"Although it would seem as if we had already furnished sufficient proofs that modern science has little or no reason to boast of originality, yet before closing this volume we will adduce a few more to place the matter beyond doubt... In the famous and recent work of Christna et le Christ, we find the following tabulation: [...]"Mathematics.--They invented the decimal system, algebra, the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculi. They also discovered geometry and trigonometry, and in these two sciences they constructed and proved theorems which were only discovered in Europe as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries[...] [...]"Chemistry.--They knew the composition of water, and formulated for gases the famous law, which we know only from yesterday, that the volumes of gas are in inverse ratio to the pressures that they support. They knew how to prepare sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acids; the oxides of copper, iron, lead, tin, and zinc; the sulphurets of iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and arsenic; the sulphates of zinc and iron; the carbonates of iron, lead, and soda; nitrate of silver; and powder. "Medicine.--Their knowledge was truly astonishing. In Tcharaka and Sousruta, the two princes of Hindu medicine, is laid down the system which Hippocrates appropriated later. Sousruta notably enunciates the principles of preventive medicine or hygiene, which he places much above curative medicine--too often, according to him, empyrical. Are we more advanced to-day? It is not without interest to remark that the Arab physicians, who enjoyed a merited celebrity in the middle ages--Averroes among others--constantly spoke of the Hindu physicians, and regarded them as the initiators of the Greeks and themselves. [...]"Surgery.--In this they are not less remarkable. They made the operation for the stone, succeeded admirably in the operation for cataract, and the extraction of the foetus, of which all the unusual or dangerous cases are described by Tcharaka with an extraordinary scientific accuracy. [...]"Architecture.--They seem to have exhausted all that the genius of man is capable of conceiving. Domes, inexpressibly bold; tapering cupolas; minarets, with marble lace; Gothic towers; Greek hemicycles; polychrome style--all kinds and all epochs are there, betokening the origin and date of the different colonies, which, in emigrating, carried with them their souvenirs of their native art." Such were the results attained by this ancient and imposing Brahmanical civilization.... Beside the discoverers of geometry and algebra, the constructors of human speech, the parents of philosophy, the primal expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological and physical science, how even the greatest of our biologists and theologians seem dwarfed! Name to us any modern discovery, and we venture to say, that Indian history need not long be searched before the prototype will be found of record."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled (1875)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
History of science and technology in the Indian subcontinent
32 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by History of science and technology in the Indian subcontinent →
Related Quotes
"The Encyclopaedia of Diderot likewise suggested, in the article on India, that the"sciences may be more ancient in In…"
"Many of the advances in the sciences that we consider today to have been made in Europe were in fact made in India ce…"
"The sciences may be more ancient in India than in Egypt."
"INDIA'S work in science is both very old and very young: young as an independent and secular pursuit, old as a subsid…"
"Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which o…"
"The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from which the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the…"
"To make these complex calculations the Hindus developed a system of mathematics superior, in everything except geomet…"
"The decimal system was known to Aryabhata and Brahmagupta long before its appearance in the writings of the Arabs and…"
"Algebra was developed in apparent independence by both the Hindus and the Greeks; but our adoption of its Arabic name…"
"The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus some 4500 years before vary not even a single minute from the modern…"