DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

8.2} BASIS OF SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 251
Primitive reasoning led inevitably to the conclusion that the heavenly
bodies not merely predict but form the all-important weather ; the word
‘meteorology’ still implies this. Therefore, the stars and planets foreshadow
and control all of human life. Thus the horoscope (which even Galileo
drew up in his day), astrology, mantras and ritual to placate or
influence the planets were natural concomitants of the indispensable
brahmin pancanga. To this day, Indians speak, with fair accuracy, of the
rains of such and such a constellation being due. On the other hand,
the largest Indian crowds bathe at sacred places during the kumbhamelas,
or to free the sun from an eclipse which is accurately predicted
by the Nautical Almanac, not by brahmin theories. There are at least
three different major calendar systems in use among the people in
various parts of the country, in spite of a common theoretical basis.
The differences may ultimately be traced to the different local behaviour
of the monsoon rains. In the same way, the science of geometry
(‘earth-measuring’) received its great start in Egypt, where
triangulation was necessary to apportion fields and plots in the area of
uniform fertility, after the silt deposit of nilotic floods had obliterated
the boundary marks. It may be noted that Euclid brought the science to
its highest pitch under the Ptolemies, whose main preoccupation was to
expropriate the maximum surplus from the enslaved peasant.
It cannot be without significance that Aryabhatta (whose suggestion
that the earth rotated about its axis was nullified by his commentators).,
belongs to the Gupta period (A.D. 488 ?). Varahamihira, far better known
for his astrology, iconography, prognostication, and allied
“science” was certainly an ornament of the Gupta court. The last great
name in Hindu astronomy is that of a southerner, Bhlaskariacarya, of
the late 12th century in Hyderabad, which shows the lag between
north and south in the development of full agrarian economy. Only in
medicine did India show better discoveries, lost because of the progressive
refusal to indulge in surgery, dissection, anatomy (all unclean practices),
the diversion of chemical research into alchemy, and the secretive nature
of all brahmin disciplines.
8.3. Brahmin penetration of the south is responsible for the
puranic Agastya legends, wherein that sage commanded the high