Neglect of knowledge traditions

History and Technology, 1990

History and Theory, 1999

The lack of interest in history in ancient India has often been noted and contrasted with the situation in China and the West. Notwithstanding the vast body of Indian literature in other fields, there is a remarkable dearth of historical writing in the period before the Muslim conquest and an associated indifference to historiography. Various explanations have been offered for this curious phenomenon, some of which appeal to the supposed currency of certain Indian philosophical theories. This essay critically examines such "philosophical explanations." I argue that it is not true that there was no history in ancient India, and it is not surprising that there was no developed historiography or scientific history. It is both true and surprising that there was no real importance attached to history in ancient India. An adequate philosophical explanation for this historical phenomenon, however, is not to be found in appeals to the influence of indigenous metaphysical theories about time and the self. A much more plausible philosophical explanation appeals instead to certain features of classical Indian epistemology.

2023

South Asian History and Culture, 2021

What do we mean when we use the category ‘indigenous knowledges’? What do we mean when we speak of ‘colonial sciences’? This Introduction briefly examines these questions in order to provide a context for the collection of articles presented in this issue on the making of the sciences in colonial South Asia. In doing so, it also addresses related questions: The translation of terms – does the Sanskrit word śāstra correspond to the English science? If not, what does each word mean? And the differences that arise when categories move across disciplines – development studies scholars use the term indigenous knowledges for the knowledge-forms of the original inhabitants of a territory; historians of South Asia and historians of science use it to refer to older forms of knowledge lost to colonial rule. The contributors represent very different disciplines – anthropology, history, history of science and Indology; and bring a variety of methodological approaches to the questions they address. They cover a chronological span stretching from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and address different subjects: the use of technical vocabulary in Sanskrit mathematical astronomy, astrology at universities in Banaras, the making of the Hindi Scientific Glossary, botanical knowledge-making in East India Company India, the philological practices of Vaidyas in Bengal, and Ayurvedic pedagogy in today’s Kerala. A common thread joining the essays appears in the role played by philology in practices as different as the naming of plants, the making of procedural medical knowledge in a gurukula, and the editing of Ayurvedic texts in the context of an expanding print culture in nineteenth-century Bengal.

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 2022

This article is an edited version of a talk delivered at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Gol Park, Kolkata on 25 August, 2017.

First Dr. Govind Chandra Pande Memorial Lecture. India’s past scientific and technological advances have been well documented, even if mainstream history of science is yet to take full notice of it. What is generally overlooked, however, is the cultural framework within which those advances took place. Because Indian savants were steeped in specific cultural concepts involving a quest for infinity, the equivalence of microcosm and macrocosm, and a certain cosmic order, we find these concepts reflected in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine and architecture, and giving Indian developments in these disciplines a specific stamp.

Isis, 2013

This essay defends the view that “modern science,” as with modernity in general, is a polycentered phenomenon, something that appears in different forms at different times and places. It begins with two ideas about the nature of rational scientific inquiry: Karin Knorr Cetina’s idea of “epistemic cultures,” and Philip Kitcher’s idea of science as “a system of public knowledge,” such knowledge as would be deemed worthwhile by an ideal conversation among the whole public under conditions of mutual engagement. This account of the nature of scientific practice provides us with a new perspective from which to understand key elements in the philosophical project of Jaina logicians in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries C.E. Jaina theory seems exceptionally well targeted onto two of the key constituents in the ideal conversation—the classification of all human points of view and the representation of end states of the deliberative process. The Buddhist theory of the Kathaﰢvatthu contributes to Indian epistemic culture in a different way: by supplying a detailed theory of how human dialogical standpoints can be revised in the ideal conversation, an account of the phenomenon Kitcher labels “tutoring.” Thus science in India has its own history, one that should be studied in comparison and contrast with the history of science in Europe. In answer to Joseph Needham, it was not ‘modern science’ which failed to develop in India or China but rather non-well-ordered science, science as unconstrained by social value and democratic consent. What I argue is that this is not a deficit in the civilisational histories of these countries, but a virtue.

2018

Traditional knowledge is a valued concept that has been carried on for generations for the benefit of the indigenous society. Such knowledge pertains to various natural resources and is utilized towards a sustainable living. One such element of traditional knowledge includes its usage for medicinal purposes. India is the hub of such medicinal knowledge considering it is the birth place of Ayurveda. The issue arises when such traditional knowledge is illegally procured by outside agencies and is utilized for their own advantage, often patented without giving due credit to the indigenous people and places which led to the development of such resources. This mode of misappropriating cultural and traditional knowledge is known as Biopiracy. This paper aims to delve into the concept of biopiracy in India. It analyses various case studies of biopiracy and international conventions and national laws formed to control them. In the end, it suggests a way forward to control the vice of biopir...

The topic I have been asked to speak on is so vast that it is impossible to do justice to even one of the aspects that constitute the 'Ancient Indian Academic Tradition'. It is not just a question of time allotted to the speaker in a seminar; every discipline cultivated in India except ritual literature and theology will have to be taken into account. I have elected to confine myself to the following area: (a) What is meant by 'scientific outlook', (b) How it developed in ancient India, and then (c) How its application to therapeutics and surgery was thwarted by forces opposed to science.