1917.] The Fourth Indian Science Conqre* ■. clxiii 



experimental work. To-day throughout the Bombay Presidency so great 

 is the emohasis that is being laid on this side of education, so revolution- 

 ary has been the change that many institutions are still only struggling 

 towards a compliance with the new demand. 



In order to grasp the full significance of these movements let us 

 glance ,back at the past of India and note the lines along which the mind 

 of India found its development. Let us bring a truly scientific spirit to 

 this inquiry, a spirit which demands the acceptance of well-established 

 facts and not a blind enthusiasm for antiquity. We are not unaware of 

 the existence of persons who sincerely believe and solemnly affirm that 

 there is no modern scientific truth that was not familiar to the writers of 

 the most ancient Hindu Scriptures, who find in the Vedas the steam- 

 engine, the locomotive, knowledge of electricity and even the aeroplane. 

 We may well marvel at the lack of imagination and the ignorance of the 

 most elementary canons of literary criticism that renders such credulity 

 possible. There are those again, persons of an entirely different grade of 

 intelligence who claim for the ancient scientific writers of their country 

 the credit of having anticipated by several centuries the greatest dis- 

 coveries of more modern times. There is really no need for such an 

 excess of national piety towards a people whose intellectual history is 

 -urelv rich enough to enable it to dispense with any false accretions. 



In studying the progress of scientific knowledge in this ancient land 

 one is struck by the fact that the only sciences within the proper domain 

 of Physics that bulk largely in this ancient history are those of Astronomy 

 and Mathematics, its indispensable handmaid. In this respect India's 

 case is not essentially different from that of all the old nations at a cor- 

 responding period in their development. 



In India the impulse to the cultivation of the Science of Astronomy 

 came from three sources: — (1) the impression which is made upon the 

 human imagination by the splendid majesty of the heavens and the desire 

 that is thus awakened to understand something of the laws which govern 

 their silent movements, (2) the necessity of a calender of times and sea 

 ons to regulate the performance of religious observances, (3) the func- 

 ion which astronomy performs as a basis for systematic astrology. The 

 extent to which these scientific inquiries were fostered by religion has 

 probably been greater in India than in any other country. In India, the 

 influence of religion has made itself felt in every department of man's life 

 and even the scientific writer of ancient India regarded their theories 

 and their rules as divinely revealed. In the opening verses of the Surya 

 Siddhanta the Sun propitiated as a deity is represented as saying : "I 

 am eratifiied b V thine austerities. I will give thee the science on which 

 time is founded^ the grand svstem of the planets." Mathematical trea- 

 tises like the Siddhanta Shiromani. the Lilavati of Bhaskardcharya begin, 

 as indeed do all Sanskrit writings, with an invocation to the gods. One 

 cannot but respect the religious feeling which prompts such invocations ; 

 but at the same time one cannot forget that the idea that Scripture con- 

 tains a revelation of scientific truth has proved both m the East and in 

 the West a hindrance to the progress of science. 



I. The earliest period of Indian thought, of which we have written 

 records, is represented by the Veda Sanhitas and the Brahmanas attached 

 to them, a period that we may safely regard as free from Greek and other 

 foreign influence. A great portion of this literature is concerned with the 

 mvtholo^ical interpretation of nature and its phenomena, a feature winch 

 is not entirelv absent even from some of the systematic treatises on astro- 

 nomv of a later age. But there is also a non-mythological element m 

 this old-world view of things. It calls attention to the presence of law 

 and resularitv in recurring phenomena of nature the path of the dawn, 

 the motions of the sun and the moon. We find the beginning of reflec- 

 tion on tl ae phenomena in the naive wonder so often expressed that 

 the sun though un ipported does not fall down from the heavens Only 

 two heavenlv bodies are mentioned, but it is scarcely probable that the 



