India was world leader in science, mathematics, architecture, linguistics and trade during her ancient years.[2] India was ahead of all civilizations in science and mathematics till the twelfth century, when Indian centers of excellence in science and mathematics were destroyed by invading foreign troops most well known of them being one led by Bakhtiar Khilji. In the very beginning, China held the second position in science for a good length of time. Greece held the second position for a couple of centuries before being destroyed by the Romans. Then Greek colony of Alexandria in Egypt held the second position in knowledge for several centuries before being destroyed completely in 642 A.D. by Caliph Omar. Mter the Indian scientist Kanaka started a revolution in science and mathematics at Baghdad, Arabs emerged the patrons of mathematics and science till they were invaded by the Mongols who destroyed much of the Islamic civilization in 1258.

Nineth century onwards, Europe started getting trickle of science and mathematics from the Arabs. The transfer of knowledge from Arabic language to Europe in Latin translation was complete by the end of sixteenth century. After that time it has been the West that occupied the leading position in science and mathematics. But even between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, Indians commanded supremacy in many branches of science, medicine especially plastic surgery being one of them.

It is a fact that much of ancient Indian history remained unknown until recently, and even now some new facts are being uncovered everyday. A couple of centuries back, not much of the ancient histories of the countries which had been under Islamic rule like Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan and India was known. The systematic histories of these countries were available only since the Muslim periods of these countries. The pre-Muslim fragments of history of these nations existed in a heavily adulterated or spurious form as folklores, fictional literature or as an admixture of religion and mythology. The ancient Egyptians were fortunate enough to have made pyramids within which their history could survive the destruction from invasions. The ancient Sumerians and the Babylonians had written enough history carved on stone, which could be deciphered by the European linguists and archeologists later.

But unfortunately the ancient Indians did not make pyramids. Two centuries back we had only a few texts surviving from ancient days of India. Little of secular literature had survived in India except texts of medicine preserved in the homes of medical practitioners, astronomical texts preserved in the homes of the private practitioners of astrology, and pure literature kept by the gentry in villages and towns. Literature of religious significance survived because it was widely spread in the homes of the religious professionals and also memorized verbatim. None of that literature, which was of academic importance kept in libraries, could survive the onslaught of the invaders. Therefore no text of real science or history had survived the several centuries of alien rule in India.

However, such invaders could not bring the history of the ancient people of Indian to a permanent extinction. Indian Buddhist missionaries as well as foreigner Buddhist travellers to India had taken huge piles of Indian historical texts relevant to their religion to cobtries like Tibet, China, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. In the process of reconstructing the history of ancient India, such texts especially Sri Lankan Buddhist cannons were extremely helpful, and the British made valuable contribution to this work. The archeological excavation and the deciphering of the ancient Indian rock inscriptions led by the British went a long way in contributing to the knowledge of ancient Indian history. The British also took ingenious interest in discovering and translating many ancient manuscripts like the Kautilya's Arthashastra, the Bakshali Manuscript and the Bower Manuscript.

We now have a fairly reasonable account of the political history of ancient India going back up to the days of Buddha. Probably the people of the Buddhist countries were not interested in Indian history prior to Buddha and therefore they did not preserve any history of India before Buddha's times. That is precisely the reason why systematic history of India stops at Buddha.

Although political history got priority over other histories earlier, recently a fresh interest in India's past sciences has been generated. It is now widely accepted that the Pythagoras's Theorem was present in India as Baudhayana Shulva-sutra at a much earlier date than Pythagoras. Paniani who never wrote anything on mathematics has been accorded a status of mathematician because of mathematical nature of the grammar of Sanskrit language (I.J.O'Conner). The Backus Normal Fonn (BNF, Backus Naur Fonn), which is the very basic of all computer language, has been found in the Panini's Sanskrit grammar and has been widely renamed as Panini-Backus Fonn (Ingennan). The binary number system which fonDS the basis for entering all computer data was described in the book of prosody by Pingala (c. 200 B.C.) in India about fourteen centuries before the West.[3] Pingala also gives the method of converting the decimal numbers into binary and vice-versa.[4] Because of the fact that the BNF and the binary system, and many other such basic computer concepts were discovered in ancient India, there is now talk of "computing science" in ancient India.[5] Vedic hymns have been interpreted by Western scientists in the light of modem science; and a lot of scientific truths of the Vedas are now agreed upon by all. Most of Indian sciences have not survived, but their references in various non-science literature enable us to fonD an idea of what Indian sciences might have looked like.

Another much less known fact needs to be emphasized that the ancient Indian sciences directly stimulated the European interest in science when they reached Europe after being translated twice-into Arabic and thence into Latin. Such transfers of knowledge must have occurred in ancient period also about which there are only stray references.

It is desirable to borrow a concept from Western medicine into history writing-the concept of the Evidence Based Medicine. I would like to say that history should also be evidence based. It should not be based on convictions of historians who matter or their schools. No individual's openion is superior to the evidence of fact. Individual imaginations have so far distorted Indian history, and the fact is that what we get today as history of ancient India is in fact largely ancient India as imagined by the powerful historians. This trend needs to be replaced by the Evidence Based History.

I have tried to present an outline of the science in ancient India and to some extent medieval India, as I could gather. But it is just an outline and further deeper studies by scientific community are desirable. This work could not have been possible without encouragement, guidance and help of several people. First of all I am grateful to Mr R. N. P. Singh, Director, India First Foundation who considered me suitable for the project and introduced me to Shri Dina Nath Mishra, Founder President of the foundation. Whenever I became slow in the work, it was Mr Singh's telephone call that reactivated me. His guidance was of enormous help to me.. I am heavily indebted to Shri Dina Nath Mishra on several accounts. His love and affection always remained a force behind my work. He suggested the project to me and extended all support. The title of the book bears the mark of his genius. Without his support this work could not have been completed.

Prof. Makkhan Lal not only gave me a valuable list of select bibliography in the very beginning but also gave me photoc!)pies of some of the valuable articles from his personal collection. He was always available to me on telephone and gave time personally to guide me through the work. He took pains to go through the manuscript and gave valuable suggestions in nearly all the chapters. I am deeply indebted to him. I am thankful to Mr Ram Naresh Sharma who took pains to find out copies of the Vaisheshika Sutras and the Samkhya philosophy from Varanasi. He as well as my sister Prof. Jayashri Mishra, Pofessor of History, Magadh Mahila College, Patna University gave valuable advice from time to time. My maternal uncle Shri Raghunath Prasad Singh was of enormous help in clarifying meanings of many Sanskrit words and verses. I am also indebted to Dr Madhusudan Mishra, former Director, Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, Mr Mohinder Vashishtha of Standard Publishers, Dr R. Kumar, psychiatrist, Dr Gaur, Registrar, Rashtriya Sansakrit Samsthan and Mr Mahesh Chandra of Sanskritik Gaurav Sansthan. I also thank Kanhaiya, Mamta, Deepa, Santosh, Mrs Tanuja Sharma, Miss Bhawana Gupta, Dr Sukant Ghosh, Dr Ram Nath. I also wish to thank Mr Prabhat Kumar of Prabhat Prakashan and his staff member Mr Sarvesh for printing. At the end I wish to thank my wife Alka Singh and daughter Sneha for always encouraging me whenever I felt tired, and for never resenting my not giving enough time to them.

P. Priyadarshi

[1] Basham, A.L.; The Wonder that was India, Part I, Rupa & Co., Bombay, 1999, p. 495 and Duncan, D. E.; The Calanda1; Fourth Estate, London, 1999, p. 166.

[2] Duncan, D. E, The Calendel; Forth Estate, London p. 152.

[3] Van Nooten, B.; Binary numbers in Indian Antiquity, J. of Indian Studies, Vol. 21, 31-50,1993. Republished in Rao, T. R. N. and Kak S. (Eds.), op. cit.

[4] Pingala, Chandahsutra, 8.24-25.

[5] Rao, T. R. N. and Kak, S. (Eds.); Computing science in Ancient India, Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1998. Republished by Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2000.