhau Daji who, for the first time, correctly recognized that 

Aryabhatiya Sutra consists of two parts - the Dasagitika and the Aryastasata. He 

correctly guessed that the word Aryastasata stands for one hundred and eight (108) 

couplets and not for 800 as was supposed by earlier scholars. He also gave the 

correct translation of the stanza relating to Aryabhata's age, and stated with 

confidence that 'Aryabhata was born in A.D. 476." (if the stanza is as clear as it is

96 Friedrich Maximilian 

Mueller (1823-1900).. Ph.D 

in philosophy in 1843. 

Studied under franz Bopp at 

the Universityof Berlin 

(1844 to 1846). Went to 

England in 1846 and 

migrated to Oxford in 1848. 

140 

translated the books of the east. His private views of these books were vastly at 

variance with his public pronouncements. See a complete list of his statements and 

views in the south asia file . This is the popular view in India, as shown in the official 

commemoration of the stamp in his honor

97 Fredrich Max Mueller (1823-1900) was born in Dessau and educated in Leipzig, where 

he learned Sanskrit and translated the Hitopadesa of Pandita Visnu Sarma before 

coming to England in 1846. Since he was penniless, he was cared for by Baron von 

Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador to England who basked in the childishly pleasant 

thought of converting the whole world to Christianity. It was in London that Max 

Mueller met Macaulay who was still on the look out for his ‘right man’. 

Mueller was first commissioned by the East India Company to translate the Rg Veda 

into English. The company agreed to pay the young Mueller 4 Shillings for each page 

that was ready to print. He later moved to Oxford where he translated a number of 

books on Eastern religion. His magnum opus was his series The Sacred Books of 

the East, a fifty volume work which he began editing in 1875. It goes without saying 

that by the end of his career, Mueller had amassed a comfortable sum of money. 

It is ironic that the man who has Bhavans named after him all over India and is 

treated with so much veneration there, probably did the most damage to uproot 

Vedic culture. 

At the time of his death he was venerated by none other than Lokamanya Tilak as 

‘Veda-maharishi Moksha-mula Bhatta of Go-tirtha’ (Oxford). 

Although Mueller is on record as extolling India’s ancient wisdom, his letters (printed 

in two volumes) tell an entirely different story. Generally personal letters give a true 

picture of the writer’s inner mind. We present herein some of Mueller’s many 

statements in which his true view on Indian culture is glaringly obvious . 

“History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education 

before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity. All 

the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth 

could meet with ready acceptance. The ancient religions of the world were but 141 the 

milk of nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life.... ‘The 

religion of Buddha has spread far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, and to our 

limited vision, it may seem to have retarded the advent of Christianity among a large 

portion of the human race. But in the sight of Him with whom a thousand years are 

but as one day, that religion, like the ancient religions of the world, may have but 

served to prepare the way of Christ, by helping through its very errors to strengthen 

and to deepen the ineradicable yearning of the human heart after the truth of God.”

98 

142

99 Albrecht Weber 

Born 17 February 1825 in 

Breslau; died 30 November 

1901) was a German 

indologist and historian. 

Albrecht Weber, was an early proponent of the false chronology of India 

Works 

• Weiße Jadschurveda, London 1849-1859 (3 Bde.) 

• Schwarze Jadschurveda, Leipzig 1871-1872 

• Tscharanawyuha. Übersicht über die Schulen der Vedas, Berlin 1855 

• Indische Litteraturgeschichte, Berlin 1852 , english translation History of 

Indian Literarture 

• Indische Skizzen, Berlin 1857 

• Indische Streifen, Berlin 1868-1879 (3 vols.) 

• Verzeichnis der Berliner Sanskrithandschriften, Berlin 1853 ff. 

• Über das Catrunjaya des Mahâtmyam, Leipzig 1858] 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_Weber 

This is what Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, the well known Bengali scholar, has 

to say about Weber in his Krishnacharita, 4th chapter:- 

'The celebrated Weber was no doubt a scholar but I am inclined to think that it was 

an unfortunate moment for India when he began the study of Sanskrit. The 

descendants of the German savages of yesterday could not reconcile themselves to 

the ancient history and traditions of India. It was therefore, their earnest effort to 

prove that the civilization of India was comparatively of recent origin. They could not 

persuade themselves to believe that the Mahabharata was composed centuries 

before Christ was born'. 

Much is made of the fact that some Indic historians (who are then conveniently 

dubbed Nationalistic) seek to extend the antiquity of India based on Puranic history, 

beyond what the Europeans would vouchsafe us. The real question is why were the 

European indologists so keen to revise the Indic chronology to fit their own 

preconceived biases. After all what harm is there in investigating the truth of the 

matter, and is that not the avowed aim of the scientific approach as touted in 143 the 

west .

100 

101 Ebenezer Burgess(1820 ? – 

1900 ?) 

144 

Ebenezer Burgess was an American scholar and missionary who studied the ancient 

texts of India . In particular he translated the Surya Siddhanta, the ancient 

astronomical text of india whose author remains anonymous 

Ebenezer Burgess. "Translation of the Surya-Siddhanta, a text-book of Hindu 

Astronomy", Journal of the American Oriental Society 6 (1860): 141–498. 

The Surya Siddhanta (A Text Book of Hindu Astronomy) 

by Rev. Ebenezer Burgess 

Year of Publication : 2000 

ISBN : 8120806123 

Edition : Reprint 

Place : New Delhi 

Book Details : 25 cm; lvi, 409p.; Figures; Maps; Tables; Appendices; Index; Notes 

Portions of the digitized version are available on the web courtesy of the Google 

Book search program 

here

102 William Dwight 

Whitney (1827-1894) 

American Indologist. One of Salisbury's students at Yale, William Dwight Whitney 

(1827-1901) went on to become a distinguished Sanskritist in his own right having 

studied in Berlin under German scholars as Bopp and Weber. But like Weber became 

one of the principal detractors of the notion that anything worthwhile came out of 

india especially in the field of Astronomy. Whitney became a full professor of 

Sanskrit language and literature at Yale in 1854, wrote his classic Sanskrit Grammar 

(1879) and was the doyen of Indologists of his period. Like many who considered 

themselvesexpert in Snabskrit, it isdoubtful he ever chanted a single sloka in his life. 

American Indologists have generallyl toed the line that Whitney first pursued . One 

wonders why in the face of such contempt for a people why these gentlemen 

continued to study their heritage. The answer lies in their assumption that Sanskrit 

was not atichthonous to the subcontinent but was brought into India by the mythical 

indo European or as they were known then by the Aryans. 

Whitney was succeeded in the Chair of Sanskrit Studies of Yale by Edward 

Washburn Hopkins (1857-1932). Hopkins was an excellent scholar but made his 

name principally as an exponent of India's religions. His book The Religions of India 

(1895) was for many years one of the principal works on the subject available in 

America and his Origins and Evolution of Religion published in 1923, sold well 

145

103 Professor Johann Georg 

Bühler (July 19, 1837—April 

8, 1898) was a scholar of 

ancient Indian languages 

and law. 

146 

Professor Johann Georg Bühler (July 19, 1837—April 8, 1898) was a scholar of 

ancient Indian languages and law. 

Bühler was born to Rev. Johann G. Bühler in Borstel, Hanover, Germany, attended 

high school in Hanover where he mastered Greek and Latin, then university as a 

student of theology and philosophy at Göttingen, where he studied classical 

philology, Sanskrit, Zend, Persian, Armenian, and Arabic. In 1858 he received his 

doctorate in eastern languages and archaeology; his thesis explored the suffix -tês 

in Greek grammar. That same year he went to Paris to study Sanskrit manuscripts, 

and in 1859 onwards to London where he remained until October 1862. This time was 

used mainly for the study of the Vedic manuscripts at the India Office and the 

Bodleian Library at Oxford University. While in England, Bühler was first a private 

teacher and later (from May 1861) assistant to the Queen's librarian in Windsor 

Castle. 

In Fall 1862 Bühler was appointed assistant at the Göttingen library; he moved there 

in October. While settling in, he received an invitation via Prof. Max Müller to join the 

Benares Sanskrit College in India. Before this could be settled, he also received 

(again via Prof. Müller) an offer of Professor of Oriental Languages at the 

Elphinstone College, Bombay (now Mumbai). Bühler responded immediately and 

arrived on February 10, 1863 in Bombay. Noted Sanskrit and legal scholar Kashinath 

Trimbak Telang was then a student at the college. In the next year Bühler became a 

Fellow of Bombay University and member of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic 

Society. He was to remain in India until 1880. During this time he collected a 

remarkable number of texts for the Indian government and the libraries of Berlin, 

Cambridge University, and Oxford University. 

In the year 1878 he published his translations of the Paiyalachchhi, the oldest Prakrit 

dictionary, with glossary and translation. He also took responsibility for the 

translation of the Apastamba, Dharmasutra etc. in Professor Max Müller's 

monumental compilation and translation, the Sacred Books of the East, vols. 2, 14, 

and 25. 

Selected publications 

• Prakrit dictionary Paiyalacchinamamala ("Beiträge zur kunde der 

indogermanischen sprachen", Göttingen 1878) 

• Erklärung der Ashokainschriften ("Zeitschrift der deutschen 

morgenländischen gesellschaft", 1883-1893) 

• The roots of the Dhatupatha not found in literature ("Wiener zeitschrift für die 

kunde des morgenlandes", 1894)

104 Louis Jacolliot 

(1837 – 1890) 

Louis Jacolliot (1837 – 1890) was a French barrister then a judge in India and Tahiti 

(1865-1869) and after that an author and lecturer. Born in Charolles, he lived several 

years in India and other parts of Asia. He wrote extensively on Indian culture, 

including the legend of the Nine Unknown Men. 

He has been described as a "prolific but unreliable" writer. [1] During his time in India 

he collected sanskrit myths, which he popularized later. Among other things, he 

claimed that hindu-writings (or unspecified "Sanskrit tablets" ) would tell the story of 

a sunken land called Rutas in the Indian Ocean. However, he relocated this lost 

continent to the Pacific Ocean and linked it to the Atlantis-myth. Furthermore his 

'discovery' of Rutas is somehow similar to the origin of the Mu-Story . 

His works were not only quoted in Helena Blavatsky's book Isis Unveiled, he also 

influenced her speculations on Lemuria. 

Among his works is a translation of the Manu Smriti, which has since been deemed 

unreliable by numerous scholars including Ann-Marie Etter. 

He died at Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes in 1890. 

In 1867 Jacolliot, Chief Judge in Chandranagar, wrote a book called ‘La Bible 

dans l’Inde’. Within that book, Jacolliot theorised that all the main philosophies of 

the western world originated from India, which he glorified thus – 

‘Land of ancient India! Cradle of Humanity. hail! Hail revered motherland whom 

centuries of brutal invasions have not yet buried under the dust of oblivion. Hail, 

Fatherland of faith, of love, of poetry and of science, may we hail a revival of thy 

past in our Western future.’ 

Mueller said while reviewing Jacolliot’s book that, ‘The author seems to have 

been taken in by the Brahmanas of India.’ 

147 

Publications 

La Devadassi (1868) 

• La bible dans l'Inde (1869) 

• Les Fils de Dieu (1873) 

• Christna et le Christ (1874) 

• Histoire des Vierges. Les peuples et les continents disparus (1874) 

• La genèse de l'Humanité. Fétichisme, polythéisme, monothéisme (1875) 

• Le spiritisme dans le monde (1875)

105 W Brennand From concluding remarks 

148

106 Ramakrishna Gopal 

Bhandarkar 

July 6, 1837–August 

24, 1925 


Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, also spelt Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, and 

known as R.G. Bhandarkar (), was a scholar, orientalist and social reformer. 

Contents 

• 1 Early life 

• 2 Orientalist 

• 3 Reformer 

• 4 External links 

Early life 

He was born in Malvan in Ratnagiri district of present-day Maharashtra. After his 

early schooling in Ratnagiri, he gained admission to Elphinstone College, Bombay. 

Like his reformer colleague Mahadev Govind Ranade, Bhandarkar was among the 

first graduates from Bombay University in 1862 and completed his Master’s degree 

in 1863. He won many awards and scholarships in the course of his brilliant 

academic career. 

Orientalist 

Reformer 

While a student, he became, in 1853, a member of the Paramhansa Sabha, a secret 

association for the furtherance of liberal ideas. It was secret in order to avoid the 

wrath of the powerful and orthodox elements of society. The members of his Sabha 

were inspired by the visits of Keshub Chunder Sen in 1864. In 1866, some of the 149 

members held a meeting in the house of Atmaram Pandurang that would publicly 

pledge itself to certain reforms such as (1) an open denunciation of the caste 

system, (2) the introduction of widow remarriage, (3) the encouragement of female 

education, and (4) the abolition of child marriage. After repeated deliberations, the 

members came to the conclusion that religious reforms were required as a basis for 

social reforms. The first prayer meeting was held on 31st March 1867, paving the way 

for the formation of the Prarthana Samaj. The efforts were boosted by another visit of 

Keshub Chunder Sen and visits of Navina Chandra Rai, founder of Punjab Brahmo 

Samaj, and Protap Chunder Mozoomdar.

107 Hans Julius Eggeling (1842- 

1918 

150 

Hans Julius Eggeling (1842-1918) was Professor of Sanskrit at the University of 

Edinburgh from 1875 to 1914, second holder of its Regius Chair of Sanskrit, and 

Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. 

Eggeling was translator and editor of the Satapatha Brahmana in 5 volumes of the 

monumental Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Müller, author of the 

main article on Sanskrit in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and curator of the 

University Library from 1900 to 1913. In August 1914 he left for a vacation in his 

native Germany; because of World War I, he was unable to return before his death in 

1918. He was also a staunch German nationalist.Catalogued Sanskrit manuscripts in 

England. Translated the Satapatha Brahmana

108 Jabez T. Sunderland 

1842-1936 

Courtesy of the Unitarian 

Universalist Association 

Archives 

Jabez Sunderland was well versed in the literature of India and encouraged 

borrowing concepts frommmmm the Sanatana Dharma 

This American Unitarian minister who was born in England launched the first major 

indictment of British imperialism in India. His attack appeared in 1908 in an Atlantic 

Monthly magazine article disclosing “The New Nationalistic Movement in India.” 

Sunderland declared: “India is a subject land. She is a dependent of Great Britain, 

not a colony. Britain’s free colonies are really self-ruling in everything except their 

relations with foreign powers. Not so with dependencies like India. They are ruled 

absolutely by Great Britain, which is not their “mother” country but their conqueror 

and master.” 

His book India in Bondage was suppressed in India but hailed in America by Time 

magazine. 

Jabez Sunderland was the first American to participate in the new Indian National 

Congress. 

Sunderland’s two journeys to India encouraged an alliance between the British and 

American Unitarian associations and the Brahmo Samaj religious and social reform 

Hindu movement in India. 

From the Ann Arbor Unitarian Church in Michigan, he led the battle for advanced 

nondogmatic theism against non-theism. When he died in Ann Arbor, his memorial 

service held at the Community Church of New York celebrated his role in liberating 

India and his promotion of liberating religion in North America 

151

109 George Thibaut (1848-1914) George Frederick William Thibaut (March 20, 1848-1914) was an Indologist notable 

for his contributions to the understanding of ancient Indian mathematics and 

astronomy and for his support of the false chronology of india. The purpose of the 

Sanskrit college was not to educate Indians butto provide a steady supply of 

individuals who would translate the books into English, so that the English could 

gain the knowledge contained within the ancient manuscripts. That is the reason 

they had a Occidental as a Principal. Otherwise bringing a Sanskrit teacher to India 

is tantamount to bringing sand to the beach 

152 

Thibaut was born in Germany, worked briefly in England, and then in 1875 was 

appointed Professor at the Government Sanskrit College, India, later Benares 

College. Between 1875 and 1878 he published a detailed essay on the Śulba sūtras, 

together with a translation of the Baudhāyana Śulba sūtra; he later co-edited and 

translated the Pañca siddhāntikā. He also edited and translated the following 

volumes in Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East: 

Note the interesting transition of the Colonial from chela to guru. Just a short span 

of 50 years prior to this the Englishman was learning from the pundits. Within such a 

short time span he returns to teach the Indians the language of their ancestors. Such 

are the benefits of being a colonial overlord, not the least of which is to dictate to the 

Indics who is or is not proficient in their own language. 

• Vol. 34, The Vedanta-Sutras, vol. 1 of 3, with the commentary of 

Sankaracharya, part 1 of 2. Adhyâya I-II (Pâda I-II). (1890) 

• Vol. 38, The Vedanta-Sutras, vol. 2 of 3, with the commentary of 

Sankaracharya, part 1 of 2. Adhyâya II (Pâda III-IV)-IV. (1896) 

• Vol. 48, The Vedanta-Sutras, vol. 3 of 3, with the commentary of Râmânuja. 

(1904) 

• Pancha Siddhantika of Varähamihira - (1) Edited with Sanskrit Commentary. - 

and Eng. Translated by G. Thibaut and S. Dvivedi, Reprint, Motilal Banarsidas, 

1930 ( 

• Criticism of Tilak and Jaconi (Indian Antiquaries vol.xxiv,1895, pp 85-100 

Thibaut contributed a number of Sanskrit manuscripts to the Department of Oriental 

Collections, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, where they are archived today. 


• Works by George Thibaut at Project Gutenberg 

Retrieved in part from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Thibaut"

110 Paul Deussen 

January 7, 1845, 

Oberdreis—July 6, 1919, 

Kiel 

Paul Deussen (IPA: [paʊl doʏs ə n])) was a German Orientalist and Sanskrit scholar. 

He was influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer. He was also a friend of Friedrich 

Nietzsche and Swami Vivekananda. 

In 1911, Paul Deussen founded the Schopenhauer Society (Schopenhauer- 

Gesellschaft). He was the first editor, in 1912, of the scholarly journal Schopenhauer 

Yearbook (Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch). Deussen served in this position until his death. 

Works 

• Vedanta und Platonismus im Lichte der Kantischen Philosophie 

• Die Philosophie des Mittelalters 

• Die neuere Philosophie von Descartes bis Schopenhauer 

• Die Philosophie der Griechen 

• Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung 

der Religionen 

• Die Elemente der Metaphysik. Nebst einer Vorbetrachtung über das Wesen des 

Idealismus. 

• Das System des Vedanta. Nach den Brahma-Sutra's des Badarayana und dem 

Commentare des Cankara über dieselben als ein Compendium der Dogmatik 

des Brahmanismus vom Standpunkte des Cankara aus. (1883) 

• Die Sutra's des Vedanta oder die Cariraka-Mimansa des Badarayana nebst 

einem vollständigen Kommentare des Cankara. Aus dem Sanskrit übersetzt. 

(1887) 

• Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche (1901) 

• Erinnerungen an Indien (1904) 

• Die Philosophie der Bibel (1913) 

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: 

Paul Deussen 


• Vivekananda on Paul Deussen 

153

111 Vincent Smith(1848-1920), author of Oxford History of India. Generally regarded as being a tad more 

enlightened than the rest his cohorts, but the die had been cast and the Indic was to 

be portrayed henceforward with condescension rather than as an equal member of 

the family of nations 

112 

113 

114 Hermann George Jacobi 

(1850-1937) 

154 

was one of the first to suggest that the Vedic Hymns were collected around 4500 

BCE based on Astronomical observations made by the Vedics

115 Kashinath (or Kashiram) 

Trimbak Telang 

(August 20, 1850 in 

Bombay–September 1, 1893 

in Bombay) 

Kashinath Trimbak Telang 

Kashinath Trimbak Telang was an Indian judge and Oriental scholar. 

By profession an advocate of the high court, he also took a vigorous share in 

literary, social, municipal and political work, as well as in the affairs of the University 

of Bombay, over which he presided as vice-chancellor from 1892 until his death. At 

the age of five Telang was sent to the Amarchaud Wadi vernacular school, and in 

1859 entered the high school in Bombay which bears the name of Mountstuart 

Elphinstone. Here he came under the influence of Narayan Mahadev Purmanand, a 

teacher of fine intellect and force of character, afterwards one of Telang's most 

intimate friends. 

From this school he passed to the Elphinstone College, of which he became a fellow, 

and after taking the degree of M.A. and LL.B., decided to follow the example of Bal 

Mangesh Wagle, the first Indian admitted by the judges to practise on the original 

side of the high court, a position more like the status of a barrister than a vakil or 

pleader. He passed the examination and was enrolled in 1872. 

His learning and other gifts soon brought him an extensive practice. He had 

complete command of the English language, and his intimacy with Sanskrit enabled 

him to study and quote the Hindu law-books with an ease not readily attained by 

European counsel. Telang, finding his career assured, declined an offer of official 

employment. But in 1889 he accepted a seat on the high court bench, where his 

judgments are recognized as authoritative, especially on the Hindu law. He was 

syndic of the university from 1881, and vice-chancellor from 1892 until his death. In 

that year also he was elected president of the local branch of the Royal Asiatic 

Society. These two offices had never been held by a native of India before. The 

decoration of C.I.E. conferred on him in 1882 was a recognition of his services as a 

member of a mixed commission appointed by the government to deal with the 

educational system of the whole of India. He was nominated to the local legislative 

council in 1884, but declined a similar position on the viceroy's council. 155 

Along with P.M. Metha, he was the originator of the Bombay Presidency Association. 

When a student he had won the Bhugwandas scholarship in Sanskrit, and in this 

language his later studies were profound. His translation of the Bhagavad Gita into 

English prose and verse is a standard work, and available in Max Müller's 

monumental compilation, the Sacred Books of the East, vol. 8, as the Bhagavadgita 

With the Sanatsugâtiya and the Anugitâ (published 1882). He criticized Albrecht 

Weber's hypothesis that the story of the Ramayana was influenced by the Homeric 

epics. While devoted to the sacred classics of the Hindus, Telang did not neglect his

116 Frederick Eden Pargiter 

(1852-1897) 

117 Arthur Anthony McDonnell 

(1854-1930), 

156 

published ‘Purana texts of the Dynasties of the Kali age”. Generally speaking was 

biased according to the racial mores of the times. Propagated the false chronology 

of India by first fixing the date of Chandragupta Maurya and then working back to 

determine the date of the Mahabharata war 

brought 7000 Sanskrit manuscripts from Kashi to Oxford University

118 Herman Oldenberg 

1854-1920 

Hermann Oldenberg 


Jump to: navigation, search 

Hermann Oldenberg (was a German scholar of Indology, and Professor at Kiel (1898) 

and Göttingen (1908). 

His 1881 study on Buddha, based on Pāli texts, popularized Buddhism and have 

remained continuously in print since their first publication. With T. W. Rhys Davids, 

he edited and translated into English three volumes of Vinaya texts, as two volumes 

of the Grhyasutras and two volumes of Vedic hymns on his own account, in the 

monumental Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Müller. With his 

Prolegomena (1888), Oldenberg laid the groundwork to the philological study of the 

Rigveda. 

Selected bibliography 

• Hymnen des Rigveda. 1. Teil: Metrische und textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. 

Berlin 1888; Wiesbaden 1982, English translation: Delhi, Motilal 2005. 

• Die Religion des Veda. Berlin 1894; Stuttgart 1917; Stuttgart 1927; Darmstadt 

1977 

• Vedic Hymns, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 46, ed. Friedrich Max Müller, 

Oxford University Press, 1897 

• Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order 1881 (in English translation 1882) 

External link 

• bibliography 

This article about a theologian is a stub. You can 

157

119 Maurice Bloomfield 

158 

(February 23, 1855 - June 

12, 1928) 

interpreted the Vedas 

Maurice Bloomfield 



Maurice Bloomfield, Ph. D., LL.D.) was an American philologist and Sanskrit scholar. 

Bloomfield was born in Bielitz, in what was at that time Austrian Silesia (today it is in 

Poland). His sister was Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler. He went to the United States in 

1867, and ten years later graduated from Furman University, Greenville, South 

Carolina. He then studied Sanskrit at Yale, under W. D. Whitney, and at Johns 

Hopkins University, to which university he returned as associate professor in 1881 

after a stay of two years in Berlin and Leipzig, and soon afterwards was promoted 

professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology. In 1896 Princeton University 

bestowed the LL.D. degree upon him. 

His papers in the American Journal of Philology number a few in comparative 

linguistics, such as those on assimilation and adaptation in congeneric classes of 

words, and many valuable contributions to the interpretation of the Vedas, and he is 

best known as a student of the Vedas. He translated, for Max Müller's Sacred Books 

of the East, the Hymns of the Atharva-Veda (1897); contributed to the Buhler- 

Kielhorn Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde the section The 

Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha Brahmana (1899); was first to edit the Kauika-Sutra 

(1890), and in 1907 published, in the Harvard Oriental series, A Vedic Concordance. 

In 1905 he published Cerberus, the Dog of Hades, a study in comparative mythology. 

The Religion of the Veda appeared in 1908; Life and Stories of the Jarna Savior 

Paravanatha and a work on the Rig Veda in 1916. 

References 


Edition, a publication now in the public domain. The article is available here: 

[1] 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Bloomfield"

120 Balagangadhar Tilak 

July 23, 1856 , August 1, 

1920 

Bal Gangadhar Tilak 


Balawant Gangadhar Tilak 

July 23, 1856 – August 1, 1920 

Alternate name: Lokmanya Tilak 

Place of birth: 

Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, 

India 

Place of death: Bombay,India 

Movement: 

Indian Independence 

Movement 

Major 

Indian National 

organizations: Congress 

Balawant Gaṅgādhar Ṭiḷak (Marāṭhī: बाळ गंगाधर िटळक) (July 23, 1856 - August 1, 

1920), was an Indian nationalist, social reformer and freedom fighter who was the 

first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement and is known as "Father 

of the Indian unrest." Tilak was one of the first and strongest proponents for Swaraj 

(complete independence) in Indian consciousness, and is considered the father of 

Hindu nationalism as well. Tilak's famous quote 

“ Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall 

have it! ” 

is well-remembered in India even today and is very popular. Reverently addressed 159 as 

Lokmanya (meaning "Beloved of the people" or "Revered by the world"), Tilak was a 

scholar of Indian history, Sanskrit, Hinduism, mathematics and astronomy. 

Early life 

He was born in a village called chikhali, near Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, into a middle 

class Chitpavan Brahmin family. Tilak had a divisive philosphy. He was among 

India's first generation of youth to receive a modern, college education. After

121 Sir Mark Aurel Stein (1862- 

1943) 

160 

Director general, Archaeological Survey of India

122 Ale 

xan 

der 

Ha 

milt 

on 

(18 

62 

– 

“In Paris, a British lieutenant was to play a very important role in the focus of 

Sanskrit studies in Germany. Lt Alexander Hamilton was employed by the East India 

Company and was one of the first twenty-four charter members of the Asiatic 

Society. (8) Hamilton, who collated Sanskrit manuscripts at the Bibliotheque 

Nationale for a new edition of Wilkins’ translation of the Hitopadesha, was the only 

one apart from Wilkins who knew Sanskrit and lived in Europe at the time. “ 

http://www.eng.vedanta.ru/library/prabuddha_bharata/sanskrit_studies_and_comparative_philology.p 

hp 

A more detailed account by Thomas Trautmann. 

Alexander Hamilton, ,the first Sanskrit professor in Britain at the East India College, 

,became the conduit by which the knowledge of Sanskrit passed from Calcutta to 

Paris and thence to Germany . Hamilton who had served as an officer in the army of 

the East India company, learned Sanskrit in Calcutta and became a founding 

member of the Asiatiic Society; in 1790 he petitioned the government to study 

Sanskrit. He resigned his commission and returned to Britain in 1790, where he lived 

of the proceeds of journalism, writing for the Monthly review for a time. And then for 

the Edinborough review, of which he was one of the founders. By the Peace of 

Amiens, (25 march 1802)) hotilities netween Britain and Napoleonic France were 

suspended , and Hamilton like many Briton took the oportunity to travel to france, 

only to become a prisoner of war by the decree of 23 May 1803, when war resumed. 

161

123 Maurice Maeterlink 

162 

(1862-1949) 

Nobel Pize for literature 

1911 

Count Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian writer of poetry, a wide variety of essays. 

He won the 1911 Nobel Prize for literature. In his book Mountain Paths, says: 

"he falls back upon the earliest and greatest of Revelations, those of 

the Sacred Books of India with a Cosmogony which no European 

conception has ever surpassed."

124 Sergey Fyodorvich 

Oldenburg (1863-1934) 

Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg (Russian: Серге́й Фёдорович Ольденбу́рг; 26 

September 1863 near Nerchinsk - 28 February 1934, Leningrad) was a Russian 

orientalist who specialized in Buddhist studies. He is remembered as the founder of 

Russian Indology and the teacher of Fyodor Shcherbatskoy. He was elected into the 

Russian Academy of Sciences in 1900 and served as its permanent Secretary in 

1904-29. 

Oldenburg's father was of lesser noble background; his grandfather was Full General 

in the Imperial Russian Army. In 1909-10 and 1914-15, Oldenburg travelled in Central 

Asia, where he discovered a number of hitherto unpublished Sanskrit texts. He 

instigated several scientific expeditions to Tibet and Dzungaria, which brought to 

light a raft of unique Buddhist manuscripts. In order to publish the newly-found 

manuscripts, Oldenburg launched in 1897 an authoritative edition of Buddhist texts, 

Bibliotheca buddhica, which continues to this day. Among his other projects was the 

Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the 

Borderlands of Russia. 

Oldenburg was a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia (1912-17) and 

served in the Russian Provisional Government as Minister of Education but, unlike 

his colleagues from the Constitutional Democratic Party, chose to spent the rest of 

his life in Russia. This was based on his acquaintance with Vladimir Lenin, which 

went back in history. As a student, Oldenburg joined the Scientific-Literary 

Association of Students (a brotherhood sharing liberal and radical ideals), where he 

met Lenin's brother Aleksandr Ulyanov. Ulyanov dropped out of the inner circle 

when he started to plan an assassination attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander III. 

The attempt failed, and following the execution of Ulyanov in 1887, his brother Lenin 

visited Oldenburg in St Petersburg in 1891 after his return from a two year trip to 

London, Paris and Cambridge. 

Although he was briefly apprehended by the Cheka in 1919, Oldenburg was allowed 

to run the Academy of Sciences until 1929, when, in connection with the ongoing 

Bolshevization of the Academy, he was ousted from his posts. Oldenburg devoted 163 

the remainder of his life to administrating the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies, 

whose antecedent (the Asian Museum) had been inaugurated by him in 1919. 

References

125 Morris Winternitz (Dec 

23,1863-January 9,1937), 

Born Horn, Austria 

164 

wrote History of Indian Literature. 


Austrian Orientalist. 

He received his earliest education in the gymnasium of his native town, and in 1880 

entered the University of Vienna, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 

1886. In 1888 he went to Oxford, where until 1892 he assisted Max Müller in the 

preparation of the second edition of the Rig-Veda (4 vols., Oxford, 1890-92), collating 

manuscripts and deciding on the adoption of many new readings. Winternitz 

remained in Oxford until 1898, acting in various educational capacities, such as 

German lecturer to the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women 

(1891-98), librarian of the Indian Institute at Oxford (1895), and frequently as 

examiner in German and Sanskrit both for the university and for the Indian Civil 

Service. 

In 1899 he went to Prague as privatdozent for Indology and general ethnology, and in 

1902 was appointed to the professorship of Sanskrit (made vacant by the retirement 

of Ludwig) and of ethnology in the German University of Prague. The Winternitz 

family were friendly with Albert Einstein, when he was in Prague around 1911. (this 

explains Einstein’s knowledge of Indic contributions to Mathematics) 

In addition to valuable contributions on Sanskrit and ethnology to various scientific 

journals, Winternitz edited the Apastambiya Gṛihyasutra (Vienna, 1887) and the 

Mantrapaṭha, or the Prayer-Book of the Apastambins (part i, Oxford, 1897); 

translated Müller's Anthropological Religion and his Theosophy, or Psychological 

Religion into German (Leipzig, 1894-95); and published Das Altindische 

Hochzeitsrituell (Vienna, 1892), which contains also valuable ethnological material; A 

Catalogue of South Indian Manuscripts Belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society of 

Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1902); and Geschichte der Indischen Literatur 

(part i, Leipzig, 1905). 

In a rare moment of candor, he expressed the view that the invading Aryans could 

not possibly have composed the vast literature in 200 years (with huge gaps before 

and after). But even he was aghast when Schopenahuer expressed his admiration for 

the upanishads in superlatives . In 1925 The Professor of Indian Studies at the 

German University of Prague, Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937), denounced Schopenhaur 

for his 

admiration of the Upanisads with the following words -

126 

127 Louis JM de la Vall‚e- 

Poussin Belgian indologist 

January 1 1869 

Belgian indologist 

165

128 Edward Joseph Thomas 

(1869-1958) 

166 

Edward J. Thomas was a librarian and author of several books on the history of 

Buddhism. 

Works 

• The Life of Buddha: As Legend and History 

• The History of Buddhist Thought second edition (1951) 

• Early Buddhist Scriptures 

• The Song of the Lord: Bhagavadgita (1931) 

Was one of the first among the European scholars to espouse the Indic origin of the 

Brahmi script. The forerunner of Devanagari and the other scripts of India. The 

Brahmi was the first phonetic and syllabic script to be discovered , a capability that 

the other indologists were reluctant to grant to the Indics. Even today few scholars 

of European origin will admit that the Brahmi script was developed in India, for by so 

doing there would be profound consequences for the history of and chronology of 

India as well as the oft disputed homeland of the proto Indo european people 

presuming of course that we accept the basic premise that they once existed. 

It must also be remembered that E J Thomas never did accept the premise or the 

chronology associated with the Aryan Invasion Theory 

129 First Vatican Council (1870) Hinduism is condemned as in the “five anathemas against pantheism” according to 

the Jesuit priest John Hardon in the Church-authorized book, The Catholic 

Catechism.

130 Sir Vepa Ramesam (1875- 

1958)Jurist, Mathematician, 

founder of Neo Malthusian 

society,historian 

(picture of Portrait in 

Madras High Court taken by 

Satvi Vepa his great great 

grand daughter in 2007 

First Indian Chief Justice of Madras High Court, http://vepa.us/dir5/Ramesam3.htm, 

Developed and authored book on Andhra Chronology. 

Developed a system of geometry without utilizing all of Euclids axioms 

Born on July 27 th , 1875. After taking his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1895, when he 

was barely 20, was enrolled as High Court Vakil in 1896. appointed Government 

Pleader in 1916 (In India the Attorney representing the state was referred to as a 

Pleader, for reasons known only to the Colonial Overlord). He ws appointed Judge 

of the high Court by the British Government in 1920 at what was considered a fairly 

young age of 45 (for India). He was reputed for his prodigious knowledge of Case 

Law and the ability to cite cases from his formidable memory. Acted as Chief 

Justice for short periods in 1931, 1933 and 1935. Retired on July 27 th 1935 at the age 

of 60. He was a keen mathematician who contributed frequently to mathematical 

journals. He could quote every theorem of Euclids elements from memory Also a 

keen student of Astronomy, forecast Halley’s comet long before it was visible to the 

public. Took interest in a vairety of subjects such as Archaeology and History, 

Dietetics, population control. He was a founder of the Neo Malthusian society in 

what was Madras at that time. Knighted in 1929 as Knight Commander of the British 

Empire , the highest honor bestowed by the British to an indian 

167

131 Sir John Hubert Marshall 

168 

(1876-1958) 

He was the Director general, Archaeological Survey of India during the period of 

discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization and assumed all the credit for the discovery 

of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, whereas the real discoveries were made by Rakhal 

das Bannerjee (Mohenjo Daro) and Daya Ram Sahni (Harappa). Author of the official 

account of the discovery 10 . 

10 Sir John Hubert Marshall Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization : Being an Official Account of Archaeological Excavations at 

Mohenjo-Daro Carried out by the Government of India Between the Years 1922 and 1927/edited by John Marshall. Reprint. New Delhi, 

AES, 2004, 3 volumes, 716 p., plates, line drawings, $198 (set). ISBN 81-206-1180-2.

132 Ananda Coomaraswamy 

1877 - 1947 


Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (ஆனந்த குமாரசுவாமி) (22 August 1877–9 

September 1947) was foremostly, as he said he would like to be remembered, a 

Metaphysician, but he was also a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, 

especially art history and symbolism, and early interpreter of Indian culture to the 

West. 

Contents 

[hide] 

• 1 Early life 

• 2 His contributions 

• 3 The Perennial 

Philosophy 

• 4 Works of 

Coomaraswamy 

• 5 References 

• 6 See also 


Early life 

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (22 August 1877 Colombo - 9 September 1947 

Needham, Massachusetts) was the son of the famous Sri Lankan Tamil legislator and 

philosopher Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. He 

became a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, and a great interpreter 

of Indian culture to the West. He was also a tireless campaigner for the regeneration 

169 

of Hinduism. In 1917, he became the first Keeper of Indian art in the Museum of Fine 

Arts in Boston. He stressed the spiritual element in Indian art. 

Born in Ceylon, educated in his mother’s homeland England, he became one of the 

world’s greatest art historians and scholars of traditional iconography. He served as 

curator in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts until his death, having been the first 

Oriental to make the meaning of oriental art understood in the West. He played an 

important role in the collection of Persian Art for the Freer in Washington, D.C. and 

the Boston Museum of Fine Art as well.

133 Arthur Barriedale Keith 

(1879-1944) 

170 

published ‘The religion of philosophy of the Hindus cannot be regarded as a reliable 

translation, betrays more than the average share of prejudice towards anything 

smacking of giving credit to the indics

134 Pandurang Vaman Kane 

(1880-1972) 

Bharat Ratna 1963 

Pandurang Vaman Kane 



Dr. Pandurang Vaman Kane (pronounced Kaa-nay) (Marathi: डॉ. पांडुरंग वामन काणे) 

(1880-1972) was a notable Indologist and Sanskrit scholar. He was born in a 

conservative Chitpavan Brahmin family in the Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra, India. 

Contents 

[hide] 

• 1 Famous works 

• 2 Recognition 

• 3 Miscellaneous 

• 4 Legacy 

• 5 Works 

• 6 See also 


Famous works 

Dr. Kane is famous for his magnum opus in English, History of Dharmasastra 

subtitled Ancient and Mediaeval Religions and Civil Law in India. This work 

researched the evolution of code of conduct in ancient and mediaeval India by 

looking into several texts and manuscripts compiled over the centuries. It was 171 

published in five volumes; the 1st volume was published in 1930 and the last, in 

1962. It runs to a total of more than 6,500 pages. Dr. Kane used the resources 

available at prestigious institutes such as the Asiatic Society of Bombay and 

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, among others. The work is known for its 

expanse and depth – ranging across diverse subjects such as the Mahabharat, 

Puranas and Kautilya – including references to previously obscure sources. The 

richness in the work is attributed to his in-depth knowledge of Sanskrit. His success 

is believed to be an outcome of his objective study of the texts instead of deifying 

them.

135 Robert Beresford Seymour 

Sewell 

172 

1880-1964 

Director of the Zoological Survey of India. led an expedition in the Indian Ocean area. 

Was responsible for founding of the Anthropological survey of India

136 Daya Ram Sahni (188X ? - ) 

Rai Bahadur Dava Ram 

Sahni, C.I.E., M.A., Director- 

General of Archaeology in 

India, 1931-35; Director of 

Archaeology and Historical 

Research, Jaipur State, 

Rajputana, 1 

Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni conducted the excavation that led to the discovery of 

Harappa in the ancient Indus Valley 

Harappa was a city in the Indus Valley civilization that flourished around 2,500 B.C. 

in the western part of South Asia. 

The Indus Valley was home to the largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of 

Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The extent of the size of the Indus valley 

civilization is now suspected tobe huge covering a vast area of over 1.6 million 

square miles. It was not discovered until the 1920's. Most of its ruins, even its major 

cities, remain to be excavated. The ancient Indus Valley script has not been 

deciphered. Basic questions about the Indus people who created this highly complex 

culture remain unanswered but it is increasingly becoming clear that that the 

denizens of the Sarasvati Sindhu River valley civilizations were in fact the 

successors to the Vedics and the forerunners to the Andhra Satavahanas . 

The Harappans used the same size bricks and standardized weights across a wide 

swath of South Asia. There were other highly developed cultures in the area. Some 

are thousands of years older. Skeletons testify to a continual intermingling of races. 

Harappa was settled before what we call the ancient Indus civilization flourished, and 

it remains a living town today. 

In fact, there seems to have been another large river which parallel and east of the 

Indus in the third and fourth millenium B.C. This was the ancient Ghaggra-Hakra 

River or Sarasvati of the Rig Veda. Its lost banks are slowly being laid out by 

researchers. Along its bed, archaeologists are discovering a whole new set of 

ancient towns and cities. 

Ancient Mesopotamian texts speak of trading with at least two seafaring civilizations 

- Makkan and Meluha - in the neighborhood of India in the third millennium B.C. This 

trade was conducted with real financial sophistication in amounts that could involve 

tons of copper. The Mesopotamians speak of Meluha as an aquatic culture, where 173 

water and bathing played a central role. One of its most well-known structures is the 

Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro. A number of Indus Valley objects have been found 

buried with Mesopotamians. 

This site tells the story of the ancient Indus Valley through the words and 

photographs of the world's leading scholars in the US, Europe, India and Pakistan. It 

starts with the re-discovery of Harappa in the early 19th century by the explorer 

Charles Masson and later Alexander Burnes, and formally by the archaeologist Sir 

Alexander Cunningham in the 1870's. This work led to the the first excavations in the

137 Rakhal Das Bannerjee 

174 

Date of Birth:12 April 1885, 

Died: 30 May 1930 

138 Indus Valley Civilization 

aka the Sarasvati Sindhu 

Civilization 

Place of Birth: Berhampore, Murshidabad Dist. W. Bengal, India 

First to identify and excavate Mohenjo Daro 

Reference 

“On the trade route from Lahore to Multan, when Charles Masson first saw the 

mounds at Harappa in 1826 he hardly realized that the ancient mound contains 

remains of one of the earliest civilizations of the world. Lt. Alexanader Burns, the 

British King's emissary to Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1831 stopped for a while at 

Harappa, gazed at the ruins, and went away to Lahore. It was in 1862, that Alexander 

Cunningham, the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, during 

his excavations, found pottery and seals at Harappa. It was Major Clark who found a 

seal with a humpless bull and the engreved letters on it which Cunningham at that 

point of time, called foreign to India. Thus, the discovery of this great civilization 

began. Actual excavations were started in 1920-22 by Daya Ram Sahni under John 

Marshall at Mohenjodaro and by R.D. Banerjee at Harappa. N.G. Majumdar had made 

a survey of the Sind region. He explored and excavated many sites in the Indus 

Basin. In the succeeding decades after 1922, a large number of sites were 

discovered in the Indus Valley. The main centres of this civilization, that were found, 

at Mohenjodaro, District Larkana (Sind, Pakistan) and Harappa, District Montgomory 

(Panjab, Pakistan). Besides these, Dabarkot, Nokjoshahdinjai, Chanhudaro, 

Lohumjodaro, Amri, Pandiwahi, Aliumurad and Ghazi Shah in Pakistan yielded 

remains of similar culture. Since many of these sites were located in the Indus Basin, 

scholars named this civilization as Indus Valley Citilization. This was due to the fact 

that civilization was then limited to the Indus Valley proper.””

139 George Coedes (1886-1969) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

George Coedès (1886-1969)was a 20th century scholar of southeast Asian 

archaeology and history. He became director of the National Library of Thailand in 

1918, and in 1929 became director of L'École française d'Extrême-Orient, where he 

remained until 1946. Thereafter he lived in Paris until he died in 1969. He wrote two 

seminal texts in the field, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968, 1975) and 

The Making of South East Asia (1966), as well as innumerable articles, in which he 

developed the concept of the Indianized kingdom. The issue is not necessarily the 

extent of the indian ization, but the antiquity of the Indianization and the longevity of 

the resulting dynasties. Western indologists have generally tried to underplay th e 

Indian influence on both counts 

References 

• Higham, Charles (2001). The Civilization of Angkor. Phoenix. ISBN 1842125842. 

• National Library of Australia. Asia's French Connection : George Coedes and 

the Coedes Collection 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Coed%C3%A8s" 

175

140 R.C. Majumdar (1888-1980) R. C. Majumdar was an Indian historian and Vice-Chancellor of Dacca University. He 

wrote many important historical works on the history of ancient and medieval India, 

including on topics like the Freedom movement of India. He was also an admirer of 

Vivekananda and Ramakrishna. 

176 

Works 

• An Advanced History of India. London, 1960. ISBN 0-333-90298-X 

• The History and Culture of the Indian People 

• Ancient India ISBN 81-208-0436-8 

• History of the Freedom movement in India ISBN 0-8364-2376-3 

• Champa ISBN 0-8364-2802-1 

• Vakataka - Gupta Age Circa 200-550 A.D. ISBN 81-208-0026-5 

• The History of Bengal ISBN 81-7646-237-3 

• Main currents of Indian history ISBN 81-207-1654-X 

• Classical accounts of India 

• Hindu Colonies in the Far East ISBN 99910-0-001-1 

• Majumdar, R.C. (1979). India and South-East Asia. I.S.P.Q.S. History and 

Archaeology Series Vol. 6. ISBN 81-7018-046-5. 

However Majumdar fails to confront the shibboleths surrounding Indic history such 

as the assumption of a significant Aryan Immigration as late as the 2nd millennium 

BC or the much more pertinent question of an Aryan immigration within the lasr 

several millennia during the period of recorded history. For all his scholarship he 

was unable to shake hmself loose from the key assumptions that the British foisted 

on India. Namely that 

there was an Aryan Tourist influx during the 2 nd millennium BCE 

There are distinct racial classes based on objective scientific criteria called 

Dravidian and Aryan. 

The Brahmi scipt was imported from the semitic peoples such as the Phoenicans. 

That the Sindhu Saraswati civilization predates the Vedic culture of India 

But it must be remembered that he didnt have the satellite data indicating the 

presence of the saraswati paleo channel and the data relating to the drying up of the 

Sarasvati river (the river has been mentioned at least 50 times in the Rg ). (This is 

still incomplete)

141 Sir S Radhakrishnan 

(September 5, 1888 – April 

17, 1975) 

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Telugu:సేవ్పల్ ాాకృషణ్,Tamil:சர்வபள்ளி 

ராதாகிருஷ்ணன), was a philosopher and statesman. 

One of the foremost scholars of comparative religion and philosophy in his day, he 

built a bridge between Eastern and Western thought showing each to be 

comprehensible within the terms of the other. He introduced Western idealism into 

Indian philosophy and was the first scholar of importance to provide a 

comprehensive exegesis of India's religious and philosophical literature to English 

speaking peoples. His academic appointments included the King George V Chair of 

Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921-?) and Spalding 

Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University (1936-1939). 

He was the first Vice President of India (1952-1962), and the second President of 

India (1962-1967). His birthday is celebrated in India as Teacher's Day in his honour. 

Contents 

• 1 Life and career 

• 2 Philosophy 

• 3 Quotation 

• 4 Works 



Life and career 

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Sarvepalli is his family name, and Radhakrishnan his 

given name) was born into a middle class family at Tiruttani, a town in Tamil Nadu, 

177 

South India, 64 km to the northwest of Madras (now known as Chennai). His mother 

tongue was Telugu. His early years were spent in Tiruttani, Tiruvallur and Tirupati. 

His primary education was in Gowdie School, Tiruvallur, and higher school 

education in P.M.High School, Gajulamandyam, Renigunta. He married 

Sivakamuamma in 1904 at age 16 in Vellore. They had five daughters and a son, 

Sarvepalli Gopal. [1][2] He graduated with a Master's degree in Arts from the University 

of Madras. 

In 1921, he was appointed as a philosophy professor to occupy the King George V

142 Arnold Toynbee 

178 

Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH 

(April 14, 1889 – October 22, 

1975) 

Arnold J. Toynbee was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise 

and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of world 

history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, 

which examined history from a global perspective. 

Toynbee's ideas and approach to history 

Toynbee's approach may be compared to the one used by Oswald Spengler in The 

Decline of the West. He rejected, however, Spengler's deterministic view that 

civilizations rise and fall according to a natural and inevitable cycle. 

Toynbee presented history as the rise and fall of civilizations, rather than the history 

of nation-states or of ethnic groups. He identified his civilizations according to 

cultural rather than national criteria. Thus, the "Western Civilization", comprising all 

the nations that have existed in Western Europe since the collapse of the Roman 

Empire, was treated as a whole, and distinguished from both the "Orthodox" 

civilization of Russia and the Balkans, and from the Greco-Roman civilization that 

preceded it. 

With the civilizations as units identified, he presented the history of each in terms of 

challenge-and-response. Civilizations arose in response to some set of challenges of 

extreme difficulty, when "creative minorities" devised solutions that reoriented their 

entire society. Challenges and responses were physical, as when the Sumerians 

exploited the intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organizing the Neolithic 

inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale irrigation projects; or 

social, as when the Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by 

enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community. When a 

civilization responds to challenges, it grows. When it fails to respond to a challenge, 

it enters its period of decline. Toynbee argued that "Civilizations die from suicide, 

not by murder." For Toynbee, civilizations were not intangible or unalterable 

machines but a network of social relationships within the border and therefore 

subject to both wise and unwise decisions they made. If leaders of the civilization 

did not appease or shut down the internal proletariat or muster an effective military 

or diplomatic defense against potential invading outside forces, it would fall. 

He expressed great admiration for Ibn Khaldun and in particular the Muqaddimah, 

the preface to Khaldun's own universal history, which notes many systemic biases 

that intrude on historical analysis via the evidence.

143 Heinrich Zimmer (1890- 

1943) 

Author of Philosophies of India "Indian philosophy was at the heart of Zimmer's 

interest in oriental studies, and this volume therefore represents his major 

contribution to our understanding of Asia. It is both the most complete and most 

intelligent account of this extraordinarily rich and complex philosophical tradition 

yet written." 

Even the school of Paul Deussen, A.W. Ryder and H. Zimmer, which followed 

Schopenhauer in the appreciation of ancient Indian intellect, but which did not work 

directly on chronology, could not throw off the burden of these extremely 

unscientific, fictitious dates. 

(b) ......gave rise to the two interrelated diseases of Western Indologists; firstly the 

disease of myth, mythical and mythology, according to which Brahma, Indra, Vishnu, 

Parvat, Narada, Kashyapa, Pururavas, Vasishta and a host of other ancient sages 

have been declared as mythical. Nobody ever tried to understand their true historical 

character apprehending that the dates of Bharatiya history would go to very ancient 

periods; and secondly, as a corollary to the above, the disease of 'attribution' and 

'ascription', under which the works of these and other sages have been declared to 

be written by some very late anonymous persons who are said to have ascribed or 

attributed them to those 'mythical' sages. 

(c) ......brought to the fore-front, the most fanciful and groundless theory of the 

migration of the Aryans into India, according to which the very existence of Manu, 

the first Crowned King of Bharat, Egypt etc., Ikshvaku, Manu's glorious son; Bharata 

Chakravarti, the glorious son of Shakuntala; Bhagiratha, who changed the course of 

the Ganga; Kuru, after whom the sacred sacrificial land is called Kurukshetra:; 

Rama, the son of Dasaratha and a number of other kings is being totally denied. 

(d) ....was responsible for the altogether wrong translations of Vaidika (Vedic) works, 

and misrepresentation of the Vaidika culture. 

(e) .....did not allow the acceptance of Sanskrit, as being the mother language 179 of at 

least the Indo-European group; as at first very ably propounded by Franz Bopp, and 

often mentioned by ancient Indian authors.

144 Sir Robert Erie Mortimer 

Wheeler(1890-1976), 

180 

Archaeological Survey of India, originated the theory that a nomadic band of 

marauders called Aryans destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization. A discovery of a 

few skeletons was all that he needed to make the leap of faith that a major invasion 

of the mythical Aryans destroyed the Saraswati Sindhu civilization. It is incredible 

to see the extent to which the Europeans would build a hypothesis (in this case the 

Aryan invasion) , the only purpose being to deny the Indics a continuous civilization 

that extended to an antiquity greater than that of the Greeks and the Babylonians

145 Bhimrao Ambedkar 

(14.4.1891-1956) 

Ambedkar studies at Heidelberg (as viewed in Germany) 

This is a note written by a German indologist which is very interesting.Note the ease 

with which he falsifies the record and says Ambedkar studied at Sanskrit at Bonn 

when he knew for certain that was not the case. 

In recent years, Dr. Ambedkar (1891-1956), a framer of the Indian constitution, has 

gained increasing recognition in academic and political circles in Germany. Within 

the realm of scholarship at the South Asia Institute, his mediating role in the framing 

of the Indian Constitution has been adequately recognized (Kulke, Rothermund 1998: 

394) as well as the implementation of constitutional safeguards for the Scheduled 

Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Conrad 1995: 419) through reservation of seats in 

politics, education and administration. His political role, especially the social 

movement initiated by him, has been subject to a dissertation in political sciences 

(Hurst 2000) as well as part of a more elaborate discourse on the part of Harijans in 

social movements in India (Fuchs 1999; 2003). In the fields of German indology and 

history of religion, Dr. Ambedkars conversion to Buddhism at the end of his life 

caught considerable academic attention. He viewed Buddhism as a theology of 

liberation (Gensichen 1995: 197) as well as an original development under the 

heading of civil religion (Fuchs 2001: 205). In addition, fieldwork among Mahars in 

Maharashtra focused on the social relevance of Dr. Ambedkar’s Navayana Buddhism 

(Beltz 2001). Textual studies focused on a comparison of Buddhist sources with Dr. 

Ambedkar’s The Buddha and His Dhamma (Buss 1998;Fiske/Emmrich forthcoming), 

projecting Dr. Ambedkar’s view of Buddhism as an effort to reconstruct the world 

(Beltz/ Jondhale forthcoming). 

Ambedkar studies apart, the concern with dalits has been the focus of a number 

of studies in social anthroplogy in the urban (Bellwinkel 1980) as well as the rural 

setting (Randeria 1993) setting. The most comprehensive project in this respect was 

an interdisciplinary research project, financed by the Volkswagen Foundation and 

linked with the Department of Modern Indology, South Asia Institute and the 

Department of Sociology, Delhi University. Under the heading of Memory, Violence 181 

and the Agency, the topic was the role of dalits as victims and perpetrators in 

Bombay and Kanpur (Fuchs forthcoming). This project set an example for the 

Memorandum of Understanding between Heidelberg University and Delhi University 

in common fieldwork for the exchange of scholars and students. 

During my fieldwork among dalits in Kanpur (Bellwinkel-Schempp 1998), I was often 

asked to give a speech, which I used to do with the introductory words, 

that I was born at Bonn in Germany, the town where Dr. Ambedkar studied Sanskrit. I 

had found the reference of a short, three months stay in 1923 in Dhananjay Keer’s 

Dr. Ambedkar biography (Keer 1995: 49). My projection of benevolent German

146 V. Gordon Childe 

182 

born April 14, 1892, Sydney, 

N.S.W., Australia 

died Oct. 19, 1957, Mount 

Victoria, N.S.W. 

Childe, V Gordon 

Australian-British archaeologist. 

He taught at the University of Edinburgh (1927–46) and later directed the Institute of 

Archaeology at the University of London (1946–56). His study of European 

prehistory, especially in The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), sought to 

evaluate the relationship between Europe and the Middle East and to examine the 

structure and character of ancient cultures of the Western world. His later books 

included The Most Ancient Near East (1928) and The Danube in Prehistory (1929). His 

approach established a tradition of prehistoric studies. He as one of the few Western 

indologists who admitted that the Indic contribution to ciuvilozation was 

independent ogf Greece and Babylon

147 K Nilakantha Sastri (1892 – 

1975) 

K Nilakanta Sastri was Professor of history at the University of Madras. The Journal 

of the Royal Asiatic Society, called the first edition of the book,A History of South 

India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar. published in 1955, a very 

impressive work 

Review: Barbara J. Harrison 

The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3 (May, 1956), pp. 452-455 

doi:10.2307/2941900 

There is still the obsession with Aryan sand Dravidians. The definitive history of 

India, shorn of such artifical and concocted diversity and distinctions has yet to be 

written. 

183

148 Biraja Sankar Guha 

184 

(August 15, 1894 Shillong- 

October 20, 1961 Ghatshila, 

Bihar) 


Biraja Sankar Guha was an Indian physical anthropologist, who classified Indian 

people into races around the early part of the 20th century.He may have been sincere 

in his beliefs about the racial divisions of India, but as we remark later on in this 

column, his studies were very convenient for the colonial enterprise and he was 

amply rewarded for such a stance 

Career 

B. S. Guha did his graduation in philosophy from the Scottish Church College and 

earned his post-graduate degree (also in philosophy) from the University of Calcutta. 

He worked as a research scholar in anthropology in the Government of Bengal in 

1917. In 1920, he received the A.M. degree in anthropology from Harvard University, 

with distinction, and became the Hemenway Fellow of the University. During 1922- 

1924 he worked as a research scholar at the Harvard Museum of Natural History 

(Boston), American Museum of Natural History (New York), and the Bureau of 

Ethnicity of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.. In 1924, he was awarded a 

Ph.D. degree in anthropology from Harvard University, for his thesis on "The Racial 

basis of the Caste System in India". In the process he became one of the earliest 

recipients of the doctorate in that discipline in the world and certainly, the first Indian 

citizen to do so. 

In 1927, he joined the anthropological section of the Zoological Survey of India [1] . 

In 1934, Guha became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain 

and Ireland, and member of the Permanent Council of the International Congress of 

Anthropology. In 1936, he founded the Indian Anthropological Institute in Calcutta 

(now Kolkata). In 1938, he became the President of the Anthropology Section of the 

British Association for the Advancement of Science. 

In 1944, he submitted a new proposal for a separate Anthropological Survey of 

India [1] . His proposal was supported by Nelson Annandale (the first director of the 

newly founded Zoological Survey of India) and Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell 

(1880-1964), Annandale's successor. In September 1945, zoology was moved under 

the Department of Agriculture, and a separate Anthropological Survey of India was 

set up under the Department of Education. The Survey came into being on December 

1, 1945 with Guha as in-charge, first as "Officer on Special Duty" and later as 

Director (from August 1946-1954). 

In 1955, Guha became the Director of Social Education Training Centre in Ranchi.

149 Stella Kramrisch 

born 1896 Nikolsburg (now 

Mikulov ), Czech Republic 

died 1993 Philadelphia , 

USA 

Career and training Art historian of South Asian art. Studied under Joseph 

Strzygowski (q.v.) at University of Vienna. Dissertation on early Buddhist sculpture 

(1919). 1921-50 taught at University of Calcutta. During those years she edited 

Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art and published numerous works 

including magnum opus, The Hindu Temple (1946). She traveled to the U.S. as early 

as 1922, but after the assassination of her husband in Pakistan (1950), she moved 

there permanently to the United States where she taught at the Institute of Fine Art, 

New York University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Museum of 

Art. 

Methodologically, Kramrisch remained close to her mentor, Strzygowski, studying 

the object using a metaphysical approach and employing distinctly non-western 

concepts in her history writing. While a student, she was influenced by Kandinsky's 

art theory and the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner (whom she knew personally). In 

India, she converted to Hinduism and amassed a significant collection of South 

Asian art objects which she ultimately sold or willed to the Philadelphia Museum of 

Art. The major exhibition she mounted at the museum in 1968, "Unknown India" 

perhaps best demonstrates her belief that the understanding of both aristocratic and 

common art objects were necessary to appreciate a culture's artistic 

accomplishment. 

Stella Kramrisch was one of the key individuals (along with a few others like Ananda 

Coomaraswamy) largely responsible for the widespread awareness of the aesthetics, 

beauty and uniqueness of Indian art. 

Country: Austria/United States 

Biography: New York Times, January 24, 1999, Section 2: 35. Dictionary of Art 18: 

437-8; Miller, Barbara Stoler, "Stella Kramrisch: A Biographical Essay," pp 3-34, in 

Exploring India's Sacred Art: Selected Writings of Stella Kramrisch, Barbara Stoler 

Miller, ed. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1983; Threads of Cotton, 

Threads of Brass: Arts of Eastern India and Bangladesh from the Stella Kramrisch 185 

Collection. Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition catalog, 1999. 

Bibliography: [complete bibliography:] Dye, Joseph M., III, comp. "A Bibliography of 

the Writings of Stella Kramrisch." in Exploring India's Sacred Art: Selected Writings 

of Stella Kramrisch. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1983, pp. 35-48; 

[dissertation:] Untersuchungen zum Wesen der frühbuddhistischen Bildnerei 

Indiens. Ph. D., University of Vienna, 1919; The Hindu Temple. 2 vols. Calcutta: 

University of Calcutta, 1946. (Repr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976). Presence of 

Siva. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981; Unknown India: Ritual Art in

150 Louis Renou 

186 

(1896-1966) 

Louis Renou 

Louis Renou (1896-1966) was the pre-eminent French indologist of the 20th century. 

In particular, he studied Indian culture and Sanskrit. Only a part of his work has been 

translated to English. 

Bibliography 

• Religions of Ancient India, (1968), Schocken Books ISBN 0-8052-0179-3 

• History of Vedic India. New Delhi, Sanjay Prakashan, 2004, xi, 216 p., ISBN 81- 

7453-102-5 

• Hinduism, (1961), George Braziller, ISBN 0-8076-0164-0 

• A History of Sanskrit Language, (translated by Balbir, Jagbans Kishore) (2003) 

ISBN 81-202-029-4 

In French 

• L’Inde classique : manuel des études indiennes, with Jean Filliozat, Paris : 

Payot, 1947 

• L’Inde classique : manuel des études indiennes, with Jean Filliozat, vol. II (with 

Paul Demiéville, Olivier Lacombe and Pierre Meile), Paris : Imprimerie 

Nationale, 1953 

• Aṣṭādhyāyī La grammaire de Pāṇini Paris : École française d’Extrême-Orient, 

1966 

• L'Inde fondamentale Hermann, Collection Savoir, c1978. ISBN 2-7056-5885-8. 

• Louis Renou : choix d'études indiennes Paris : École française d'Extrême- 

Orient, 1997. (2 vol.) 

• Notes sur la version « Paippalada » de l'atharva-veda, Paris: imprimerie 

nationale 1964 

• Sur le genre du Sutra dans la littérature sanskrite, Paris: imprimerie nationale 

1963 

• Littérature sanskrite, A.Maissonneuve 1946 

• Grammaire et Vedanta, Paris imprimerie nationale 1957 

• Fragments du Vinaya Sanskrit, Paris: imprimerie nationale 1911 

• Etudes védiques, Paris: imprimerie nationale 1952 

• Etudes védiques et paninéennes (2 volumes), Paris: imprimerie nationale 

1980-1986

151 Otto E. Neugebauer, 

Professor of History of 

mathematics , Brown 

University 

May 26, 1899 — February 

19, 1990 

By N. M. Swerdlow 

OTTO NEUGEBAUER WAS one of the most original and productive scholars of the 

history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age. He began 

as a mathematician, turned first to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, and then 

took up the history of mathematical astronomy, to which he afterward devoted the 

greatest part of his attention. In a career of sixty-five years, he to a great extent 

created our understanding of mathematical astronomy from Babylon and Egypt, 

through Greco-Roman antiquity, to India, Islam, and Europe of the Middle Ages and 

Renaissance. Through his colleagues, students, and many readers, his influence on 

the study of the history of the exact sciences remains profound, even definitive. 

Neugebauer was born in Innsbruck, Austria, his father Rudolph Neugebauer a 

railroad construction engineer and a collector and scholar of Oriental carpets. His 

family soon moved to Graz where his parents died when he was quite young. He 

attended the Akademisches Gymnasium, and was far more interested in 

mathematics, mechanics, and technical drawing than in the required courses in 

Greek and Latin. Because his family was Protestant, he was exempted from 

mandatory instruction in religion, which also pleased him.To cut a long story short, 

Neugebauer eventually took up a position as Professor of Mathematics at Brown 

Unversity where he did the bulk of his research into the exact science sin antiquity. 

What interests us about Neugebauer is that he shifted the interest of the world from 

its preoccupation with Greece to Babylon. Once he had done so , the notional 

stranglehold that ‘all civilization came from Greece’ was broken and it was possible 

for people to fathom that there were other areas of the world where there was 

scholarship in the ancient world. In fact it was Neugebauer who first proposed that 

Babylon may not have been the only source of ideas in the ancient world and that 

the mathematics as decribed in the Vedas and the Sulva Sutras which we now know 

predates at least the Egyptian and most likely also the Babylonian civilizations , may 

have developed independently of the Babylonians . It finally dawned upon him that 

the decimal place value system as well as the symbolic respresentation of an 

unknown quantity by alphabets, that created the field of algebra as we now know it, 

was the reason for the great advantage that the indics had over everybody else in 187 the 

world during that period. It may have also occurred to him that the Indic was unique 

in the use of the techniques now known as analytic geometry and hence their 

approach to proof was quite different from that of the Greeks. All these deductions 

are based on the faulty but never exolicitly stated premise that the Indics were 

incapable of developing their own script and numerical notation system.The 

Babylonians on the other hand used a place value system, a sexagesimal system 

based on 60 (The Jovian orbital period is approximately 12 years long and that may 

have had something to do with the choice of 60 as the base for the numerical 

system). But such a system is far more cumbersome for arithmetic and algebraic

152 

153 Andre Malraux 

188 

((November 3, 1901 – 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Malraux#Bibliography_include 

Malraux was born in Paris. His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. 

He was raised by his mother, Berthe Lamy, and maternal grandmother, Adrienne 

Lamy. His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930.Malraux studied Oriental 

languages at the École des Langues Orientales but did not graduate. At the age of 21 

he left for Cambodia with his new wife, Clara Goldschmidt, a German Jewish heiress 

whom he married in 1921 and divorced in 1946. (They had a daughter, Florence, born 

1933, who married the filmmaker Alain Resnais.) In Cambodia he was arrested and 

almost imprisoned for trying to smuggle out a bas-relief from the Banteay Srei 

temple.He became highly critical of the French colonial authorities in Indochina and 

in 1925 helped to organize the Young Annam League; he also founded the 

newspaper Indochina in Chains. 

On his return to France he published his first novel, The Temptation of the West 

(1926). This was followed by The Conquerors (1928), The Royal Way (1930) and 

Man's Fate (1933). For the latter, a powerful novel about the defeat of a communist 

regime in Shanghai and the choices facing the losers, he won the 1933 Prix Goncourt 

of literature. Included in his non-published work is Mayrena, a novel about the 

eccentric French adventurer Marie-Charles David de Mayrena, conqueror of the 

highlands of Vietnam and first king of the Sedangs.

154 Fernand Braudel 

(August 24, 1902 – 


Fernand Braudel 


Fernand Braudel 

Fernand Braudel (August 24, 1902–November 27, 1985) was a French historian. He 

revolutionized the 20th century study of his discipline by considering the effects of 

such outside disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography on global 

history. He was a prominent member of the Annales School of historiography, who 

concentrated on meticulous Biography 

He was born in Luméville-en-Ornois, in the département of the Meuse. Not only was 

he born there to the peril of his parent's summer vacation, but he also lived with his 

paternal Grandmother for a long time. He studied at the elite Paris Institute of 

Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po). His father who was a natural 

mathematician aided him in his studies. Braudel also studied a lot of Latin and a little 

Greek. He loved History and wrote poetry. Braudel wanted to be a doctor but his 

father opposed this idea. In 1923 he went to Algeria, then a French colony, to teach 

history. Returning to France in 1932, he worked as a high school teacher and met 

Lucien Febvre, the co-founder of the influential Annales journal, who was to have a 

great influence on his work. With him, he travelled to Brazil in 1935 to "build" the 

University of São Paulo, and using his own words "one of the happiest times in my 

life", returning together with Febvre in 1937. In 1939, he joined the army but was 

captured in 1940 and became a prisoner of war in a camp near Lübeck in Germany, 

where, working from memory, he put together his great work La Méditerranée et le 

Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II (The Mediterranean and 189 the 

Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II). Part of his motivation for writing the 

book, he said, was that, as a "Northerner," he had come to love the Mediterranean. 

After the war he worked with Febvre in a new college, founded separately from the 

Sorbonne, dedicated to social and economic history. 

In 1962 he wrote A History of Civilizations to be the basis for a history course, but its 

rejection of the traditional event-based narrative was too radical for the French 

ministry of education, which rejected it.

155 Joseph Campbell (1904- 

1987) 

190 

follows in the tradition of Heinrich Zimmer, albeit he uses the word myth much too 

liberally

156 K D Sethna (1904 - ) In 1980 KD Sethna published a landmark in Indian History, titled The problem of Aryan 

origins from an Indian point of view. Indians, at least on the eve of the 20th century were 

certainly not used to the notion of History as being subject to a certain point of view. They 

assumed there was only one version of history which was closest to the truth. Sethna’s 

book was one of the first that pointed out how wrong they could be Sethna questioned the 

very fundamentals upon which the Aryan invasion theoory was based 

He was 76 at that time and 12 years later he updated a second edition of the book. The Indic 

needed to be reminded that history is written by the conquerors not as a search for the truth 

but to push forward their own ideologies and worldviews. The conqueror does this for many 

reasons, not the last of which is in order to finesse the need to fight a second battle all 

over again. It is an understatement to say that KD Sethna has had a remarkable influence 

on how Indians perceive their own history 

(Redirected from Amal Kiran) 

Kaikhosru Dadhaboy (K.D.) Sethna, 26 

November 1904) is an Indian poet, 

scholar, writer, philosopher, and cultural 

critic. He has published more than forty 

books. He is also known as Amal Kiran. 

Kiran studied at St. Xaviers School and 

St. Xaviers College, affiliated to Bombay 

University and was one of Sri 

Aurobindo's earliest disciples, arriving at 

the Ashram in 1927, age twenty-three, to 

take up the path of Integral Yoga under 

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. He was 

named Amal Kiran, or "Clear Ray", by Sri 

Aurobindo in 1930. His book of poems 

Inmost Beauty was published at 1933. 

In 1949 he was a founding editor of the 

Sri Aurobindo Ashram journal Mother 

India, which he edited for almost fifty 

years. He has recently celebrated his 

centenary at the Beach Office of the Sri 

Aurobindo Society. 

Originally, Amal Kiran was born a Parsi- 

Zoroastrian but, after meeting with Sri 

Aurobindo, embraced Hinduism. 

Books: 

Teachings: 

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo 

Life Divine, Synthesis of Yoga, Savitri, 

The Mother, Letters, Agenda 

Important Places: 

Communities: 

• Involution/Involution, Evolution 

• Integral education, Integral 

psychology 

• Integral yoga, Triple 

transformation 

• Physical, Vital, Mental, Psychic, 

Spirit 

• Overmind, Supermind, Gnostic 

being 

• Matrimandir 

Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Auroville, 

Important Disciples: 

Champaklal, N.K.Gupta, Amal Kiran, 

Nirodbaran, Pavitra, M.P.Pandit, 

191

157 Paul Thieme (1905 – 2001) Paul Thieme (1905-2001) was a scholar of Vedic Sanskrit. He received his doctorate 

in Indology in 1928 in Göttingen, and habilitated there in 1932. From 1932 to 1935 he 

taught German and French at the University of Allahabad. He taught at Breslau from 

1936 to 1940, and reveived tenure at Halle in 1941, but in the same year he was 

drafted to the German army, where he worked as an interpreter. In 1945, he was 

captured by U.S. troops in Württemberg. After his release in 1946, he returned to 

Halle, where he remained until 1953, when he moved to Frankfurt for a professorship 

in Indo-European studies, against the will of the GDR authorities. From 1954 to 1960 

he was in Yale, and from 1960 to his retirement in 1972 in Tübingen as professor for 

Religious studies and Indology. 

192 

Thieme is considered one of the "last great Indologists", advancing all aspects of the 

philology of Sanskrit, with expertise reaching from the Vedas to the Epics and the 

Upanishads, Sanskrit poetry and traditional Hindu science (shastra), and Indian 

grammarians (Panini and his commentators). Thieme was also a comparative 

linguist, studying Iranian and Indo-European languages in general. Thieme was 

fluent in Sanskrit, and therefore respected among traditional Indian scholars, and 

rendered the inauguration speech at the first World Sanskrit Conference in Delhi in 

1971-1972. 

Selected bibliography 

• 1929: Das Plusquamperfektum im Veda (Diss. Göttingen 1928). 

• 1935: Panini and the Veda. Studies in the Early History of Linguistic Science in 

India. Allahabad 

• 1938: Der Fremdling im Rigveda. Eine Studie über die Bedeutung der Worte 

ari, arya, aryaman und aarya, Leipzig. 

External link 

• http://www.indologie.uni-halle.de/instgesch/th.htm 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Thieme"

158 Jean Filliozat, 

Born November 4,1906 , 

died 1982 

Jean Filliozat was a French author and Indologist. He studied medicine and was a 

physician between 1930 and 1947. He learned Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Tamil. He 

wrote some important works on the history of Indian medicine. 

Jean Filliozat started his career as a physician in Opthalmology, which he practiced 

between 1930 and 1947 but gravitated eventually to the study of Oriental religions 

and medicine. 

He earned a dploma in 1934 from the École pratique des hautes etudes with a thesis 

where he compared a text in Sanskrit, the Kumâratantra of Râvana, with the parallels 

in other languages of India, in Tibetan, Chinese, Cambodian and Arabic. contributed 

in 1946 to a PhD thesis “ The classic doctrine of Indian medicine” . His vocation for 

scientific research, his medical studies, his taste for the wisdom of the East, have 

played a major role in defining the subject of history of Indian medicine 

Filliozat could not go to India before 1947. His first years were therefore devoted to 

the study of texts. He was attached to the Department of oriental manuscripts of the 

National Library between 1936 to 1941, and a Fellow of modern languages of India 

(Tamil) at the École National oriental languages births beween 1937 and 1939, 

responsible 

s'oriente d'abord vers la médecine (ophtalmologie), qu'il pratique de 1930 à 1947 

Parallèlement, pendant ces années de formation, de pratique et de recherches 

médicales, il s'initie à l'orientalisme. Il apprend le sanskrit, le pâli, le tibétain et le 

tamoul, est licencié ès lettres en 1936 avec des certificats d'études indiennes 

(1932), d'histoire des religions (1933), d'ethnologie (1936) et un diplôme de l'École 

nationale des langues orientales (tamoul, 1935).. Il obtient en 1934 un diplôme de 

l'École pratique des hautes études avec une thèse où il compare un texte sanskrit, 

193 

le Kumâratantra de Râvana, avec des parallèles en d'autres langues de l'Inde, en 

tibétain, chinois, cambodgien et arabe. Il soutient en 1946 une thèse de doctorat ès 

lettres, La doctrine classique de la médecine indienne. Sa vocation pour la 

recherche scientifique, ses études médicales, son goût de l'Orient, l'ont engagé 

d'emblée vers l'histoire de la médecine indienne. Mais il ne sera jamais le 

spécialiste d'un champ de recherche unique. Sa vocation est universelle et le milieu 

des maîtres qui le guident contribue sans doute beaucoup à universaliser son 

orientation. S. Lévi l'entraîne vers le domaine dravidien, afin d'éclairer la

159 Alain Danielou(October 

4,1907-January 27,1994) 

194 

• La Musique de l'Inde du Nord 

• Le Temple Hindou - Architecture sacrée ( 'The Hindu Temple; Deification of 

Eroticism' in English) 

• Music and the Power of Sound 

• Histoire de l'Inde ( "A Brief History of India' in English) 

• The first unabridged translation of the Kama Sutra 

• Virtue, Success, Pleasure and Liberation (The Four Aims of Life) 

• Ragas of North Indian Classical Music 

• Le chemin du labyrinthe (autobiography 

Like most French indologists, Alain Danielou makes up his own mind regarding the 

worth and value of the contributions of the ancient Indic civilization . He is all the 

more refreshing in his writings because of his special interest in Music. The More I 

read of the writing so the French school of Indologists , the more I like.

160 Abraham Seidenberg 

1916-1988 

Ph.D. The Johns Hopkins 

University 1943 

Professor Emeritus, 1987 University of California, Berkeley 

The distinguished mathematician and historian of mathematics Abraham 

Seidenberg, who taught at Berkeley for 42 years, died in Milan, Italy, on May 3, 1988. 

He had been born in Washington, D.C., on June 2, 1916 and received his B.A. degree 

at the University of Maryland in 1937 and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1943 before 

joining the Department of Mathematics at Berkeley as Instructor in 1945. He became 

Professor in 1958 and Professor, Emeritus in 1987. His career included a 

Guggenheim Fellowship, Visiting Professorships at Harvard and at the University of 

Milan, and numerous invited addresses, including several series of lectures at the 

University of Milan, the National University of Mexico, and at the Accademia 

Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. At the time of his death, he was in the midst of another 

series of lectures at the University of Milan. 

Seidenberg's writings, as were his lectures, are noted for their meticulous clarity of 

expression. His publications in pure mathematics include some very influential work 

in commutative algebra, notably his joint paper with I.S. Cohen that greatly simplified 

the existing proofs of the so-called going-up and going-down theorems of ideal 

theory, and a recent series of papers on finiteness results and constructive methods 

in algebra. His articles on algebraic geometry include a much-quoted one on the 

normality of the general hyperplane section of a normal projective variety. His 

papers on differential algebra include several on the foundations of differential 

algebra, for any number of differentiations and for any field characteristic, on the 

11 Seidenberg, A The origin of mathematics, Archive Picard-Vessiot for History theory of Exact of Sciences. homogeneous vol. 18, linear 301-342, 

differential equations, and on the socalled 

Lefschetz-Seidenberg principle of differential algebra, an analog of the 

Lefschetz principle for algebraic geometry, which says, very roughly, that algebraic 195 

geometry of characteristic zero is the same as algebraic geometry over the field of 

complex numbers. Another famous result is the Tarski-Seidenberg theorem, to the 

effect that there is a decision procedure for algebra over the real number field and 

for elementary geometry, first proved by Tarski using complicated logical machinery, 

then restated more simply by Seidenberg and given a much simpler mathematical 

proof. 

Seidenberg was the author of two textbooks aimed largely at undergraduate

161 Ram Swaroop 

196 

(1920 - December 26, 1998) 


Ram Swarup (राम ः वरूप) [1] was an independent Hindu thinker. A prolific author, his 

works took a critical stance against Christianity, Islam and Communism. His work 

greatly influenced later Indian writers. 

Life 

He graduated in Economics at Delhi University in 1941. He participated in the Indian 

Freedom Movement, [2] and helped Freedom fighters like Aruna Asaf Ali [3] . He started 

the Changer's Club in 1944. Its members included L. C. Jain, Raj Krishna, Girilal Jain, 

and historian Sita Ram Goel. [4] In 1948-49, he worked for Gandhi's disciple Mira Behn 

(Madeleine Slade). [5] 

Swarup worked for the DRS, where he wrote a book on the Communist party that 

was published under someone else's name. [6] In 1949 he started the Society for the 

Defence of Freedom in Asia. [7] The Society published books that were reviewed in 

the West, and criticized in the Communist newspapers Izvestia and Pravda. [8] [9] It 

closed in 1955. [10] His early book "Gandhism and Communism" from this time had 

some influence among American policy makers and Congress men. [11] 

In 1982 he founded the non-profit publishing house Voice of India, [12] which 

published works by Harsh Narain, A.K. Chatterjee, K.S. Lal, Koenraad Elst, Rajendra 

Singh, Sant R.S. Nirala, and Shrikant Talageri among others . [13] 

American author David Frawley wrote, "While Voice of India had a controversial 

reputation, I found nothing irrational, much less extreme about their ideas or 

publications... Their criticisms of Islam were on par with the criticisms of the 

Catholic Church and of Christianity done by such Western thinkers as Voltaire or 

Thomas Jefferson. In fact they went far beyond such mere rational or historical 

criticisms of other religions and brought in a profound spiritual and yogic view as 

well." [14] 

Author 

Ram Swarup's book "The Word As Revelation: Names of Gods" was published in 

1980 by Sita Ram Goel. The book was received favourably by Girilal Jain, and was 

reviewed by Dr. Sisir Kumar Maitra in the Times of India. [15]

162 

163 Lal, Braj Basi 

Born Jhansi 1921 - 

Completed his graduate 

work 

at Allahabad University 

(1921- ) Former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 

1968 to 1972. Elected to revert to do research reather than being in an 

administrative capacity at the age of 51 . Learned hhis craft wiking with Mortimer 

Wheeler at Taxila in 1944. Dug with him at Arikamedu, Harappa, Brahmagiri, and 

other sites. After 1947, carried out excavations at Hastinapur, Kalibangan.... . 

Instrumental in establishing the first regular School of Archaeology in New Delhi in 

1959, under the overall charge of the ASI. He was its first Director, a post that he held 

till 1965. In 1968 he became DG of ASI, a post that he held till 1972. After a short spell 

at Jiwaji University at Gwalior, he joined Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Simla 

in 1977 as a fellow, and later became its Director, a post that he held till 1984. He 

excavated many famous sites, including Kalibangan and conceived the Ramayana 

Project. His publications include, apart from many papers and reports, The Earliest 

Civilization of South Asia. 

197

164 Alexander Basham, 192x ? India A. L. Basham, regarded as a scholar on ancient India, writes in The Wonder 

That Was India: 

198 

"Medieval Indian mathematicians, such as Brahmagupta (seventh century), Mahavira 

(ninth century), and Bhaskara (twelfth century), made several discoveries which in 

Europe were not known until the Renaissance or later. They understood the import 

of positive and negative quantities, evolved sound systems of extracting square and 

cube roots, and could solve quadratic and certain types of indeterminate 

equations." Mahavira's most noteworthy contribution is his treatment of fractions 

for the first time and his rule for dividing one fraction by another, which did not 

appear in Europe until the 16th century. 

B. B. Dutta writes: "The use of symbols-letters of the alphabet to denote unknowns, 

and equations are the foundations of the science of algebra. The Hindus were the 

first to make systematic use of the letters of the alphabet to denote unknowns. They 

were also the first to classify and make a detailed study of equations. Thus they may 

be said to have given birth to the modern science of algebra." 

The great Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya (1150 C.E.) produced extensive 

treatises on both plane and spherical trigonometry and algebra, and his works 

contain remarkable solutions of problems which were not discovered in Europe until 

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He preceded Newton by over 500 years in 

the discovery of the principles of differential calculus. 

A. L. Basham writes further, "The mathematical implications of zero (sunya) and 

infinity, never more than vaguely realized by classical authorities, were fully 

understood in medieval India. Earlier mathematicians had taught that X/0 = X, but 

Bhaskara proved the contrary. He also established mathematically what had been 

recognized in Indian theology at least a millennium earlier: that infinity, however 

divided, remains infinite, ‘ 

In the 14th century, Madhava in South India, developed a power series for the arc 

tangent function, apparently without the use of calculus, allowing the calculation of 

to any number of decimal places (since arc tan 1 = /4). Whether he accomplished this 

by inventing a system as good as calculus or without the aid of calculus; either way 

it is astonishing. Stanley Wolpert says: " An untutored Kerala mathematician named 

Madhava developed his own system of calculus, based on his knowledge of 

trigonometry around A.D. 1500, more than a century before either Newton or 

Liebnitz.

165 Roger Louis Billard (1922– 

2000) 

Roger Billard, the historian of Indian astronomy, was born in Puteaux, in the 

outskirts of Paris, on 29 August 1922. He was the only child of parents who lived 

in modest circumstances. As a boy he developed an interest in both astronomy and 

Oriental studies, at one time selling his bicycle to buy a Sanskrit dictionary. But his 

JHA, xxxii (2001) 

Roger Billard, L'astronomie Indienne. Paris: Publications de l'ecole francaise 

d'extreme-orient, 1971.. 

Billard, Roger, “Åryabhata and Indian Astronomy,” 12.2 (1977) 207-24. 

References to these texts were made by Billard in his book 

Rajamriganka by Bhoja (1042 CE) [Billard (1971), p. 101 

Siddhántashekhara by Shripati (1039 CE) [Billard (1971), p. 101 

ShishyadhIivrddhidatantra by Lalla (tenth century CE) [Billard (1971), p. 10] 

Laghubháskariyaivivarana by Shankaranâràyana (869 CE) [Billard (1971), p.8] 

Bhaskarivabhasya by Govindasvàmin (c. 830 CE) IBillard (1971), p.81 

199

166 Edwin Bryant 

(Ph.D,Columbia,1997) 

167 Asko Parpola 

200 

Somewhat more balanced than the rest of the Anglo American cohorts. While 

sympathetic towards the traditions of ancient Indics, does not show sufficient 

courage to stand up for his own convictions and to call a spade a spade and that 

the Aryan invasion theory is Anaarya and an ignoble effort to rob the native 

inhabitannts of the Indian peninsula of their own heritage 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search 

Asko Parpola is a professor emeritus of Indology and South Asian Studies at the 

University of Helsinki, Finland. He specializes in the Indus script. He is best known 

for his theory that the script encodes a Dravidian language.He is brother of the 

Akkadian language epigrapher Simo Parpola pdf.httDp://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/ , 

http://www.harappa.com/script/parpola0.html

168 David E. Pingree 

2 January 1933 

11 November 2005 

While no one will dispute the considerable tenacity, scholarship, and single 

mindedness with which he pursued his studies especially of ancient Indian 

astronomy, the approach David Pingree takes to the contributions of the Vedics of 

Ancient india to Astronomy is fundamentally flawed by the assumption that he 

makes that India borrowed practically everything from the Greeks or the 

Babylonians. This is not borne out by any evidence but remains a conjecture. The 

late Abraham Seidenberg of the University of California Berkeley, whose credentials 

in the field of History of Mathematics are quite well known, was finally convinced that 

the Mathematics of the Sulvasutra predated the Greeks by several centuries snd 

developed independently of the Babylonians. 

Eulogy by Jon McGinnis “On 11 November 2005, at the age of 72, David E. Pingree 

passed away. With the passing of this one man, the academic world lost a 

philologist, historian, mathematician, anthropologist, intellectual detective, and true 

gentleman. Pingree’s interests ranged from the exact sciences, such as mathematics 

and astronomy, to the not so exact sciences, such as astrology and divination; they 

spanned the lands from India to Europe, and the times of ancient Mesopotamia to the 

Renaissance. Because Pingree treated so many areas that spread across such 

diverse cultures, languages and times, it is nearly impossible for any single 

individual to do justice to his work. The following, then, can only hope to provide a 

few of the pieces in the intricate mosaic that was David Pingree’s life. 

Pingree was born on 2 January 1933 in New Haven, Connecticut. His family 

moved to Massachusetts when he was a teenager, where he attended high school at 

Phillips Academy. At an early age he already showed an interest in mathematics and 

the classics, and it was while still in high school that he began teaching himself 

Sanskrit -- just one of the numerous language he would come to master in order to 

pursue his interests. After high school, Pingree attended Harvard University for both 

his undergraduate and graduate work. He received his B.S. degree in 1954 and then 

went on to complete his PhD in 1960, writing his dissertation, Materials for the Study 

of the Transmission of Greek Astrology to India, under Daniel Ingalls and the 

renowned historian of ancient mathematics, Otto Neugebauer, with whom Pingree 201 

would later work as a colleague at Brown University. In 1958, while still pursing his 

graduate degree, Pingree traveled to India to further his study of Sanskrit and while 

there studied informally with a modern Indian astrologer at Poona. After completing 

his PhD, Pingree remained at Harvard three more years as a member of its Society of 

Fellows before moving to the University of Chicago to accept the position of 

Research Associate at the Oriental Institute. In 1971, his former advisor, Otto 

Neugebauer, successfully recruited Pingree to succeed him in Brown University’s 

Department of the History of Mathematics, of which in 1986 Pingree himself became 

Chairman and where he remained until his death.

169 

170 Michael Witzel 

202

171 Wakankar, Vishnu Shridhar 

May 4 1919 - 1988 

Dr. Wakankar discovered and studied more than 4000 rock caves in India including 

the caves at Bhimabetka, pushing the dates of Indian artistic activities back to 40,000 

years ago. He also discovered rock shelter paintings in Europe and America. His 

major contribution to Indian History and Indic studies is in the recognition of the 

identification of the dried up Sarasvati Ghaggar paleo channel as the Sarasvati river 

mentrioned in the Rg . On 17th November, the Dr. Wakankar had begun his four 

thousand miles long Marathon Yatr from Adi Badri… to Somanath tracing the entire 

course of the Sarasvati river to draw attention to the significance of this river to 

Indian History…. 

Interview with Wakankar by K. L. Kamat 

Sources: 

• Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar by V. N. Misra. pp.16 (2001). 

Pub: Bharatiya Itihaas Sankalana Samiti, 528/C Shaniwar Peth, Pune-411030, 

Maharashtra. 

• Obituary section - Man and Environment, Vol. 13 (1989). 

• Wakankar Shodh Sansthan (Wakankar Indological / Cultural Research Trust) 

(http://members.rediff.com/wakankar/) 

In another interview he talks about the myth that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea 

route to India 

Did Vasco da Gama discover the route to India? 

Another illusion that the British spread was the Vasco da Gama discovered the 203 sea 

route to India. It is true that Vasco da Gama came to India but if we get to know how 

he came, then reality will become clear. 

The famous archeologist Padmashri Dr. Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar says, “I had gone 

to England for studies. I was told about Vasco da Gama’s diary available in a 

museum in which he has described how he came to India.” He writes that when his 

ship come near Zanzibar in Africa, he saw a ship three times bigger than the size of 

his ship. He took an African interpreter to meet the owner of that ship who was a 

Gujarati trader named Chandan who used to bring pine wood and teak from India

172 Shikaripura 

Ranganatha Rao 

204 

Born 1922 

Shikaripur Ranganatha Rao (born 1922) is an Indian archeologist who led teams 

credited with the discovery of a number of Harappan sites including the famous port 

city of Lothal in Gujarat. 

Biography and career 

Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao completed his education at Mysore University. He 

worked in the Archaeological Department of Baroda State and subsequently served 

the Archaeological Survey of India in various capacities. Dr. Rao has led excavations 

of many important sites such as Rangpur, Amreli, Bhagatrav, Dwaraka, Hanur, 

Aihole, Kaveripattinam and others. One of his most important works were leading the 

research and excavations at Lothal, the earliest known port in history and the most 

important Indus-era site in India. Dr. Rao was the recipient of Jawaharlal Nehru 

Fellowship and a doctorate of literature from Mysore University. Rao had supervised 

excavation of several historic sites across the country in the West and South. He 

was also associated with conservation of monuments such as Taj Mahal and forts. 

Despite officially retiring in 1980, Dr. Rao was requested to work for the ASI Director 

General in leading Indian archaeological projects. It was under the initiative of Dr 

Rao that the NIO opened a marine archaeology research centre in 1981, under the 

stewardship of then director Dr S. Z. Quazim, which grew into a world recognised 

body. He was the founder of the Society of Marine Archaeology in India. Rao has 

been at the forefront of Indian archaeology for many decades - he was involved in 

extensive research into India's ancient and often mythical past, from the sites of the 

Indus Valley Civilization to excavations pertaining to the Kurukshetra War. 

Indus script decipherment claim 

Ancient Lothal as envisaged by the Archaeological Survey of India. 

Rao (1992)) [1] claimed to have deciphered the Indus script. Postulating uniformity of 

the script over the full extent of Indus-era civilization, he compared it to West Asian 

alphabets, and assigned sound values based on this comparison. His decipherment 

results in an "Sanskritic" reading, including the numerals aeka, tra, chatus, panta, 

happta/sapta, dasa, dvadasa, sata (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 100). 

While mainstream scholarship is generally in agreement with Rao's approach of 

comparison, the details of his decipherment have not been accepted, and the script 

is still generally considered undeciphered. John E. Mitchiner, after dismissing some 

more fanciful attempts at decipherment, mentions that "a more soundly-based but 

still greatly subjective and unconvincing attempt to discern an Indo-European basis 

[2]

173 Girilal Jain 

(1924 – 1993) 

Girilal Jain, Editor, The Times of India 

Published: July 26, 1993 

Girilal Jain, an influential Indian journalist, died on July 1, 1993 in New Delhi. He was 

69. 

Mr. Jain, who joined The Times of India in 1950, served as editor in chief from 1978 to 

1988. In columns and other writings, he often argued that a weak central government 

was a danger to India, and that Mrs. Gandhi was needed to provide authority, 

discipline and order. She was Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 until 

she was assassinated in 1984. 

His support of Mrs. Gandhi was notable during her crackdown on political opponents 

from 1975 to 1977, beginning with the arrest of hundreds. 

After her death, Mr. Jain continued to call for strong government, writing in 1987 of 

the need to renew and strengthen "the institutions of a modern state which we 

inherited from the British, and which have become caricatures of the original 

models." 

Girilal Jain matured into becoming one of the most refreshing voices in Indan 

Journalism today. Culminating in his book titled The Hindu Phenomenon. Typical of 

his later writings is this piece 

His view of the Hindu right wing 

Mr. Jain, who was born in a rural village 50 miles from New Delhi, received a 

bachelor's degree from Delhi University. 

He married Sudarshan Jain in 1951; they had a son and three daughters. 

205

174 Samuel Huntington 

206 

Born April 18,1927 

Samuel Phillips Huntington (born April 18, 1927) is a controversial US political 

scientist known for his analysis of the relationship between the military and the civil 

government, his investigation of coups d'etat, his thesis (inspired by Polish scientist 

Feliks Koneczny) that the central political actors of the 21st century will be 

civilizations rather than nation-states and, most recently, for his views on US 

immigration. He graduated from Yale and received his Ph.D. from Harvard. As an 

advisor to Lyndon Johnson and in an influential 1968 article, he justified heavy 

bombardment of the countryside of South Vietnam as a means to drive the peasants 

and supporters of the Viet Cong into urban areas. Huntington also served as coauthor 

on the report, "The Governability of Democracies", that was issued by the 

Trilateral Commission in 1976. More recently, he garnered widespread attention for 

his analysis of threats posed to the United States by modern-day immigration. He is 

a professor at Harvard University. Huntington came to prominence as a scholar in 

the 1960s with the publication of Political Order in Changing Societies, a work that 

challenged the conventional view of modernization theorists that economic and 

social progress would bring about stable democracies in recently decolonized 

countries. 

The Clash of Civilizations 

For more details on this topic, see Clash of Civilizations. 

In 1993, Huntington ignited a major debate amongst international relations theorists 

with the publication in Foreign Affairs of an extremely influential and often-cited 

article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations?" The article contrasted with another 

political thesis regarding the core dynamics of post-Cold War geopolitics expressed 

by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History. Huntington later expanded the article 

into a full-length book, published in 1996 by Simon and Schuster, entitled The Clash 

of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. The article and the book 

articulated his views that post-Cold War conflict would occur most frequently and 

violently along cultural as opposed to ideological lines. He argued that, whilst in the 

cold war conflict was most likely to occur between the Western free world and the 

Communist Bloc, it was now most likely between the world's major civilizations, of 

which he identified eight with a possible ninth: Western, Latin American, Islamic, 

Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese, and the possible ninth, African. 

Huntington believes that this cultural organization better describes the world than 

the classical notion of variegated sovereign states. He surmised that to understand 

conflict in our age and in the future, cultural rifts must be understood, and culture 

(instead of the state) must be accepted as the locus of war. Thus, he warned that 

Western nations may lose their predominance if they fail to recognize the 

irreconcilable nature of this brewing tension.

175 Karl Potter (192x ?) Karl Potter is a professor Emeritus in the department of Philosophy at the University of 

Washington and has done extensive commentary on the core texts of the Indic philosophy. 

He is the general editor of the The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies which is an ongoing 

project to assemble and summarize information on the various systems (darsana) of Indian 

philosophy. Initiated forty years ago, the entire series is planned to consist of some 28 

volumes: 26 dealing with particular philosophical systems, an introductory Bibliography, 

and a concluding Glossary/Index. Karl H. Potter is Professor Emeritus in the Department of 

Philosophy at the University of Washington. His publications include 

• The Padarthatattvanirupanam of Raghunatha Siromani. Harvard Yenching 

Series 17, Harvard University Press, 1957. 

• Presuppositions of India's Philosophies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 

1963; New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India, 1965. Reprinted Wesport, CT: 

Greenwood Press, 1972; paper 1976. 

• Guide to Indian Philosophy. Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1988. 

• Bibliography of Indian Philosophy, (ed.), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies 

Vol. I., Parts 1 and 2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, Third edition, 1995. 

• Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyaya-Vaisesika Up To 

Gangesa. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Vol II. Delhi: Motilal 

Banarsidass and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. 

• Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara and His Pupils. Encyclopedia of Indian 

Philosophies Vol III. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass and Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1981. 

• Indian Philosophical Analysis Nyãya-Vaisesika from Gangesa to Raghunãtha 

Siromani (ed. with Sibajiban Bhattacharyya), Encyclopedia of Indian 

Philosophies Vol. VI. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass and Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1993. 

• Abhidharma Buddhism to 150 A.D. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies 

Vol. VII. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996. 

• Buddhist Philosophy from 100 to 350 A.D, (ed. et al), Encyclopedia of Indian 

Philosophies Vol. VIII. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999. 

Each volume in the series contains an Introduction by its Editor(s), followed by summaries 

of all the philosophical texts of the system known to exist in Western language translation, 

or extant only in editions, or in a few cases available only in manuscript. These summaries 

are arranged in the chronological order in which the texts appear to have been written, and 

provide a guide to the literature together with a flowing account of the development of 

thought through the history of the system being covered. The summaries are solicited from 

specialists in the field from throughout the world who have an intimate knowledge of the 

texts being summarized. 

207

176 Carl Sagan 

208 

Born November 9, 1934 

Brooklyn, New York 

December 20, 1996 (aged 62) 

Seattle, Washington, USA 

Died Seattle, Washington, USA 

United States 

Astronomy and planetary science 

Universities associated with 

Cornell University 

Harvard University 

University of Chicago 

Search for Extra-Terrestrial 

Intelligence (SETI) 

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage 

Voyager Golden Record 

Pioneer plaque 

Contact 

Notable prizes 

Oersted Medal (1990) 

NASA Distinguished Public 

Service Medal (twice) 

Pulitzer Prize for General Non- 

Fiction (1978) 

NAS Public Welfare Medal (1994) 

Rating ***** 

Carl Sagan needs no introduction to the readers of this essay. He was well 

acquainted with the Indic contribution to ancient Astronomy. 

Carl Sagan was a distinguished Cornell University astronomer and Pulitzer Prizewinning 

author. Here he talks about the indic contribution to the cosmology of the 

solar system in one of the episodes of his TV series on the Cosmos 

"The main reason that we oriented this episode of Cosmos towards 

India is because of that wonderful aspect of Hindu cosmology which 

first of all gives a time-scale for the Earth and the universe -- a timescale 

which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. 

We know that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and the 

cosmos, or at least its present incarnation, is something like 10 or 

20 billion years old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of 

Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years." 

"As far as I know. It is the only ancient religious tradition on the 

Earth which talks about the right time-scale. We want to get across 

the concept of the right time-scale, and to show that it is not 

unnatural. In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is 

for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that billions is 

indwelling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very 

clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about 

billions of years." 

"Finally, the many billion year time-scale of Hindu cosmology is not 

the entire history of the universe, but just the day and night of 

Brahma, and there is the idea of an infinite cycle of births and 

deaths and an infinite number of universes, each with its own gods."

177 Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat 

Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1936 

Vasundhara Filliozat 

Author of "Grammaire Sanskrite Panineenne", son of Jean Filliozat, one of the 

foremost scholars of Sanskrit in France, Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat is Professor of 

Sanskrit in Paris and conducts research mainly in the field of Sanskrit literature, 

Alamkarasastra, Vyakarana, Saivagamas, History of Indian art and architecture. His 

publications bear inter alia on Panini and Patanjali, Saivagama and Temple 

architecture in Karnataka. 

Vasundhara Filliozat is a scholar in Indic epigraphy is the author of the well 

acclaimed book on Hampi Vijayanagar, and has written another book recently on “Le 

Ramayana” in the context of the architectural depictions at Hampi Vijayanagar 

Making something out of nothing - Indian mathematics by Pierre Filliozat 

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1993 by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat 

By inventing the zero, India became the birthplace of modern arithmetic 

IN India mathematics has not always been linked to writing. The earliest surviving 

written document dates from the third century B.C., but India certainly had an 

advanced civilization many centuries before that, and scientific knowledge formed 

part of it. Most knowledge was transmitted orally. This ancient learning preserved in 

human memory makes up the corpus of the great religious texts known as the 

Vedas, which incidentally contain evidence of mathematical knowledge. The Vedas 

are written in an archaic form of Sanskrit. Like all Indo-European languages, Sanskrit 

has decimal numerals and individual names for the nine units, as well as for ten, a 

hundred, a thousand and higher powers of ten.The names of the tens are derived 

209 

from those of the units, somewhat modified and with the addition of a suffix. 

Examples are vimcati 20, trimcat 30, catvarimcat 40. The other numerals are formed 

from these components. The names for the hundreds, thousands and so on consist 

of a unit name followed by cata or sahasra. Dve cate (dual), for example, means 200, 

and trinisahasrani (plural), 3,000.

178 Prof K D Abhyankar 

210 

(1936 - ) 

KD Abhyankar has done considerable research into Ancient Indian astronomy in 

additon to his regular duties as Professor af astronomy in Osmania university, 

Hyderabad. Attached is a list of his publications . 

See for biographical paper 

http://prints.iiap.res.in/bitstream/2248/1324/1/paper-1.pdf 

Or indicstudies.us/Astronomy/Abhyankarbio 

I had the privilege of meeting him on April 26 at his flat in Hyderabad. His health was 

not robust, but he agreed to see me even though I did not know him personally at 

that time. I plan to compile a summary of his work in the near future.

179 Nicholas Kazanas (193x - (Nicholas Kazanas is the director and a teacher of Yoga and Vedanta at the Omilos 

Meleton institute, which was founded in 1976. It focuses on Philosophy (Platonism, 

Vedanta, Christian and Buddhist ethics). The Institute also offers courses in 

Sanskrit, Comparative Mythology and Political Economy. 

http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/rdp.pdf 

“The Harappans were obviously a literate and highly civilized people who 

maintained their 1000 year old culture with peaceful means through trade and 

perhaps religion rather than conquest and expansion. The area they inhabited was, 

according to Rao (1991: 1), ³1.5 million square kilometers² though I suspect it was 

much bigger. Then at about 2000 down to 1800, because of ecological and 

environmental changes including the alteration of the routes of some rivers and as 

a result, the desiccation of the SarasvatI river, they, or many of them, began to 

move eastwards to the Gangetic basin while their culture was breaking down. At 

about this time, then, enter our illiterate barbarians, the Aryans. Here the Allchins 

(Parpola and Witzel) fail to notice the glaring contradiction in their theory: if the 

Aryans had acquired the ³material culture and lifestyle² of the Harappans before 

they entered into Saptasindhu, then the RV hymns ought to reflect Harappan 

elements (urbanization, fixed fire-hearths, bricks, silver, cotton, rice); but it is the 

later texts (BrAhmaNas and sUtras) that do so, and not at all the RV hymns. 

Anyway, the Aryans take over and after 2 or 3 centuries produce a most astonishing 

collection of hymns, to be followed by other collections, various prose works about 

cultic rites and codes of social behaviour. Lord Renfrew (ignoring the 

archaeological evidence he cites) suggests they came as mounted bands and 

formed an élite (1989: 197) presumably with their horses alone since in all else they 

were just like the natives. All that the natives left were their ruined brick-built cities 

and some seals with inscriptions the nature and use of which is still unknown. In 

this Region of the Seven Rivers, then, we have an archaeologically well attested 

culture that seems to have no literature at all (other than the briefest inscriptions) 

no code of laws, no religious hymns or secular songs, no fables and tales, and then 

an illiterate people that is not archaeologically attested yet produces, in quick 211 

succession, all the kinds of literature that the previous culture lacked. It is a most 

amazing paradox, an astonishing coincidence of space, time and people. All this is, 

of course, possible just as it is possible to be struck by lightning in one¹s bed, or to 

fall from the 10th floor on the lawn below and live with only a few concussions. 

Many wondrous things are possible in life, but the question is do they really 

happen? “ 

In 2001, Kazanas submitted an article arguing against the concept of Indo-Aryan 

migration to the JIES. The editor, JP Mallory, elected to forego the normal peer-

180 Frits Staal (1930 ? - ) 

212 

Professor emeritus, UC 

Berkeley, Department of 

South & Southeast 

asian studies 

LIFE & CAREER - FIELDWORK & WRITING 

“Frits Staal 's life and career have always been eventful. 

Now transplanted to a forest in the Chiang Mai hills, his writings and lectures have 

become more wide-ranging. Creativity thrives on specialization, yet he is convinced 

that the distinctions between letters, sciences and other man-made disciplines are 

arbitrary. The seeds for these outlandish beliefs were planted during WWII in his 

native Amsterdam where he attended The Barlaeus Gymnasium, called after Caspar 

van Baerle whose Inaugural Lecture on Logic of 1632 was on Mercator sapiens, "the 

learned merchant." That legendary institution taught Biology, Chemistry, Dutch, 

English, French, German, Greek, Latin, Mathematics and Physics with optional 

Hebrew and Italian, to which Frits added Arabic and where he fell in love with a part 

Indonesian student who excelled at gymnastics. At The University of Amsterdam, he 

combined Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy with Philosophy, specializing in 

Greek Philosophy and Mathematical Logic; and played violin and viola in the 

student's orchestra. 

Halfway through his graduate studies, a scholarship of the Government of India took 

him to India for three years of Indian philosophy at the University of Madras, where 

he obtained a Ph.D., and at Banaras Hindu University. At Mylapore, he studied 

Panini's Sanskrit grammar with a Pandit and in the old city of VaranasÌ, nibbled at 

Navya-NyËya logic under the tutelage of another. Indian hobbies included martial 

arts, Vedic recitation, chant and ritual. The combination of Panini and Logic opened

181 Andre Wink, Professor of 

Indian History, University of 

Wisconsin, Madison 

B 193x ? 

Education: PhD: University of 

Leiden 1984; MA: University of 

Leiden; BA: University of 

Leiden 

Unlike other Western authors of Indian History, who rarely find anything negative to 

say about the cabal of leftist, communist combine that rules the roost today in 

determining what is appropriate and non –appropriate ot th e 850 billion prple in the , 

Andre Wink has been forthright about criticizing eminent historians like R C Sharma 

for poor scholarship and and indifference to the facts. Here is a quote from 

Sandhya Jains article in the Pioneer 

“Despite grandiose declarations about free debate and scientific rigour, the Marxist 

view of history can survive only when presented as revealed truth, like the Koran and 

Hadith in madrasas. A look at the critique of “eminent historian” R.S. Sharma’s work, 

Indian Feudalism, by Andre Wink, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, 

Madison, would substantiate this argument. 

In Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World (Vol. I), Wink castigates Sharma for 

misguiding historians to look for Indian parallels to European feudalism. Sharma 

contends that the “absence of finds of gold coins” in the seventh to tenth centuries 

proves that the Indian economy was exclusively rural with trade and urbanism 

having suffered a distinct decline. Rubbishing this claim, Wink points out that the 

“texts refer to the abundant use of coined money and land charters speak of taxes in 

gold and there remains evidence of commercial activity on the coasts.” He also 

ridicules Sharma’s assertion that land grants to Brahmins amount to political 

feudalism. “ 

Wink concludes that Sharma’s thesis “involves an obstinate attempt to find 

‘elements’ which fit a preconceived picture of what should have happened in India 

because it happened in Europe (or is alleged to have happened in Europe by Sharma 

and his school of historians whose knowledge of European history is rudimentary 

and completely outdated)… The methodological underpinnings of Sharma’s work are 

in fact so thin that one wonders why, for so long, Sharma’s colleagues have called 

his work ‘pioneering.’” 

213 

If Andre Wink, who is no saffron scholar, holds this opinion about the man 

handpicked by then Education Minister Nurul Hasan to head to Indian 

Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and fund the now-challenged genre of 

historiography, one is within one’s right to question the accuracy and 

integrity of other works as well. In the context of the textbook controversy, 

the assertion that twenty-three Jain Tirthankaras are fictional is worthy of 

contempt. Wink also scorns the work of D. Desai and G.C. Choudhary, as 

also K.A. Nizami, who has glorified the Turkish conquest of northern India for

182 N S Rajaram 

214 

born 1943 in Mysore, India 

Navaratna Srinivasa Rajaram (is an author and mathematician. He is notable for his 

extensive publications on the archeology and ancient history of India, focussing on 

the anomalies inherent ion the revised history of India as as assembled by British 

historians. He was one of the first amongst the post independence Indians to break 

loose from the contradictory assumptions made by Euriopean historians which 

resulted in such absurdities as the harappan civilization and the Vedic civiliation 

living side by side with each other One would expect to see copious references But 

in reality as the British would tell the narrative neithrer know about the existenced of 

the other . 

Professional career 

Rajaram holds a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Indiana University, and has 

published papers on statistics in the 1970s [4][5] and on artificial intelligence [6][7] 

and robotics[8] in the 1980’s 

Indian history 

Rajaram has published on topics related to ancient Indian history and Indian 

archeology, alleging Eurocentric bias in mainstream Indology and Sanskrit 

scholarship 

Rajaram takes a refreshingly original approach to the artifically created question of 

the origin of the Vedics and exposes the "lack of scientific methodology" that has 

gone into the field of Indology. He has criticized the process by which, eurocentric 

19th century "Indologists / missionaries" arrived at many of their conclusions. 

Rajaram questions how it was possible for 19th century European evangelical 

"Indologists / missionaries" to study and develop hypotheses on Indian history, 

claiming many of them were "functionally illiterate" in Indian languages, including 

even the fundamental classical language, Sanskrit, suggesting that "every available 

modern tool from archaeology to computer science" be used to "clearing away the 

cobwebs cast by questionable linguistic theories" as he chooses to refer to 

mainstream historical linguistics and philology. [2] 

But there is more to this story than incompetence. There is a deliberate attempt to 

revise and retrofit Indic history to fit the preconceived misconceptions of Christian 

fundamentalist dogma . We have narrated the story of how the Colonial overlord set 

about systematically to deny india a historical context and to infer that nothing 

worthwhile came from the India and subcontinenent . With the Orientalist paradigm 

prevailing in western academia, the postulate that the vast contributions of the 

worlds store of knowledge made by the Vedics was in fact the work of an influx of

183 Srinivasan Kalyanaraman Srinivasan Kalyanaraman has been almost single handedly responsible for the rejuvenation 

of interest in the Saraswati River and for proposing a solution for the decipherment of the 

Saraswati Sindhu/Brahmi scripts. He forms the vanguard of the new historians of India 

(under construction) 

215

184 Thomas Roger Trautmann 

(May 6 1940 - ) 

216 

Thomas Trautmann 


Thomas R. Trautmann is an American historian. He holds a Ph.D. from the University 

of London. His studies focus on ancient India and other subjects. One of the 

siginificant acts that Thomas Trautmann did was the chronicling of the notion of an 

Aryan race in Europe after the discovery of Sanskrit 

Works 

• Kautilya and the Arthasastra (1971) 

• Dravidian Kinship (1981) 

• Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (1987) 

• The Library of Lewis Henry Morgan and Mary Elizabeth Morgan (1994) (with 

Karl Sanford Kabelac) 

• Aryans and British India (1997) [1] 

• The Aryan Debate in India (2005) New Delhi, Oxford University Press ISBN 0- 

19-566908-8 

References 

• C.A. Bayly: “What language hath joined”, Times Literary Supplement, 8-8-1997. 

(Review of Trautmann 1997)

185 S N Balagangadhara 

(194x ) 

Professor S.N.Balagangadhara or Balu as he is popularly known among his students 

and admirers, is director of the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap 

(Comparative Science of Cultures) in Ghent University, Belgium. He has authored a 

book, The Heathen in His Blindness : Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion, on 

the nature of religion. His central area of inquiry is to develop a description of the 

western culture against the background of the Indian culture. 

Prof. Balagangadhara is currently holding the co-chair of the Hinduism Unit at the 

217

186 Rajeev Srinivasan (194x) 

218 

Rajeev Srinivasan (Hindi: राजीव ौीिनवासन) is a prominent [citation needed] Indian journalist, 

blogger and Hindu rights activist. He was educated at Indian Institute of Technology, 

Madras and at Stanford Business School and works in software sales and is a 

marketing professional [1]. He writes a regular opinion column for Indian web portal 

Rediff. He has been featured in Outlook and other magazines. 

His writings represent in general a refreshing change from the crabbed style of 

western journalists who use overworn cliches to describe the Indian political scene. 

The term ‘right and left’ do not adequately capture the range of the Indian political 

ideological spectrum. It is a more of a matter as to who can pander the most to the 

greatest number of the electorate and still maintain the façade of being a leader. 

Some of the Issues 

• The rise of Chinese power and influence 

• Christian missionary activity and conversions 

• Minority appeasement politics in India 

• Leftist politics in India 

• Western bias against and insensitivity towards Indian interests 

• The Aryan Invasion theory of Hinduism's appearance in India 

• The general Anti Hindu tone of western journalism 

Blogspot, titled "Shadow Warrior". Some of the major blogosphere issues he has 

been instrumental in covering include the Californian Hindu textbook controversy 

and Shekhar Gupta's "Hindu fanatic bombers" slip-up. 

He is skeptical about the Treasure ship voyages of the Chinese Ming dynasty into 

the Indian Ocean and to Africa under Admiral Zheng He and suspects they were 

"concocted to give the impression that the indian ocean rim has been a chinese 

hinterland for a long time", and an instance of "inventing 'history' to justify future 

colonization" [2]. In general, he exposes what he alleges are nefarious designs of 

modern-day Chinese imperialism. 

In December 2003, he made an appearance as a guest speaker at the Indian Institute 

of Science's Prasthutha forum, speaking on "Rethinking Indian History" [3]. 

[edit] External links 

• "Shadow Warrior", Srinivasan's blog

187 Huston Smith 

May 31 1919 

Huston Cummings Smith (born May 31, 1919) is among the preeminent religious 

studies scholars in the United States. His work, The Religions of Man (later revised 

and retitled The World's Religions), is a classic in the field, sold over two million 

copies, and is a particularly useful introduction to comparative religion. 

Life 

Smith was born in Soochow, China to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 

years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944–1947, 

moving to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for the next ten years, and 

then Professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958–1973. While at MIT he participated in 

some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted 

at Harvard University. He then moved to Syracuse University where he was Thomas 

J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy 

until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, 

CA area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of 

California, Berkeley. 

During his career, Smith not only studied, but practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen 

Buddhism, and Sufism for over ten years each. He is a notable autodidact. 

As a young man, Smith, of his own volition, after suddenly turning to mysticism, set 

out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's 

letter, invited him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna 

Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary 

Aldous Huxley. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation, and association 

with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami 

Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order. 

Via the connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with 

Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was 

Research Professor. The experience and history of the era are captured somewhat 219 in 

Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. In this period, Smith joined in on 

the Harvard Project as well, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through 

entheogenic plants. 

He developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon 

and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his 

writings. 

In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The

188 B G Siddharth 

220 

Mahabharata-1300 bce in Afghanistan? 

Research by Dr. B.G. Siddharth, Directior of the BM Birla Science Center shows that 

the events of the Mahabharata war could have occurred about 1350 BCE in the 

region of 35 degrees latitude stretching from Turkey to the Indus Valley. Pitamaha 

Siddhanta, a text on astronomical principles, gives this date which is corroborated 

by the ancient Jyotish Vedanga, one of the world's oldest astronomical texts. 

Siddharth said the total solar eclipse mentioned in the Mahabharata occurred on 

June 24, 1311 bce, putting the location of the war in present-day Afghanistan, not far 

from Kabul. Grammarian Panini lived in Afghanistan and linguisitic evidence shows 

a Sanskritic base ranging from Turkey to the present-day Pakistan. Another piece of

189 Srikant Talageri 

Talageri is one of the true original philosopher historians of modern India who shot 

into prominence with 2 books that changed the nature of the discourse on the 

History of Asia and indeed the world. His first book titled ‘The Aryan Invasion 

Theory a reappraisal’ was a landmark among the small list of really original books 

written about ancient India. It effectively challenged many prevailing myths about 

ancient Indic History, in particular the postulate that a mythical race of barbarians 

who called themselves Aryans much like the Norsemen who descended upon most 

of Europe, proceeded to invade India.. He followed up with another book on the 

linguistic , historical analysis of the Rg Veda, which came to some major 

conclusions about the history of the various mandalas of the Rg. These conclusions 

make it untenable to support the Aryan Invasion Theory, and its core belief in a 

migration into indi aas late as 1300 BCE 

The debate about the true history of India has now taken on a much more 

comprehensive canvas involving the contributions of the ancient Indics on various 

topics such as mathematics and Astronomy . These works of Talageri sparked a 

paradigm shift in the study of the history of the Indic civilization. 

Talageri has been singled out for special scorn and derision by the current 

generation of Indologists such as Michael Witzel and Lars Martin Fosse 

221

190 Wendy (O’Flaherty )Doniger 

222 

“Wendy Doniger, (formerly Wendy O’Flaherty) who wrote the article on Hinduism in 

Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, is a RISA scholar, and undoubtedly the most 

powerful person in academic Hinduism Studies today. She is a former President of 

the AAR, now teaches Religious Studies at the University of Chicago, chairs many 

academic and powerful bodies, has two Ph.D.s (from Harvard and Oxford) and is a 

prolific author. She was also a past President of the very influential Association of 

Asian Studies. The most important leverage she has is that she has given more 

students (affectionately called Wendy’s children) their Ph.Ds in Hinduism than any 

other person in the world and has successfully placed these former students in highleverage 

academic jobs throughout the Western world, to carry the torch of her 

theories and principles of researching Hinduism. There is no place one can go to in 

this academic discipline without running into the effect of her influence, through her 

large cult of students, who glorify her in exchange for her mentorship. An 

introduction on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website had once 

described her as follows: “Professor Wendy Doniger is known for being rude, crude 

and very lewd in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit Academics. All her special works 

have revolved around the subject of sex in Sanskrit texts…” 

Quote from

191 Arvind Sharma 

Arvind Sharma was born in Varanasi, India. He earned a B.A. in History, Economics, 

and Sanskrit from Allahabad University in 1958 and continued his interests in 

economics at Syracuse University, earning an M.A. in 1970. Pursuing a life-long 

interest in comparative religion, Dr. Sharma gained an M.T.S. in 1974 and then a 

Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University in 1978. He was the first 

Infinity Foundation Visiting Professor of Indic Studies at Harvard University and 

succeeded Wilfred Cantwell Smith to the Birks Chair of Comparative Religion at 

McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He has published over fifty books and five 

hundred articles in the fields of comparative religion, Hinduism, Indian philosophy 

and ethics, and the role of women in religion. Often cited as an authority on 

Hinduism, amongst his most noteworthy publications are The Hindu Gita: Ancient 

and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavadgita (1986), The Experiential Dimension 

of Advaita Vedanta (1993), Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by 

Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition (1994), and The Study of Hinduism (2003). 

Arvind Sharma is the author of the upcoming World Wisdom book, A Guide to Hindu 

Spirituality. He also wrote the foreword to the anthology The Essential Ananda K. 

Coomaraswamy, edited by Rama P. Coomaraswamy . 

223

192 Rosane Rocher (194x ? ) 

224 

Education 

1955-1965 University of 

Brussels, Belgium 

1965 Ph.D. in Indian 

linguistics (awarded prize 

for best dissertation in the 

humanities) 

1961 Licence in Indo-Iranian 

studies 

1959 Licence in classical 

studies 

Professor of South Asia Studies Rosane Rocher at he Univerrsity of Pennsylvania 

has published several books and many articles on Indian and Indian American 

studies, East-West intellectual encounter, the history of Indian studies and 

linguistics, Sanskrit linguistics, and 18th-century studies. In addition to a biography 

of Indologist and polymath Henry Thomas Colebrook, for which she has received a 

Weiler Fellowship, her current work includes an edition and translation of an 18thcentury 

Sanskrit lawbook, a study of language instruction at the East India 

Company's College in the early 19th century, and research on 18th-century Bengali 

Pandits in British employ.

193 Koenrad Elst (195x – Dr. Koenraad Elst was born in Leuven, Belgium, on 7 August 1959, into a Flemish 

(i.e. Dutch-speaking Belgian) Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese 

Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. During a stay 

at the Benares Hindu University, he discovered Indias communal problem and 

wrote his first book about the budding Ayodhya conflict. While establishing himself 

as a columnist for a number of Belgian and Indian papers, he frequently returned to 

India to study various aspects of its ethno-religio-political configuration and 

interview Hindu and other leaders and thinkers. His research on the ideological 

development of Hindu revivalism earned him his Ph.D. in Leuven in 1998. He has 

also published about multiculturalism, language policy issues, ancient Chinese 

history and philosophy, comparative religion, and the all pervasive but tiresome 

Aryan invasion debate. 

225

194 Subhash Kak 

March 26 1947 – 

Subhash Kak (Hindi: सुभाष काक Urdu: ﮎﺎﮐ شﺎﻬﺒﺳ Subhāṣ Kāk) (born March 26, 1947 in 

Srinagar, Kashmir) is an Indian American computer scientist and is a Delaune 

distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering. He holds a joint professorship in 

the department of Asian studies at Louisiana State university 

When it comes to Subhash Kak and a host of other Indics, many of whom are 

mentioned in this monograph , the occidental world is unanimous in painting him 

and the rest as a Hindu nationalist, although his main field of endeavor is that of a 

engineering Professor. Typical of the indictment against Kak (and others) is the 

essay by Lars Martin Fosse 12 . It is not clear what Fosse’s credentials are when he 

lectures Indic scholars on their inability to grasp their own history, but he pulls out 

all the rhetorical flourishes and stops. 

For example when an indic expounds on his thesis it is usually termed a polemic. 

One of the complaints that Fosse has against Srikant Talageri’s brilliant exposition 

on the Rg is that it had only 40 odd references at the end of the book. If that were the 

sole criterion for valuation of a paper surely many a classic such as Galileo’s 

Dialogue concerning 2 new sciences should rank as a completely useless work 

because it has no references. 

No paper of this type is without the obligatory reference to the caste of the authors 

among those who oppose them. So well informed are these authors like Fosse that 

they have figured out that most of the opposition to their half baked theories come 

from the Brahmin caste. This is indeed very amusing and ironic. The indian 

Brahmana (the correct spelling of the Sanskrit word, the name stems from the fact 

that a Brahmana is anyone who is in the pursuit of or has realized Brahman, the 

12 ultimate reality) has been targeted deliberately by every invader and colonial power 

Lars Martin Fosse “Aryans Past and Post colonial present;the polemics and politics of indigenous Aryanism, Ch 12 of “The Indo 

for the very simple reason that it is easy to capture the rest of the population, once 

the intellectual head has been decapitated (this is of course changing as we speak 

226 

as a greater proportion of the population is now more well informed, but I suspect 

even so , it is universally true that the intellectual class is going to remain less 

abundant than other classes in almost every society.It is therefore quite amusing to 

see his clumsy attempt to isolate the Brahmana from the rest of the indic 

population. Furthermore a fair proportion of academia both in the US and in india 

have a Brahmanical origin, which is not a big surprise to anybody considering that 

the Brahmanas are by definiton academic in their pursuits. Since it requires a 

degree of scholarship and interest in academic matters, it follows therefore that the 

opposition to Western Indology is coming mostly from Brahmanas. The implication 

of the Indologists is that the Brahmana is especially motivated to trash the Aryan

195 M D Srinivas No matter which way we slice it, the contribution that MD Srinivas has made to the 

understanding of the Indic Mathematical tradition is both profound as well as 

enlightening. He writes in such charming and elegant style that the subject come 

alive and we feel we a wtnessng the unfolding of great breathroughs which is indeed 

the case. His manuscrpt on “The Indian tradition in Science and technology is a 

short but very complete overview. His essay on “Proofs in Indian Mathematics”(in ) 

is a highly original philosophical work which lays to rest the oft heard complaint by 

Occidentals that Indian mathematicians of yore were deficient in proofs.Generally to 

be classed as an original thinker 

196 K V Sarma Uncovered significant new details of the contribution of Kerala Astronomers. Has 

done an outstanding job pf Cataloging the vast manuscript wealth of India in the 

exact science 

197 C K Raju 

Books 

History of the Kerala School of Indian Astronomy in perspective, Visveshwaranand 

institute, Hoshiarpur, 1972 

Aryan Controversy” a compilation by Edwin Bryant and Laurie L Patton, Routledge, London and New York 

227

198 Georges Ifrah Georges Ifrah has done a lot of research on the origin of the 

number systems in the world and has shared his knowledge 

in a beautiful book titled the The Universal History of 

Numbers , There is a very large section devoted to India and 

in addition a very complete Glossary of Indic and related 

terms. Ifrah is quite convinced (if there was need of 

convincing ) that the decimal place value system as 

presently used in the world originated in india. 

228 

French historian of Mathematics and author of the book, 

The Universal History of Numbers 

"The Indian mind has always had for calculations and the 

handling of numbers an extraordinary inclination, ease and power, such as no 

other civilization in history ever possessed to the same degree. So much so that 

Indian culture regarded the science of numbers as the noblest of its arts...A 

thousand years ahead of Europeans, Indian savants knew that the zero and 

infinity were mutually inverse notions." 

(source: Histoire Universelle des Chiffres - By Georges Ifrah Paris - Robert 

Laffont, 1994, volume 2. p. 3 ). 

Claiming India to be the true birthplace of our numerals, Ifrah salutes the Indian 

researchers saying that the "...real inventors of this fundamental discovery, which 

is no less important than such feats as the mastery of fire, the development of 

agriculture, or the invention of the wheel, writing or the steam engine, were the 

mathematicians and astronomers of the Indian civilization: scholars who, unlike 

the Greeks, were concerned with practical applications and who were motivated 

by a kind of passion for both numbers and numerical calculations." 

He refers to 24 evidences from scriptures from India, whose dates range from 

1150 BC until 458 BC. Of particular interest is the work by Indian mathematician 

Bhaskaracharya referred to as Bhaskara II (1150 BC) where he makes a reference 

to zero and the place-value system were invented by the god Brahma. In other 

words, these notions were so well established in Indian thought and tradition that 

at this time they were considered to have always been used by humans, and thus 

to have constituted a "revelation" of the divinities. 

"It was only after the eighth century BC, and doubtless due to the influence of the 

Indian Buddhist missionaries, that Chinese mathematicians introduced the use of 

zero in the form of a little circle or dot (signs that originated in India),...".

199 Rajiv Malhotra 

229

200 Nicholas Dirks (1951 ? - ) 

230 

Dean of the faculty, 

Columbia University 

Vice President of the Arts 

and Sciences 

Nicholas Dirks is the Franz Boas Profressor of History and Anthropology at 

Columbia University, dean of the university's faculty, and Vice President of its Arts 

and Sciences division. Dirks is the author of numerous books on South Asian 

history and culture, primarily concerned with the impact of British colonial rule. 

His most famous works include The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian 

Kingdom (1987), Castes of Mind (2001), and Scandal of Empire (2006). In these works 

Dirks has advanced research on how the character of British rule shaped the Indian 

subcontinent to come, as well as how Britain's development came to be influenced 

by its colonies. In fact Dirks is scathing of the many shibboleths surrounding the 

Colonial era. 

One such shibboleth is the widely cultivated notion that the Caste system 

associated with India today is an artifact of its core religious belief and tradition. 

Dirks demolishes this with a devastating indictment of British colonial rule in his 

books. In Castes of Minds he writes “caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival 

of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a 

basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of 

a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does 

not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination 

caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's 

diverse forms of social identity and organization. 

In , The Scandal of Empire,India and the Creation of Imperial Britain 

Dirks, , sets out to dismantle the traditional explanation that Britain's empire in India 

was, in the famous words of Victorian historian J.R. Seeley, acquired 'in a fit of 

absence of mind.' According to Dirks, there was nothing accidental about Britain's 

'conquest' of the subcontinent in the late 18th century. He argues that public 

exposure of the East India Company's scandalous corruption by the philosopher and 

politician Edmund Burke during the Warren Hastings impeachment trial in 1788 

persuaded the government to step in and administer what the British regarded as a 

vulnerable, backward territory. This intrusive, imperialist behavior, claims the author, 

helped cover up the 'corruption, venality, and duplicity' of Britain's presence in India, 

which was recast as a civilizing mission that also happened to benefit the British 

economy. In examining the Hastings case, Dirks scores many points, vaporizing 

comforting visions of a benevolent empire, and he expertly unravels the complexities 

of Burke. 

But it it is in the systematiic expose of the looting of the country, where extortion by 

all levels if the East India company was practiced with brazenness and arrogance

201 Michel Danino b. 1956 Born in 1956 at Honfleur (France) into a Jewish family recently emigrated from 

Morocco, from the age of fifteen Michel Danino was drawn to India, some of her 

great yogis, and soon to Sri Aurobindo and Mother and their view of evolution which 

gives a new meaning to our existence on this earth. In 1977, dissatisfied after four 

years of higher scientific studies, he left France for India, where he has since been 

living. 

Michel Danino participated in the English translation and publication of Mother’s 

Agenda (13 volumes, Mother’s record of her yoga in the depths of the body 

consciousness) and several books by Satprem (Mother’s confidant and recipient of 

Mother’s Agenda). Michel Danino also edited, among other titles, India’s Rebirth (a 

selection from Sri Aurobindo’s works about India, available online ; first published 

in 1993, now in its 3rd edition, translated into nine Indian languages) and India the 

Mother (a selection from Mother’s words, 1998). 

Studying India’s culture and ancient history in the light of both Sri Aurobindo’s 

pioneering work and archaeological research, in 1996 Michel Danino authored The 

Invasion That Never Was, a brief study of the Aryan invasion theory. Intended 

primarily for the educated non-specialist Indian public, the book has also been well 

received in scholarly circles. A second, extensively revised and enlarged edition 

was brought out in 2000; a third is scheduled for late 2003. 

Over the last few years, Michel Danino has given lectures at various official, 

academic and cultural forums on issues confronting Indian culture and civilization 

in today’s world ; some of them have been published under the titles Sri Aurobindo 

and Indian Civilization (1999), The Indian Mind Then and Now (2000), Is Indian 

Culture Obsolete ? (2000), and Kali Yuga or the Age of Confusion (2001). Delving 

into the roots of Indian civilization, Michel Danino has argued that its essential 

values remain indispensable in today’s India — and in fact for all humanity in this 

critical phase of global deculturization and dehumanization. Many of those lectures 

and a few new ones are available on this homepage. 

231 

Michel Danino’s other fields of activity include Nature conservation; his action for 

the preservation of an important pocket of native tropical rainforest in the Nilgiris 

led to the creation of Tamil Nadu’s first “watchdog” committee in which concerned 

citizens actively collaborated with both the Forest Department and local villagers in 

conservation work, also involving local teachers and hundreds of students. 

In 2001, Michel Danino convened the International Forum for India's Heritage (IFIH) 

with over 160 eminent founder members, whose mission is to promote the essential 

values of India's heritage in every field of life.

202 

203 Iravathan Mahadevan Dr. Iravathan Mahadevan is currently at the University of Chicago at Chennai. He has 

spent considerable portion of his life trying to prove that script of the Indus Valley 

could be derived off from the Dravidian languages. But the effort is generally 

considered inconclusive 

204 A D Pusalkar Assistant Director and Head of the department of Sanskrit, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. 

Assistant Editor of the History and culture of the Indian People. He was one of the 

first to trace the dynastic succession from the time of Parikshit (the grandson of 

Arjuna,), to the time of the Mauryas. While the total time period is in acdcordance 

with Puranic history, the absolute dates he uses in the HCIP remains distorted and 

corrupted by the need to placate the views of the Colonial Overlord. Now that India is 

no longer in thrall to a colonial power, the time has come to settle this once and for 

all. 

205 V Raghavan 

232

206 H D Sankalia 

1908–89 

Indian archaeologist who built the Department of Archaeology at Deccan College. 

Born into a middle-class family in Bombay he studied Sanskrit for his first degree at 

Bombay University and Indian history and culture for his MA degree. In 1932 he 

completed a thesis on the ancient Buddhist educational establishment at Nalanda 

before spending some time in London where he took a doctorate in 1936 on the 

dynastic history of ancient monuments in Gujarat. During this time he worked for Sir 

Mortimer Wheeler at Maiden Castle where he learnt the techniques of excavation. He 

was selected as professor of proto-Indian and ancient Indian history at Deccan 

College in Poona in 1939. Sankalia chaired the Department of Archaeology at Deccan 

until his retirement in 1973, building the reputation of the department and developing 

numerous programmes of survey and excavation in the region. 

[Obit.: American Anthropologist, 92 (1990), 1006–10] 

233

207 Pratipaditya Pal (194x ? ) Pratap Aditya Pal is a Fellow of Research at the Norton Simon Art Museum at 

Pasadena, California, and Visiting curator of Indian,Himalayan and Southheastasian 

Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been General editor of Marg Publications 

of Mumbai, India since 1993. 

208 

234 

Pratap Aditya Pal has been instrumental in educating the American public about the 

arts of India, in the tradition of Ananda Coomaraswamy and Stella Kramrisch. He has 

prodiced some outstanding booksd on the collection at the Normal Simon Musueum 

at Los Angeles 

209 Paul Martin DuBost Paul Martin duBost has lived and studied for a number of years with the scholars of 

kerala in india and is one of the very knowledgeable Indologists from Europe. His 

work on Ganesha the Enchanter of Three worlds is fast becoming a classic in its own 

right. He has also written a companion bnook on Sarasvati which is being translated 

into English and will shortly be published in that language. 

210 

Ganesha 

Sarasvati

211 Sita Ram Goel 

235

212 K S Lal 

236 

MA in 1941 

DPhil, University of 

Allahabad, 1945 

K.S. Lal is an Indian historian. He wrote many historical books, mainly on medieval 

India. Many of his books, such as History of the Khaljis and Twilight of the Sultanate, 

are regarded as standard works. [1][2][3] 

He has been courageous enough to call a spade a spade and describes the period of 

islamic domination of the subcontinent, as one characterized by much destruction 

and barbaric behavior. He has described in excruciating detail th debilitating tax 

system which Allauddin had imposed on the farmers, leaving them just enough to 

subsist till the next year so they could be fleeced year after year. While none of his 

critics have the courage to question the accuracy of his writings, they neverthekess 

feek that th every accuracy with which he portrays the period betrays a bias on his 

part. Suxch is the temper of the times in India when being truthful is frowned upon 

especially in matters of history. 

The realtruth of the matter is that durting the time of the emergency, Indira Gasndhi 

made a pact with Communists that she would rewqard them with influential positions 

in academia , especially in subjects related to History in return for their political 

support. The resulkt of this seemingly innocuous pact was that many position 

amongst those 

Career 

He obtained his Master's degree in 1941 at the University of Allahabad. In 1945 he 

obtained his D.Phil. with a dissertation on the history of the Khaljis. This dissertation 

formed the basis for his book History of the Khaljis. 

From 1945 to 1963 he taught at Government Colleges in Madhya Pradesh. After 1963, 

he was a professor at the University of Delhi in Medieval Indian history. 

He was fluent in Persian, Old Persian, Urdu and other languages. 

Andrew Bostom's book The Legacy of Jihad contains several chapters written by K. 

S. Lal. 

Works 

• The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India. New Delhi, Aditya Prakashan, 1992. [1] 

(ISBN 81-85689-03-2)

213 Bhagavan Singh 

237

214 R S Bisht R S Bisht is an archeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India . He and his 

team have discovered many sites in India including Dholavira in the rann of Kutch. 

Former Director, Institute of Archaeology, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. 

He is well known as the Excavator of Dholavira. Apart from many research papers 

and reports, his published work include, in collaboration with J.P. Joshi, India and 

the Indus Civilization. Currently, he is Director (Excavation) in the Archeological 

Survey of India. 

238 

Bisht, R.S. 1991. Dholavira: A New Horizon of the Indus Civilization. Puratattva 20: 

7 1-82. 

Wednesday, April 22, 1998 

Dholavira upturns an idea or two 

Anand Sundas 

Dholavira, April 21: Dholavira. The lost empire that 300 labourers and a six-member 

team of archaeologists have made it their mission to rediscover. Temperatures of 50 

degree Celsius be damned. And finally, after seven long years of hope and sweat, 

they have stumbled on to something really big. 

It was perhaps a poignant irony of fate that a place which once cradled one of the 

oldest and most sophisticated civilisations is today far from civilisation. So far that, 

apart from the chartered tourism buses or the taxis that you succeed in hiring only 

after much wrangling and enticing there is no mode of transportation to Dholavira. 

But as they say, history repeats itself. 

Dholavira, perched in the middle of the Khadir island, along the Rann of Kutch, is 

again the cynosure of all eyes -- western and Indian -- especially after the excavation 

of the oldest and largest reservoir with archaeologists expecting to unearth at least 

60 metres more. So, apart from reports of Bill Clinton including the civilisational site 

in his Indian itinerary, there is the National Geographic team camped out there and a 

host of TV channels either in or trying to get in. Ministers, bureaucrats, businessmen 

have suddenly woken up with a jolt to the reality that is Dholavira. 

The site has also proven wrong some age-old and widely held archaeological 

`truths'. For instance, Dholavira -- meaning white well -- has proven that the Indus 

culture (Harappan, as archaeologists prefer to call it these days) was not totally a 

riverine civilisation, as it is in the middle of a Rann.

215 Ian G Pearce (196X ?) 

It iis important not to make broadbrush characterizations of western scholarship, 

similar to the manner in which many European Indologists have done after the initial 

period of adulation, and fall into the ‘Avidya’ trap (what I dont know cannot possibly 

of much use’…. Ian Pearce has personally done much to ‘redress the balance’ as it 

were. But it remains true nevertheless that half baked scholarship is still dominant 

in American academic circles in areas related to Hinduism, as evidenced by the 

recent case of the California Text Book controversy. 

Ian G. Pearce ( ? ) has written: Mathematics has long been considered an invention 

of European scholars, as a result of which the contributions of non-European 

countries have been severely neglected in histories of mathematics. Worse still, 

many key mathematical developments have been wrongly attributed to scholars of 

European origin. This has led to so-called Eurocentrism. ...The purpose of my project 

is to highlight the major mathematical contributions of Indian scholars and further to 

emphasize where neglect has occurred and hence elucidate why the Eurocentric 

ideal is an injustice and in some cases complete fabrication. 

It is through the works of Vedic religion that we gain the first literary evidence of 

Indian culture and hence mathematics. Written in Vedic Sanskrit the Vedic works, 

Vedas and Vedangas (and later Sulbasutras) are primarily religious in content, but 

embody a large amount of astronomical knowledge and hence a significant 

knowledge of mathematics. ... 'The need to determine the correct times for Vedic 

ceremonies and the accurate construction of altars led to the development of 

astronomy and geometry. 

I feel it important not to be controversial or sweeping, but it is likely European 

scholars are resistant due to the way in which the inclusion of non-European, 

including Indian, contributions shakes up views that have been held for hundreds of 

years, and challenges the very foundations of the Eurocentric ideology. ... It is 

almost more in the realms of psychology and culture that we argue about the effect 

the discoveries of non-European science may have had on the 'psyche' of European 239 

scholars. ... To summarize, the main reasons for the neglect of Indian mathematics 

seem to be religious, cultural and psychological¡± 

(source: Indian Mathematics: Redressing the balance' - 'Abstract' - By Ian G. Pearce 

¨C '(IGP-IM:RB) 'Mathematics in the service of religion: I. Vedas and Vedangas' and 

Conclusion.

216 Narahari Achar, Professor 

of Astronomy,University of 

Memphis 

240 

B.N.Narahari Achar had presented the date of Mahabharata war and related observed 

events described in the epic with extraordinary accuracy by Veda Vyasa in an 

international colloquium (January 2003). Further researches by him have established 

the Mahabharata as the sheet-anchor of the history of Bharatam. The textual 

references (Critical edition of Bhandarkar Institute) of observed events are related to 

either planets or comets. In this note (July 2006), Achar establishes that some 

references are emphatically to comets (mentioned as such in the text itself; graha 

means both 'planet' and 'comet' and has to be interpreted in context). This brilliant 

insight resolves the centuries' old problem of apparent inconsistencies within the 

critical edition of the text. In fact, there are no inconsistencies. Mahabharata is 

astonishingly accurate, making it the most authentic historical document in human 

civilizational history. 

Continuing the path-breaking use of planetarium software (of the type used by NASA 

to launch satellites into cosmos), Achar also validates the date of Nirvana of the 

Buddha. This date is consistent with the Tibetan Bauddha tradition which notes that 

Gautama the Buddha lived in 19th century BCE. The skymaps of the 3067 and 1807 

BCE map the important dates in Hindu civilization: the Great War and the Nirvana of 

the Buddha, respectively. 

Kalyanaraman (20 July 2006). Vyasa-Dhritarashtra Samvada by BN Achar 

Annals of BORI, LXXXIV, (2003), pp 13-22). This document establishes 1) the 

concordance between Atharvaveda Paris'is.t.a and the Mahabharata in relation to the 

accounts related to comets and 2) internal consistency of astronomical observations 

recorded in Udyogaparvan and Bhishmaparvan. 

S. Kalyanaraman (28 July 2006).

217 Robert Sewell (1845 – 1925) Robert Sewell was a civil servant in colonial India. He is the author of the book A 

Forgotten Empire Vijayanagar: A Contribution to the History of India. He did 

extensive work on the history of the Vijayanagara Empire, particularly the fall of 

Hampi, the empire's capital. 

Sewell also translated The Vijayanagar Empire as seen by Domingo Paes and Fernao 

Nuniz which is described as an eyewitness account of Portuguese travellers to India 

in the 16th century and report on the 

Vijayanagar empire. [1] 

Notes 

He also wrote extensivelly on the indian calendar 

1. ^ Holdings of Kamat Memorial Library. Retrieved on 2007-01-10. 


• Works by Robert Sewell at Project Gutenberg 

• Download book for free or read online 

218 Hermann Kulke Herman Kulke holds the chair of Indian history at the University of Kiel and has 

published his version of the History of India for the benefit of German speakers. It is 

a rather unremarkable effort and takes the conventional view of Indic chronology, 

with the Harappans predating the Vedics . Notable for the lack of any original 

thought into the subject 

241

219 S Balachandra Rao 

242 

Prof Balachandra Rao has published several books on ancient indian astronomy 

written in simple and clear language to provide access to the heritage of the orients 

to those wo are not familiar wt Sanskrit . By so doing he has brought to the attention 

of the general Indan public extensive developments in ancient Indian astronomy. 

Thereby he has dispelled much of the mystery behind the calculations necessary for 

the Indian panchang. India owes a lot to this individual for keping alive the memory 

of the Indic Mathematical tradition . 

Balachandra Rao., S., Tradition, Science and Society, Navakar i nataka Publications, 

Bangalore, 1990. 

Balachandra Rao. S., Mahãvirachäryas Contribution to Mathematics, Scientific 

Heritage of India, The Mythic Society, Bangalore, 1988. 

Baklachandra Rao, S., Indian mathematics and Astronomy, Bhavans Gandhi Centre 

for Values, Bharatiya Vidy a Bhavan, Bangalore., hid edition,2004 

Balachandra Rao, S Indian Mathematics and Astronomy. Jnana Deep Publications, 

Bangalore, 1994. 

220 Raj Mohanka Developed a more rational chronology of the ancient Indics that is unencumbered by 

dependence on the postulate of an Aryan Invasion, a postulate that can only be 

regarded as a myth , until proven otherwise. All too often it is forgotten in the heat of 

debate that the Aryan Invasion Postulate (AIP) is and always has been merely a 

postulate for which no archaeological or literary proof has ever been proffered 

221 Kalavai Venkat Kalavai is one of the new breed of Indic historians who have shaken themselves 

loose from the stranglehold that the Macaulay Marxist axioms have placed on 

Ancient Indic History.

222 George Joseph 

Gheverghese (194x ?) 

George Gheverghese Joseph was born in Kerala, Southern India, and lived in India 

until he was nine. His family then moved to Mombasa in Kenya where he received his 

schooling. He studied at the University of Leicester and then worked for six years as 

a teacher in Kenya before returning to pursue his postgraduate studies at 

Manchester. His teaching and research have ranged over a broad spectrum of 

subjects in applied mathematics and statistics, including multivariate analysis, 

mathematical programming and demography. In recent years, however, his research 

has been mainly on the cultural and historical aspects of mathematics with particular 

emphasis on the non-European dimensions to the subject and its relevance 

for mathematics education. He has travelled widely, holding university appointments 

in East and Central Africa, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand as well as a Royal 

Society Visiting Fellowship (twice) in India during which he gave lectures at several 

universities. In 1992, he addressed a special session of the American Association for 

the Advancement of Science at Boston. In 1993 he was invited by the African 

National Congress of South Africa to take part in a Workshop on 'Mathematics 

Curriculum Reconstruction for Society in Transition'. In recent years he has been 

invited to lecture at Hobart, Monash, Perth and Sydney in Australia; at Cornell, Los 

Angeles, New Mexico, New York, Berkeley and Chicago in the United States; at York, 

Laval and Toronto in Canada; at Western Cape and Durban in South Africa; at UNAM 

in Mexico; at Cave Hill in Barbados; and at various universities in Portugal, Spain, 

Italy, Netherlands, Germany and Norway as well as the United Kingdom. He was 

invited to Cuba to give the keynote address at the 1st International Conference on 

Mathematics and Mathematics Education in 1996. In 1997 he gave the Aldis Lecture 

at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and went on a British Council sponsored 

lecturing tour to various universities in New Zealand. In January 2000, he 

organised an International Seminar and Colloquium to commemorate the 1500th 

year of Aryabhata's famous text, Aryabhateeyam, which was held in 

Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala, India. He has appeared on radio and televisions 

programmes in India, United States, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand as well 

as United Kingdom. His publications include four books: Women at Work ( Philip 

Allan, Oxford, 1983), The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics 

( 1st Hardback Edition, Tauris, 1991; 1st Paperback Edition, Penguin 1992, 2nd 

Edition, jointly by Penguin Books and Princeton University Press, 2000), 

Multicultural Mathematics: Teaching Mathematics from a Global Perspective (Oxford 

University Press, 1993) and George Joseph: Life and Times of a Kerala Christian 

Nationalist (Orient Longman, 2003). The last named book is a political biography of 

his grandfather, George Joseph, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawarhalal 

Nehru and other leaders of modern India. His book, The Crest of the Peacock, has 

been translated into Italian entitled C'era una Volta un Numero (il Saggiatore, 2000), 

into Japanese (1995) and Spanish entitled La Cresta del Pavo Real (Piramide, 1996). 

A Malayalam translation of the book is imminent. He is also the author of about 70 

243

223 

224 Pierre Fermat 

244

225 Edmund Leach 

(November 7, 1910 – 

January 6, 1989) 

Sir Edmund Ronald Leach was a British social anthropologist. 

He was provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966-1979, was made a Fellow of 

the British Academy in 1972 and knighted in 1975. He introduced Claude Lévi- 

Strauss into British social anthropology. 

To quote Subhas Kak 

“It is bad enough if a fabrication-- a story-- is palmed off as the truth, but what if the 

fabrication is driven not just by poor logic but by racism? 

Ten years ago, the distinguished British anthropologist, Edmund Leach, wrote a 

famous essay on this problem titled ``Aryan Invasions Over Four Millennia''. 

Published in a book called ``Culture Through Time'' (edited by Emiko Ohnuki- 

Tierney, Stanford University Press, 1990), this essay exposed the racist basis of the 

19th century construction of Indian prehistory and, perhaps more important for us, it 

showed how racism persists in the academic approach to the study of India. The 

implication of Leach's charge is that many of the assumptions at the basis of the 

academic study of Indian social organization, language development, and evolution 

of religion are simply wrong! Here are some excerpts from this essay: 

Why do serious scholars persist in believing in the Aryan invasions?... Why is this 

sort of thing attractive? Who finds it attractive? Why has the development of early 

Sanskrit come to be so dogmatically associated with an Aryan invasion?... 

Where the Indo-European philologists are concerned, the invasion argument is tied 

in with their assumption that if a particular language is identified as having been 

used in a particular locality at a particular time, no attention need be paid to what 

was there before; the slate is wiped clean. Obviously, the easiest way to imagine this 

happening in real life is to have a military conquest that obliterates the previously 245 

existing population! 

The details of the theory fit in with this racist framework... Because of their 

commitment to a unilineal segmentary history of language development that needed 

to be mapped onto the ground, the philologists took it for granted that proto-Indo- 

Iranian was a language that had originated outside either India or Iran. Hence it 

followed that the text of the Rig Veda was in a language that was actually spoken by 

those who introduced this earliest form of Sanskrit into India. From this we derived 

the myth of the Aryan invasions. QED.

226 Key Areas where the 

record is yet to be 

corrected 

227 Depiction of Hinduism in 

American Academia 

228 

246 

Chronology of Indian History 

The Origin of the Brahmi script 

Depiction of Hinduism in american academia 

Silence and/or negation on Indic contributions in Astronomy and mathematics 

The invention of the calculus by Kera mathematicians

229 C K Raju C. K. Raju holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute. He taught mathematics 

for several years before playing a lead role in the C-DAC team which built Param: 

India’s first parallel supercomputer. His earlier book Time: Towards a Consistent 

Theory 

(Kluwer Academic, 1994) set out a new physics with a tilt in the arrow of time. He has 

been a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study and is a Professor of 

Computer _Applications. He is an editor of the _Journal of Indian Council of 

Philosophical Research, and an Editorial Fellow of the Centre for Studies in 

Civilizations, bringing out a three part volume on science and technology in modern 

India for the Project of History of 

_Indian Science, Philosophy, and Culture. He also coordinates an Indian National 

Science _Academy Project on “Madhava and the Origin of the Differential Calculus” 

and is an _Affiliated Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. After much 

research in Spain and Italy into the records o f the Society of Jesus, he concludes 

that there was massive intellectual property theft by the SJ, who had stationed 60 to 

70 Jesuits in Cochin withtheexpress purpose of learning the calendar and purloining 

a accurate table of sine values which were not available in Europe yet, whereas 

Indian astronomers were already using infinite sseries to evaluate suich functions to 

any desired accuracy 

230 Leonhard Euler 

231 California Text Book 

Controversy 

247

232 C T Rajagopal Was instrumental. In resurrecting the work of the Kerala school of mathematics in a 

series of papers with his colleagues. The Kerala school of Astronomy was founded 

by Madhava of Sangramagrama, but their work would probably have languished in 

obscurity had it not been for the series of papers written by Rajagopal and his 

colleagues. Charles Whish ,made an impact by bringing it to the attention of the 

world. For 200 years the school flourished, while the list of people with this 

233 Buddhism – Indology 

scholars who focused their 

study oin Buddhism 

248 

Indologists who studied 

Buddhism[ most of whom 

are not included in our list 

and may be included ina 

subsequent volume or 

volumes. This is by no 

means an exhaustive list 

knowledge dwindled down to handful 

B. R. Ambedkar • Lokesh Chandra • Edward Conze • Alexandra David-Néel • Kelsang 

Gyatso • Dalai Lama • Walpola Rahula • C.A.F. Rhys Davids • T.W. Rhys Davids • 

Seongcheol • Sogyal Rinpoche • Robert Thurman • Richard Gombrich • Chah 

Subhatto • Thanissaro Bhikkhu • Bhikkhu Bodhi • Nyanaponika Thera • Jack 

Kornfield • Gil Fronsdal • Seongcheol • Nishida Kitaro • Scott Shaw • D.T. Suzuki • 

Paul Reps • Alan Watts • Thich Nhat Hanh • Yin Shun

234 Indologists who studied 

Hinduism, Sikhism and 

Jainism who may not 

currently included in our 

list 

Hindu writers: Aurobindo • A. Coomaraswamy • Bankim • Alain Daniélou • Dayananda 

• Sita Ram Goel • The Mother • Prabhupada • Sivananda • Ram Swarup • Tilak • 

Vivekananda • Yogananda 

Jain writers: Satish Kumar • Claudia Pastorino • Yashodev Suri • Jayantsain Suri 

Sikh writers: Bhai Vir Singh • Harjot Oberoi • G.S. Talib • Khushwant Singh 

Other/Syncretic: Gurumaa • Annie Besant • Ram Dass • Sathya Sai Baba • Georg 

Feuerstein • H. S. Olcott • Meher Baba • Osho • Ken Wilber • Nirmala Srivastava 

249

235 The Organization of Vedic Literature 

250 

236

General Conclusions 

Do we see any patterns in the assessments of the various Indologists over the ages. It is difficult to generalize and we 

prefer to let the words of each Indologist speak for his own assessment; 

Generally speaking the opinion of indologists prior to the colonial era were generally positive. 

After the discovery of Sanskrit by the occidental world, the assessment of philosophers (Schopenhauer, Schlegei, von 

Humboldt, Voltaire of the Indic contribution to world civilization was always far more positive than that of Indologists, 

focused primarily on linguistics (Weber, Roth, MaxMueller, ). English historians (James Mill, )were generally negative 

about India or guardedly in the positive column with a few exceptions (Montstuart Elphinstone, Alexander Hamilton, Sir 

Thomas Munro and among the exceptions were quite a few Scots (e.g.John Playfair) 

The German indologists(Weber, Franz Bopp, MaxMueller , Buhler, Thibaut) uniformly tried to undermine the antiquity of 

India and to a man were arguing for the Aryan Invasion Theory, trying to push it as close possible to the Christian era. 

They followed the Hegelian principle that nothing worthwhile originated in India and that India had no historical agency. 

The exception was Herman Jacobi 

By and large French Indologists were positive about the antiquity as well as the contributions of the Indic civilization 

and remaine refreshingly original in their assessments (Sylvain Bailly, Roger Billard, Martin du Bost, Voltaire, George 

Coedes). The French interest in indology was nurtured initially by the legacy of Napoleon, but then took on a life of its 

own. The French collection of manuscripts at the Bibliotheque National and other institiutions is one of the largest In 

the world outside of India and the UK 

Criteria for Inclusion 

A word as to the choices we made of the Indologists we chose to focus on in our study. Clearly, the universe of 

Individuals who studied India is very large and we had to exercise discrimination in our choice. While personal 

preferences play a big part and caprice rears its head every once in a while, we engaged in certain criteria during the 

251 

process of selection, 

There must be a significant indic connection whether directly or indirectly (in the content of their work). There are 

several individuals who qualify in this list because their weltanschuung is substantially in accord with the Indic 

Vedantic tradition. 

The impact of the individual on the world and/or India was signicant, though it may not always have been recognized 

as such during the lifetime of the individual. Has the perception of the world about India changed (for better or worse) 

because of this Individual.

252 

References 

http://books.google.com/books?id=S720d-apNkC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=henry+thomas+colebrook+indologist&source=web&ots=Bf5ndXjxXP&sig=iG2CBPCj_TZU 

MgcbvzX6rFky4gA#PPP1,M1 

Great Encounter: A Study of Indo-American Literature and Cultural ... - Google Books Result 

by Raj Kumar Gupta - 1986 - 284 

pages 

... an unusual combination of learning, insight, and common sense, in a manner reminiscent of the distinguished British 

Indologist Henry Thomas Colebrooke. ... 

http://books.google.com/books?id=uca8R72W8iQC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=henry+thomas+colebrook+indologist&sou 

rce=web&ots=c-yIUAC4Xc&sig=cKntZCBDtEC2DQbazxgMycxGSeM 

Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought - Google Books Result 

by Richard King - 1999 - 224 pages 

Hegel became aware, through the work of the English Indologist Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837), of the apparent 

existence of Indian forms of philosophy 

... 

books.google.com/books?isbn=0748609547...

i Bernard Cohn “Colonialism and its forms of knowledge Oxford Univerrsity Press, 1997 

253

Indology and Indologists A study in motives - Indic Studies Foundation

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