meh..
Ancient Indian Texts
31–40 of 98 posts
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#32The dates of ancient texts from India are claimed over a whole wide range. There is as much as 2,000 years of divergence between the earliest speculative date and absolutely attested known date for the Vedas, for example. A good outline of the issues in historiography of India can be found in Mathematics in India by Kim Plofker[1], who was trained both as a mathematician and Sanskrit scholar. Not always knowing when…
The oldest writings in China are not much more than 2,000 years old. Maybe you're thinking of oracle bones & bronze inscriptions? But those are rarely more than a sentence or two in isolation.
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#33Interesting collection. Disappointed to see the typical Hindu apologist, revivalist nonsense in the description though. Edit: What I mean by typical: http://youtu.be/RSHFzZmQPj0
Agreed - why dig up ancient books that did not stand the test time? Just go forward with what is present and focus on future.
Why indeed, And also why to spend time and money on exploring the archeological places and rebuilding old ancient machines? In short it interests some people and it gives clear picture of how knowledge evolved. It does not need to be advanced than the current technologies.
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Physics - Concepts of atom and theory of relativity were explicitly stated by an Indian Philosopher around 600 BC. Looks pretty accurate to me. All the best science comes from philosophers backed by feelings and visions instead of math.
he he. In fact every group claim that the "ancients" already knew "everything" but we just forgot about it and rediscovering it..
Well the "ancients" did know everything. As do I. No, really, I know every conceivable thing! It's just knowing which things I know are right that's the hangup.. Everyone has hindsight, but few are blessed with foresight :\
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#35I'm really confused by the comments that say the tone of this site is "Hindu nationalist". I see no mention of the word "Hindu" in the entire page. In fact, it's as far from politicized text as possible. Not everything on the web has some hidden meaning or subtext.
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#36The dates of ancient texts from India are claimed over a whole wide range. There is as much as 2,000 years of divergence between the earliest speculative date and absolutely attested known date for the Vedas, for example. A good outline of the issues in historiography of India can be found in Mathematics in India by Kim Plofker[1], who was trained both as a mathematician and Sanskrit scholar. Not always knowing when…
The oldest writings in China are not much more than 2,000 years old. Maybe you're thinking of oracle bones & bronze inscriptions? But those are rarely more than a sentence or two in isolation.
The formation of the texts of Confucius and Mencius of course is older than that. The Qin book-burning destroyed a lot of the books that were that old, but bamboo manuscripts and silk manuscripts are still being discovered from archeological sites that are much older than any surviving writings from India. I have personally read in museums bronze inscriptions that are more than just a few sentences long, dating back about three millennia.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/2010/01/29/rare-bamboo-...
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#37Yep ... I know that eye glasses and cataract surgery were done there first (the ruined lens was poked out of place with a copper wire, then a pair of glasses became the primary lens and the cornea became the secondary lens). And obviously you needed to be able to produce glass to make eye glasses. There was also early production of stainless steel.
I'm not as well-versed in Indian history as I should be ... with that kind of science, you would have expected a dominant technical culture but why was this knowledge lost instead?
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The oldest writings in China are not much more than 2,000 years old. Maybe you're thinking of oracle bones & bronze inscriptions? But those are rarely more than a sentence or two in isolation.
The formation of the texts of Confucius and Mencius of course is older than that. The Qin book-burning destroyed a lot of the books that were that old, but bamboo manuscripts and silk manuscripts are still being discovered from archeological sites that are much older than any surviving writings from India. I have personally read in museums bronze inscriptions that are more than just a few sentences long, dating back…
The Qin book-burning was mainly what I was referring to, but I didn't know there was significant recovery of bamboo or silk manuscripts going on (such material does not generally last 2,000 years without unusual environmental conditions).
I've also seen the long-form bronze inscriptions in museums - but those are the exceptions. That's why they're in museums ;)
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#39Interesting collection. Disappointed to see the typical Hindu apologist, revivalist nonsense in the description though. Edit: What I mean by typical: http://youtu.be/RSHFzZmQPj0
Physics - Concepts of atom and theory of relativity were explicitly stated by an Indian Philosopher around 600 BC. Looks pretty accurate to me. All the best science comes from philosophers backed by feelings and visions instead of math.
Problem is that anyone could come up with the concept of the atom, and even relativity is not beyond the bounds of possibility. We are all genetically identical to the earliest Homo Sapiens who left Africa. And the ones who stayed in Africa. Any one of those people who had the fortune to have a life of diverse experience and the spare time needed to think about things, would have discovered any number of supposedly modern things. They might have even written about it 10,000 years ago on parchment or leaves which have long since disappeared.
But we have no evidence of any of this, and therefore we claim that it did not happen. That is not a very rational position to take. It should be clear by now that wonderfuly discoveries often happen in parallel in different geographical locations. Sometimes they are almost forgotten for generations until a historian discovers old documents. There is no good reason to believe that this kind of thing has been going on since Homo Sapiens first came to be.
The only real advantage that we have today is the law of large numbers and the network effect.
Re: Ancient Indian Texts
#40You may have picked up on the author's not-so-subtle self-congratulation in the use of the phrase: "our great culture". There is a lot of wonderful material to be absorbed in the ancient texts of India, but the text of that page has a strong Hindu religious nationalist tone (which in Indian languages is called "Hindutva", or "Hindu-ness"). The vast (in time and space), and diverse Indian culture that produced these w…
"our great culture"
Do you mean cultural heritage? I wouldn't call the culture so great now with the corruption in politics, etc.