2. Cosmos; Śāstra; Indian Contributions

§2.1 His Holiness sent for me one evening in the first week of June 1975. He was seated in the room in which He usually granted private audience on the ground floor of Saccidananda Vilas, His abode in Sringeri. A person in his forties was seated in front of Him. His Holiness mentioned to me that he was a ‘Physics Professor from Bihar.’ He introduced me to him as ‘My disciple.’ In the conversation that followed, while the professor spoke in Hindi, he did use words like ‘gravity’ rather than their equivalents in Hindi; for His convenience, His Holiness did the same.

1. The professor deemed that the Bhagavad-gītā and the Purāṇas have made known that the universe undergoes endless, similar cycles of expansion and contraction and that what was taught by them very long ago itself is what modern science is arriving at. The Lord has said in the Bhagavad-gītā: “They, the ones who know the day and the night (of Brahmā, the cosmic progenitor), know that Brahmā’s day lasts for 1000 yugas (4.32 billion years) and night for 1000 yugas. At the inception of the day, all manifested entities arise from the Unmanifest (the state of Brahmā’s sleep); at the start of the night, they merge in that itself, which is called the Unmanifest.”¹ Had the professor just wanted to set forth his viewpoint to His Holiness, His Holiness would have given him, as He normally did, a thorough and satisfying hearing, without raising any issues. However, since the professor intended to impart to students his idea of the correlation between the scripture and science about the universe’s start and end, His Holiness gently alerted him to some snags, by posing questions. He first led the professor to admit that his premise that the expanding universe would later begin to contract because of gravity was unsubstantiated by data till then. The hint was that he was seeking to glorify the scripture by correlating its teaching (as conceived by him) with what was till then hypothetical. His Holiness pointed out that for his scripture-science correlation to hold, not only must there be cycles of expansion and contraction, the cycles must be similar. The professor said that if the need to admit dissimilar cycles arose, he would re-examine the scripture and find how they have taught this. His Holiness told him that in that case, he would be reinterpreting the scripture in terms of modern science to claim that the scripture had made known what science was finding! Science relies on data. If years later (after 1975), data were to support accelerated expansion of the cosmos, would he then reinterpret the scripture to claim that it specifies not a cyclical universe but one that expands faster and faster? To drive home His point, He even described an attempt at retrofitting to maintain that our ancient texts had revealed what science is finding.

2. Since the professor’s fundamental aim was to tell his students about the greatness of India’s past, His Holiness delighted him by giving incontestable examples of Indian achievements in the fields of mathematics, medicine, and engineering; He cited offhand the Śulba-sūtras, Brahmasphuṭa-siddhānta and the Suśruta-saṁhitā and spoke of the Delhi Iron Pillar and the Kailasa Temple at Ellora.

§2.2 Professor: I am interested in showing that what was stated in our ancient books is what modern science is finding about the universe. It is now largely accepted that the universe is expanding. Its origin can be traced back to a time when it was a point¹. I believe that the universe will start shrinking after reaching some final size. This is because of the pull of gravity associated with the matter in the universe. It will return to the state in which it was when it originated. Thereafter, it will start expanding again. I think that this is exactly what the Bhagavad-gītā and the Purāṇas had revealed.

His Holiness: You opined that the universe will start shrinking because of the amount of matter in it. Has that much matter been discovered?

Professor: Not yet, but I am confident it will be.

His Holiness: Let us suppose that it will be. Will the next cycle of expansion then be identical to the present one or bigger or smaller? If the next cycle of expansion is larger, more time will be required for the universe to fully shrink than will be needed for it to do so in the present cycle. Hence, the universe will eventually not shrink back no matter how long one waits. Even if the next cycle of expansion is smaller than the previous one, then too the cycles will not continue endlessly. If your position is that the scriptures speak of infinite cycles of expansion and contraction of the universe and that that is exactly what science is arriving at, you must not only have enough matter to cause the universe to shrink, but it must also be that the next expansion matches the present one. Any evidence to the contrary will be detrimental to what you are trying to establish.

Professor: I do not think such a contingency will arise.

{The professor seems to have been unaware of or chose to discount the fact that since the 1930s there had been reports that as per the second law of thermodynamics, even if the universe were to undergo cycles of expansion and contraction, a cycle would be longer and larger than the preceding one.¹} Professor (continuing): If it turns out that the cycles will not be identical, I will have to go through our texts again and see how they exactly predict what conforms to the new data.

His Holiness: In that case, you will be modifying your explanation of the scriptural texts to suit the scientific position of the day, whereas your aim is to start with texts and establish that that is what modern science has discovered. Let us suppose that nothing fatal to your present view is noticed now or in the near future, and hence no reinterpretation of the texts by you is needed for the present. Even then, what guarantee is there that even after a decade or two, data will not necessitate a major rethink? For instance, what would happen if scientists were to come by data that shows that the universe is expanding faster and faster? In that case, how would even the present expansion be followed by a contraction? Would you then reinterpret the scriptural texts to emphasize that they speak of the universe expanding faster and faster and not of it having infinite cycles of expansion and contraction?

Professor: I do not think that there is any reasonable possibility of data for an increasingly fast expansion of the universe turning up, but I see the point that Your Holiness is making.

{As it turned out, the professor was wrong. Accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered in 1998 by two independent research teams, and three scientists – Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Riess – were awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 2011.}

His Holiness: I value your interest in viewing scientific findings in the light of our ancient texts. The point I sought to make is that if you equate an interpretation of the scripture with even a leading scientific view, as scientific positions are subject to change with new data or interpretations, you may, in time, have to reinterpret the scripture to conform to the new scientific position.

When I was at Kalady for some months in 1956, an aged devotee told me, “When I was young, I read a write-up that the ākāśa spoken of in our ancient texts as an all-pervasive substance is what scientists had accepted as aether¹, a substance that fills the universe and through which light travels from the sun to the earth. When I told a friend this a few years ago, he said, ‘Wrong! The ākāśa of our texts is not the aether that was assumed by scientists in the last century but, rightly, dismissed in due course. Aether was taken to be dragged along by moving objects. This is contrary to our description of ākāśa. It corresponds to space, not aether. Scientists have now realized that particles² appear and disappear in space. This was revealed by our scriptures ages ago; they said that the element vāyu originates from ākāsa and later dissolves into ākāśa.’ Another friend objected that scientists accept that space curves near the sun; ākāśa does not. They then tried jointly to find how our texts had revealed what scientists accept about space.”

I related this just to exemplify the point I made earlier.

§2.3 Professor: I esteem the culture and achievements of ancient India. That is why I wanted to tell my students that modern science’s universe with infinite cycles of expansion and contraction was made known long ago

itself, in the Bhagavad-gītā and the Purāṇas. His Holiness: There is much that can make us proud of ancient India in the scientific realm. If you see the Śulba-sūtras, which deal with the construction of sacrificial altars, you can confirm that millennia ago itself, India had a notable knowledge of mathematics. For example, a Śulba-sūtra of Bodhāyana is, “dīrgha-caturaśrasya akṣṇayā-rajjuḥ pārśva-mānī tiryaṅ-mānī ca yat pr̥thag-bhūte kurutas tad ubhayaṁ karoti – A cord that marks out the diagonal of a rectangle produces [in terms of a square whose sides have that cord’s length] an area that is the sum of the two areas that are independently produced by the cords that mark out the rectangle’s longer and shorter sides.” ¹

{His Holiness elucidated the sūtra. He first spoke of the aim and approach of the Śulba-sūtras and about the use of cords to mark lengths and specify areas. He pointed out that the word ‘śulba’ means ‘cord.’ Then, moving His right index finger a little above a book on the desk in front of Him and sequentially indicating a rectangle, its diagonal, a square having that diagonal as a side, the rectangle’s length and width and squares with these as sides, He gave the word-for-word meaning of the sūtra¹. After throwing light on the nomenclature and on the relevance of each word, He concluded His exposition by spelling out the overall import. It was evident from the sūtra that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its other two sides.}

Professor: Amazing! This is the Pythagoras theorem. This is evidence that we knew it before Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth-century B.C.

His Holiness: By how much should the side of a square be lengthened to form a square that has double the area of the given square? Bodhāyana has specified this.

Professor: Oh, a rule to compute the square root of 2.

{If l is the length of a square’s side, the square’s area is l²; if a square has to have double this area – that is, it is to have an area 2l² – the length of each of its sides must be √2 l. This is the basis of the Professor’s remark that what is prescribed is a rule to compute the square root of 2. He said, “square root of 2” in English and not its equivalent in Hindi.}

His Holiness: He says, “pramāṇaṁ tr̥tīyena vardhayet tac caturthenātmacatustriṁśonena / saviśeṣaḥ.”² Begin with the length of a square’s side. To this length, add one third of it. Next, add one fourth of that one third. Finally, subtract one thirty-fourth of that one fourth.

{If the initial length is l, the extended length is l + l/3 + (l/3)/4 – {(l/3)/4}/34. The professor took out a writing pad and pen from his bag and sought permission to note down the terms and to compute speedily the implied square root of 2. His Holiness nodded. At the professor’s request, He repeated what He had said about the terms to be added and subtracted. He then waited. In around a minute itself, the Professor finished what he intended to do, which was to compute the value of 1 + 1/3 + (1/3)/4 – [(1/3)/4]/34.}

Professor: This ancient rule is quite impressive. I can recall offhand the square root of 2 to four digits. I find that this rule yields those digits.

{The square root of 2 is 1.4142135… The sūtra yields: 1.4142156… It is correct to five decimal places; what the professor noted was that it is correct to three decimals. The mismatch with the actual square root of 2 is less than 0.00015 %.}

His Holiness: Immediately after specifying how the new length is to be obtained, Bodhāyana says, “saviśeṣaḥ.” The new length that is arrived at from the given length is assigned an appellation – saviśeṣa – so that it may be expediently referred to in later sūtras. Saviśeṣa is not just some appellation for conveniently referring to the length; it is etymologically quite significant here. An etymological meaning of ‘saviśeṣa’ is ‘with an excess.’ It is apt since the length is actually ‘with an excess.’ How? The area of a square that has this length for its sides is not precisely double the area of the square with the given length; it is actually a little greater; it is ‘with an excess.’ In an earlier sūtra¹, Bodhayana had pointed out that a square’s diagonal produces a square with an area that is double – exactly double – the area of the given square. The length that is named saviśeṣa is a little greater than the diagonal of the given square; it is truly ‘with an excess.’ Thus, the appellation ‘saviśeṣa’ is apt for this length, regardless of whether double the area of the given square is considered or the diagonal of the given square. Here is an example. I saw it in two commentaries and verified the figures. Beginning with an initial length of 408 tilas, the saviśeṣa is computed.

Professor: (unasked) It is 408 + 136 + 34 - 1 = 577 tilas. His Holiness: The area of the square produced by the saviśeṣa of 577 tilas is a little more than twice the area of the square whose sides are all 408 tilas long.

Professor: May I quickly calculate the difference?

His Holiness: That is not necessary. The saviśeṣa-based area is exactly one square tila more than two times the initial area. The name saviśeṣa is thus apt here.

Professor: It is striking that the ancient śulba-sūtras not only prescribe a rule that yields a fine approximation of the square root of 2, they even point out that this value is slightly greater than the square root. I did not know all this. I shall put together such information and present it to my students. I know Sanskrit and shall study the Śulba-sūtras.

{He asked about the two commentaries mentioned by His Holiness as he wished to refer to them. His Holiness told him that they were elucidations of the Śulba-sūtras of Āpastamba by Kapardin and Karavinda and that the sūtras of Bodhāyana that He had taken up occur nearly identically in the Āpastamba-śulba-sūtras. He added that He had presented the sūtras of Bodhāyana as he is regarded as preceding Āpastamba.}

His Holiness: The concept of zero as a number is another instance of what we can be proud of. India was the first to comprehend and explicate it. A mathematician told me this when I was at Ujjain in 1966 and pointed to the pioneering contribution of Brahmagupta. He lived about 1300 years ago. Brahma-spuṭa-siddhānta is his opus. Taking into account positive numbers¹ such as 1, 2, and 3 and negative numbers² such as -1, -2, and -3, he says: “dhanayor dhanam – The sum of two positive numbers is a positive number;” “r̥ṇam r̥ṇayoḥ – The sum of two negative numbers is a negative number;” “dhanarṇayor antaram – The sum of a positive number and a negative number is the difference between them.” Immediately after this, he points out: “samaikyaṁ kham – When the positive and negative numbers added are equal, their sum is zero.” Thus, zero is presented as a number. There is no ambiguity here as he proceeds to take up addition involving zero. He states that the sum of a negative number and zero is negative, while that of a positive number and zero is positive; “śūnyayoḥ śūnyam – The sum of zero and zero is zero.” Considering subtraction, he says: “śūnya-vihīnam r̥ṇam r̥ṇam dhanaṁ dhanaṁ bhavati śūnyam ākāśam – A negative number minus zero is a negative number; a positive number minus zero is a positive number; zero minus zero is zero.” With respect to multiplication, he first says that the product of a positive and a negative number is negative; that of two negative numbers is positive; and that of two positive numbers is positive. Then, about multiplication by zero, he specifies: “śūnyarṇayoḥ kha-dhanayoḥ kha-śūnyayor vā vadhaḥ śūnyam – A positive number or a negative number or zero multiplied by zero is zero.”

{The following are citations from six good books on the history of mathematics and zero, and from an article.

1. Brahmasphuṭasiddhānta was a landmark achievement, as it is the oldest-known mathematical work in which zero and negative numbers appeared in mathematical calculations. [M. J. Bradley The Birth of Mathematics – Ancient Times to 1300, Chelsea House Publishers, 2006, pp. 82-83.]

2. The systematized arithmetic of negative numbers and zero is, in fact, first found in his work…Moreover, although the Greeks had a concept of nothingness, they never interpreted it as a number, as did the Indians. [Uta C. Merzbach and Carl B. Boyer, A History of Mathematics (third edition), 2011, John Wiley and Sons, p.198.]

3. In 628, in Brahmasphuṭasiddhānta, Brahmagupta defined zero as the result of the subtraction of a number by itself (a – a = 0), and described its properties… Brahmagupta gives the following rules…Modern algebra was born…It is clear how much we owe to this brilliant civilization… [Georges Ifrah, The Universal History of Numbers – From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer (Translated from the French by D. Bellos et al.), John Wiley and Sons, 2000, p. 439.]

4. Brahmagupta...gave rules…Just as 2 - 3 was now a number, so was 2 - 2. It was zero…It had a specific value, a fixed place on the number line…it had to be placed between one (2 - 1) and negative one (2 - 3)… Zero had finally arrived. [Charles Seife, Zero – The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Penguin Books, 2000, chapter 3.]

5. For zero to be a power of equal status with what it empowered, we must understand how to add, subtract, multiply and divide with it, for a start; and this was just what the Indian mathematicians did. By doing so, they helped bring about a momentous shift… [Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is – A Natural History of Zero, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 70-71.]

6. …the Hindus…made a conceptual leap that ranks as one of the most important mathematical events of all time…The Hindu recognition of 0 as a number was a key for unlocking the door of algebra. Zero, as a symbol and as a concept, found its way to the West largely through the writings of the 9th-century Arab scholar Muhammad Ibn Mūsa Al-Khwārizmī…the Hindu idea …took a long time to get established in Europe. [W. P. Berlinghoff and F. Q. Gouvêa, Math Through the Ages – A Gentle History for Teachers and Others (expanded edition), Oxton House Publishers and The Mathematical Association of America, 2004, pp 80-81.]

7. …the Indian zero was a multi-faceted object: a symbol, a number, a magnitude, a direction, and a place-holder, all in one operating within a fully established positional numeration system…the Indian zero…is now the universal zero…[G. G. Joseph, A Brief History of Zero, Iranian Journal for the History of Science, vol. 6, pp. 37-48, 2008.]}

His Holiness (continuing): With respect to division, he first points out: “dhana-bhaktaṁ dhanam r̥ṇa-hr̥tam r̥ṇaṁ dhanaṁ bhavati – A positive number divided by a positive number as also a negative number divided by a negative number results in a positive number.” After this, Brahmagupta makes a mistake for the first time when he says: “khaṁ kha-bhaktaṁ kham – zero divided by zero is zero.”¹

{In arithmetic, the division of any non-zero number by zero and the division of zero by zero are undefined. The presumption that the division of zero by zero is valid and the claim here that the result of such a division is zero are, thus, incorrect. It would have been an error even if the result of dividing zero by zero were to have been given here not as zero but as some other number or even as infinity.}

His Holiness (continuing): I deliberately pointed out a flaw even while presenting an instance of an estimable Indian accomplishment of the past. My view is that it is best to stick to facts, not evade inconvenient data, and be wary of fanciful claims and interpretations.

Professor: I shall study Brahmagupta’s Brahma-sphuṭa-siddhānta. Would Your Holiness please recommend a couple of other books that I may study in order to learn about India’s contribution to mathematics in the past?

His Holiness: India had a distinguished mathematical tradition that continued for centuries from the time of Āryabhaṭa. You could study, with the help of a scholar, his pioneering work, Āryabhaṭīya; he was, as per a verse in it, 23 when 3600 years of the kaliyuga had passed (that is, in 499 A.D.). You will find noteworthy material in it, including that about the number system and zero. To know how mathematics had progressed with the passing of about 650 years, you could study Bhāskara’s Līlāvatī, which is composed in an engaging style. There flourished in Kerala, a weighty mathematical tradition headed by Mādhava, who was born in the 14th century. I felt that I should not omit to mention this to you.

{The following are brief excerpts from six good books:

1. …the Indian mathematical sciences flourished as one of the richest and most fascinating scientific traditions ever known. [K. Plofker, Mathematics in India, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. viii.]

2. …the Indians developed a system of mathematics superior, in everything except geometry, to that of the Greeks. [D. Burton, The History of Mathematics (sixth edition), McGraw-Hill, 2006, p. 227.]

3. … showed remarkable ability in indeterminate analysis and were perhaps the first to devise general methods in this branch of mathematics. [H. Eves, An Introduction to the History of Mathematics (third edition), Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1969, p.187.]

4. From Āryabhaṭa…to Bhāskara in the 12th century and onward, one finds more and more sophisticated methods for approximate calculations. Many of these methods anticipate ideas that were later discovered by European mathematicians. [W. P. Berlinghoff and F. Q. Gouvêa, Math through the Ages – A Gentle History for Teachers and Others (expanded edition), Oxton House Publishers and The Mathematical Association of America, 2004, p.186.]

5. …around the beginning of the fifteenth century Madhava of Kerala derived infinite series for pi and for certain trigonometric functions…about 250 years before European mathematicians…[ G. G. Joseph, Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics, Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 21.]

6. Newton…independently discovered the series for tan⁻¹x, sin x and cos x in his Analysis without knowing that all the three series had already been discovered by Indian mathematicians. [J. Stillwell, Mathematics and Its History, Springer, 2009, p. 108.]}

His Holiness (continuing): We had a great past in other fields too. For instance, over 2000 years ago, Suśruta performed surgery on the eye to remove cataracts¹. The Suśruta-saṁhitā details the surgical treatment of cataract, including information about the cataract to be surgically treated, the preparation of the eye, the position of the patient, the instrument to be used, how it should be held, and where and how the eye should be pierced with it. For instance, it says that the patient is “yantritasya upaviṣṭasya – secured and seated”; the eye is pierced “śalākayā …yava-vaktrayā – by means of a thin rod with a tip like a barley kernel.” After wetting the eye with milk and applying leaves externally: “śālāgreṇa tato nirlikhed dr̥ṣṭimaṇḍalam – The circular area of the eye (the pupillary region, where the cataract is located) should then be scraped with the tip of the rod.” In order to cleanse the eye, the patient is made to snort, with the nostril on the opposite side closed. The scraping is assessed to have been accomplished well when the scraped region is clear “nirabhra iva gharmāṁśuḥ – like the sun in the cloudless sky.” Then: “tato dr̥ṣṭeṣu rūpeṣu śalākām āharec chanaiḥ – When forms can be seen, the rod should be slowly removed.” After applying ghee, the eye is bandaged. Thirty-three years ago (in 1942), a learned vaidya came to Sringeri for the darśana of my Guru; he was about 80 years old and belonged to a line of vaidyas; having wound up his long practice at his native place, he had moved to Bombay to live with his eldest son; none of his sons had chosen to be a vaidya. When conversing with me, he referred to the Suśruta-saṁhitā and, to illustrate its worthiness, spelt out all these steps to me. He also explicated a procedure for the reconstruction of a cut nose. It was only after this that I read for the first time the pertinent two portions of the Suśruta-saṁhitā, together with a commentary thereon. This vaidya was the one who enthused me to do so; he asserted that the surgical treatment of cataract and the surgical reconstruction of cut noses are two of our ancients’ ground-breaking achievements in the field of surgery. According to the Suśruta-saṁhitā, the cut nose is reconstructed by using skin from the cheek. The vaidya said that nowhere else in the world was such reconstruction done till much later and that the Suśruta-saṁhitā’s influence was great. To arrive at the dimension of the tissue needed from the cheek for fashioning the nose, the surgeon starts with a leaf: “nāsāpramāṇaṁ pr̥thivī-ruhāṇāṁ patraṁ gr̥hītvā – He takes a tree’s leaf that correctly covers the cut portion of the nose.” Next: “tv avalambi tasya tena hi pramāṇena gaṇḍapārśvād utkr̥tya baddhaṁ – He cuts out from the patient’s cheek a patch of skin and flesh of the size of that leaf; the cut is made in the upward direction; also, a bit of the patch is left attached to the cheek.” The vaidya told me that the purpose of keeping a bit attached to the cheek is to maintain some supply of blood to the patch till it fully becomes an integral part of the nose. Next: “nāsikāgraṁ vilikhya – He scrapes the front part of the nose with a knife.” The vaidya said that the upper front part of the stump is scraped and that the scarifying is done to prepare the cut end of the nose to bond with the patch. Then: “cāśu pratisandadhīta sādhubandhair bhiṣag apramattaḥ – The doctor should, being heedful, quickly turn the patch of skin and flesh towards the nose and attach it to the nose by means of fine sutures”; “susaṁhitaṁ samyag atho yathāvan nāḍīdvayena abhisamīkṣya baddhvā pronnamya cenām – Having made sure that that the parts are joined well, he should put two tubes in the nostrils and, thereby, raise the attached skin.” The vaidya said that till full healing occurs, the tubes, which are hollow stalks, prevent any sagging of the attached skin and facilitate breathing.

The text goes on to prescribe that the nose should be medicated and bandaged. After the healing is complete, the piece of skin that was left connected to the cheek should be cut out.¹ The vaidya mentioned that with the procedure of the Suśruta-saṁhitā as its fount, there arose in India a variant in which a patch of skin is taken from the forehead for nasal reconstruction.

{The following are excerpts from eight medical journals and a book on the history of medicine.

1. …the birthplace of the ancient operation for cataract …the great ancient civilizations, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia can be…excluded. In ancient Babylon, the Code of Hammurabi (before 2000 B.C.) is...quoted as mentioning payments for the “needling of cataract”… This…is founded solely on an erroneous interpretation of the word nagapti or nagaptu, which most probably means a lacrimal fistula…in Semitic languages, the root naqab denotes “hole.” In ancient Egypt, no indication can be found in the medical papyri of the knowledge of cataract or cataract operation…Old Persian…medicine as presented in Zend-Avesta…is…unprofitable. On the other hand, there are weighty proofs that ancient India was most probably the birth place of the method …Sushruta…was the first Ayurvedic surgeon to deal systematically…[Aryeh Fiegenbaum, Early History of Cataract and Ancient Operation for Cataract, American Journal of Ophthalmology, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 305-326, 1960.]

2. …cataract surgery…Indian tradition and the Persian author Zarrin-Dast attributed the procedure to the Indians, while pseudo-Galen suggested an Egyptian origin…In Egypt, copper needles or probes were found…in the tomb of King Khasekhemwy…(ca. 2700 BCE). Likewise, near the Saqqara pyramids…the tomb of Skar, one of the chief physicians of the fifth dynasty (ca. 2200 BCE) was found…to include bronze surgical needles. Because rods or probes can be used for the application of kohl or ointment, removal of foreign bodies, scraping the eye, nonophthalmic uses…the significance of these rods is unknown…The Eber Papyrus, the Edwin-Smith papyrus and other medical papyri speak of medical recipes for ophthalmic conditions but none refers to cataract surgery …The earliest Indian text that describes cataract surgery is the Suśruta-saṁhitā…[C. T. Leffler et al., The History of Cataract Surgery: From Couching to Phacoemulsification, Annals of Translational Medicine, vol. 8, no.22, 1551, November 2020.]

3. …dated circa 3000 BC…the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus…contains the first descriptions of the surgical management of facial trauma, including the treatment of…nasal fractures. Treatments at that time were simple: nasal manipulation followed by lint, swabs and plugs of linen…Splints were formed of thin wood…The Indian science and art of total nasal reconstruction constitutes the first chapter in the history of plastic surgery… Sushruta …described a method of transferring skin from the…cheek; these were the first operative procedures for reconstructing noses. [I. S. Whitaker et al., The Birth of Plastic Surgery: The Story of Nasal Reconstruction From the Edwin Smith Papyrus to the Twenty-First Century, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, vol. 120, no. 1, pp. 327-336, July 2007.]

4. Sushruta…described…surgical operations, including those for cataracts…and…rhinoplasty…It was from him that the surgical reconstruction of the nose descended into modern medicine [I. Eisenberg, History of Medicine: A History of Rhinoplasty, South African Medical Journal, vol. 62, pp. 286-292, 21 August 1982.]

5. …rhinoplasty…development…has occurred in three great spurts…1. The Indian period – about 600 B.C. 2. The Italian period 1400-1600 A.D. 3. The Modern Period …Sushruta…the originator of plastic surgery…described the use of flaps from the cheek to reconstruct a lost nose. Later, Indian surgeons started using flaps from the… forehead… [D. J. Brian, The Indian Contribution to Rhinoplasty, Journal of Laryngology and Otology, vol. 102, pp. 689-693, August 1988.]

6. There is little doubt that plastic surgery in Europe which flourished in medieval Italy is a direct descendant of classical Indian surgery. [E. H. Ackernecht, A Short History of Medicine, John Hopkins University Press, 1982, p. 41.]

7. …plastic surgery diminished in Europe until the late 1700s due to the church’s prohibition of plastic surgery. …It was rediscovered in Britain circuitously...in…1793. …Thomas Causo and James Tridaley, surgeons at the British residency in Poona, observed a forehead flap reconstruction on a patient named Cowasjee, a cart-driver for the British whose nose was amputated during the Mysore War of 1792…The ‘Indian method’ was studied extensively by John Carpue, an English surgeon…Carpue successfully performed the first English rhinoplasty operation…followed by a second successful operation as described in his publication…in 1816. Subsequently …the forehead flap gained popularity among British and European surgeons. [M. C. Champaneria et al., Sushruta: Father of Plastic Surgery, Annals of Plastic Surgery, vol. 73, no. 1, pp. 2-7, July 2014.]

8. Remarkably, centuries after their first use, the original Indian methods utilizing the cheek flap and median forehead flap remain the basis for most reconstructive rhinoplastic procedures. [L. S. Nichter et al., The Impact of Indian Methods For Total Nasal Reconstruction, Clinics in Plastic Surgery, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 635-647, October 1983.]}

His Holiness (continuing): For highlighting the glory of India’s past, I deliberately chose to present instances based on passages in texts that were composed in India long ago and are available in print for verification; none of these instances is speculative and none requires any propping up by text-torture or textual reinterpretation driven by modern knowledge.

Professor: I recognized this, noting that in each case Your Holiness unfailingly cited the pertinent passages and explained them, even word by word. Your Holiness has already spared much time for me. Nevertheless, as hearing Your Holiness has truly been impactful and absorbing, I would request Your Holiness to spare a little more time for me and touch upon a couple of non-textual examples, which too are undeniable.

His Holiness: There is the Iron Pillar of Delhi that you may have seen. It is over 1500 years old and has stood exposed to the elements. Yet, it has not corroded and the Sanskrit inscription on it is still distinct. It evidences the metallurgical knowledge and skill of ancient India.

Consider the Kailasa Temple in Ellora. This Śiva temple, which is accommodated in a single block of rock, is more than a thousand years old. An extraordinary feature of its construction is that well over a lakh tons of rock was cut out from the hill there, proceeding downward from the top; moreover, this mammoth task was done manually. The Kailasa Temple, with its fine carvings, is a great, Indian sculptural accomplishment.¹

{Two of the excerpts given below are about the Delhi Iron Pillar; the first is from a book of 1914 and the second from a publication of 2020; both books are authored by professors. The next three excerpts are about the Kailasa Temple; two of these are from Encyclopaedias and one is from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre’s website.

1. Roscoe and Schorlemmer in their…“Treatise on Chemistry” have remarked that “the dexterity exhibited by the Hindus in the manufacture of wrought iron may be estimated from the fact of the existence of…a wrought iron pillar…bearing an inscription…belonging to the fourth century. It is not an easy operation at the present day to forge such a mass with our largest rollers and steam hammers; how this could be effected by the crude hand-labour of the Hindus, we are at a loss to understand.”…Fergusson, the great archaeologist, has written, “…It is equally startling to find that after an exposure to wind and rains…it is unrusted, and the capital and inscription are as clear and sharp now as when put up fifteen centuries ago.”…engineer’s opinion …– “…It is questionable whether the whole of the iron works of Europe and America could have produced a similar column of wrought iron so short a time ago as the exhibition of 1851.” [P. Neyogi, Iron in Ancient India, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, 1914, pp. 19-20.]

2. …the excellent corrosion resistance is because of the formation of a protective passive film on the surface of the pillar…The high phosphorous content in the iron of the pillar aids the formation of the protective passive film…We now know phosphoric irons must have been produced in India by the use of high P containing ore, and aided by the absence of limestone in the bloomery furnace charge. …relevance of the studies conducted on the Delhi Iron Pillar to modern technology is that phosphoric irons are the materials of choice in… applications where atmospheric exposure conditions are involved. Recent research at IIT Kanpur has shown the excellent corrosion resistance of phosphoric irons in concrete environments…as an old adage informs, “the best of the new is often the long forgotten past.” [R. Balasubramaniam, Marvels of Indian Iron Through the Ages, Infinity Foundation India, 2020, Chap. 2.]

3. The Ellora complex was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983...The most remarkable of the cave temples is Kailasa…Unlike the other temples at the site, which were delved horizontally into the rock face, the Kailasa complex was excavated downward from the basaltic slope…Construction of the temple in the 8th century, beginning in the reign of Krishna I (c. 765-773), involved the removal of 150,000 to 200,000 tons of solid rock. The complex…has four levels or stories. [Editors, Ellora Caves, Encyclopaedia Britannica.]

4. Kailasa Temple…is one of the most spectacular monuments in the world and it is the largest rock-cut structure anywhere…The temple was built by digging out from the sloping basalt hill, two trenches, each 90 m long and joined with a connecting trench 53 m in length. The temple was then carved from the remaining central portion. This resulted in a 32-metre high structure that seems to come out of the ground…This temple, even if they are not structurally required, has all the architectural details of a…block-built temple with bases, beams, columns, brackets and pilasters. [M. Cartwright, Ellora Caves, World History Encyclopedia, 08 March 2016.]

5. Criterion (i): The ensemble of Ellora is a unique artistic achievement, a masterpiece of human creative genius. If one considers only the work of excavating the rock, a monument such as the Kailasa Temple is a technological exploit without parallel. However, this temple, which transposes models from “constructed” architecture, offers an extraordinary repertory of sculpted and painted forms … [Ellora Caves – UNESCO World Heritage Centre.]}

His Holiness (continuing): What I have spoken about are some of the Indian achievements of the past in the fields of mathematics, medicine, and engineering. There are, decidedly, more of them in these and other fields; you may acquaint yourself with them. You would have noticed that whenever I referred to the Indian origin of something, I also stated the source of my information. Questions such as, “Was this discovered or developed just in India or elsewhere too? What were the inputs, Indian or foreign, that led to this?” call for answers that are based on credible evidence and objective analysis, not on suspect data, biased interpretations or dogmatic assertions; the answers may, of course, change with the uncovering of new evidence. Personally, I would value any such answer. There is much in India’s past that we can be proud of while objectively depending on plain facts and reliable evidence, regardless of whether there were inputs from elsewhere or not and whether or not there were similar developments or findings elsewhere.

{The Professor then received prasāda from His Holiness and left, expressing his gratitude and joy. After he left, His Holiness told me, “He is sincere. He is, however, mistaken when he takes it that the Bhagavad-gītā and the Purāṇas specify that the universe keeps on expanding and contracting. What they do reveal is not incompatible with a universe that has infinite cycles, with a universe that can be traced back to a point, as also with one that expands faster and faster.” He did not elaborate on this as His attendant entered and said that a group of devotees was awaiting His darśana.}

§2.4 In August 1982, when His Holiness was camping at New Delhi, the Maṭha’s priest, Ganapathy Subrahmanya Avadhani, introduced a person in his 30s to me, saying, in Tamil, “He has come from abroad and is leaving today. His conversation with His Holiness will interest you.” He told that person, in Telugu, “Tell him.” When he began to speak in Telugu, Avadhani stopped him and asked him to present the details in English as I did not know Telugu. The following is what he told me. Finally, he said that it was getting late for him and left. When I asked Avadhani about him, he said that all he knew was that his name was Dakshinamurthi and that he was a first-time visitor.

One of his three questions was, “Some of what the Vedas say about the earth, the human body, etc., is known, in the light of science and medicine, to be incorrect. Does this not call into question the validity of the śruti?” His Holiness: What is unknowable by other means of valid knowledge such as perception and inference – this includes the areas of science – is the domain of the śruti. Bhagavatpāda has stated in His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya: “pratyakṣādipramāṇānupalabdhe hi viṣaye agnihotrādi-sādhyasādhanasambandhe śruteḥ prāmāṇyam, na pratyakṣādiviṣaye…na hi śrutiśatam api śīto ’gnir aprakāśo veti bruvat prāmāṇyam upaiti / yadi brūyāc chīto ’gnir aprakāśo veti tathāpy arthāntaraṁ śruter vivakṣitaṁ kalpyam – It is in matters that are unknowable by means of knowledge such as perception, an instance being that the Agnihotra rite results in the attainment of heaven, that the Veda has authoritativeness, not in what lies in the domain of perception, etc., … Surely, even if hundred Vedic passages were to declare that fire is cold or dark, they would not become valid in this matter. Were there to be a statement in the Veda that fire is cold or dark, something different from the literal meaning must be arrived at as its intended import.”¹ The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad presents Brahman as associated with the five elements in the cosmic and individual contexts and with mental tendencies, and then declares unambiguously:

“athāta ādeśo neti neti na nahy etasmād iti nety anyat param asti – Now, therefore (following the description of what is not the final truth), is the teaching (about Brahman): ‘Not this. Not this.’ There is no other more fitting description (of Brahman) that this: ‘Not this.’”¹

Thus, the mention of even the five elements is just a stepping stone to teach the transcendental Brahman, which is completely free of all attributes, and these are included in what are then dismissed. Arthavādas (corroborative Vedic passages) are taken up in depth in the Mīmāṁsā-śāstra that lays down the cannons of interpretation of the Vedas. Sureśvarācārya has stated in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-bhāṣya-vārtika: “virodhe guṇa-vādaḥ syād anuvādo ’vadhārite / bhūtārthavādas taddhānād arthavādas tridhā smr̥taḥ – Corroborative Vedic statements (arthavādas) are said to be of three kinds; what contradicts a different means of valid knowledge (such as perception) is a figurative statement (guṇa-vāda); what accords with what is known by another means of valid knowledge is a reiterative statement (anuvāda); what neither contradicts nor states what is determined by another means of valid knowledge is a ‘bhūtārthavāda’.”² Thus, the case of Vedic passages that are discordant with what is ascertained by other means of knowledge is recognized and accounted for.

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