Dear All: Below, a set of slides painstakingly created by Archna Sahni on the Hindu contribution to Science and Mathematics..Please do share widely – especially with the younger ones in your family…
I need volunteers to further develop these slides (and create similar ones on Hindu Contribution to the Arts, Archeology etc).
Please let me know if you have the time and the interest.

Pl also read: The Hindu Contribution to Mathematics Part 1 and Part 2
Indian Contribution to Technology
and these category of posts on Science and Technology in Ancient India. Happy Reading …

Aryabhata discussed the concept of sine in his work by the name of ardha-jya. Literally, it means ”half-chord“. For simplicity, people started calling it jya. When Arabic writers translated his works from Sanskrit into Arabic, they referred it as jiba.
However, in Arabic writings, vowels are omitted, and it was abbreviated as jb.

Later writers substituted it with jiab, meaning “cove” or “bay” (in Arabic, jiba is a meaningless word).
Later in the 12th century, when Gherardo of Cremona translated these writings from Arabic into Latin, he replaced the Arabic jiab with its Latin counterpart, sinus, which means “cove” …

Micro-post of the week, in which I wonder why the “Popular Book Shop”, located inside the Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum had a loud “Mulberry Bush” nursery rhyme playing in the background, “..This is the way we go to Church, go to Church, go to Church…”.
And find it odd (and saddening) that Acharya  J C Bose barely finds a small mention…(not to forget Sir C V Raman).  No photograph of Wing Cmdr Rakesh Sharma either. And no trace or mention of our own achievements in Science and Technology from ancient …

Thanks to Parthasarathy-ji for alerting me to this recent interview of Jeffrey Armstrong. I found it fascinating for the breadth of subjects it covered and the insights it offered. Some excerpts below (emphasis added). As some of you may know,
Jeffrey Armstrong is an award-winning author of numerous books on Vedic knowledge..He is a philosopher, practitioner and teacher of the Vedas for the past 40 years. He has degrees in Psychology, History & Comparative Religions, and Literature and had a successful career as an executive in Silicon Valley before turning to …

This is a sad story of forgetten history, indifference towards ancient knowledge and wisdom & callous neglect…Read on.. From A search for India’s mathematical roots, some depressing excerpts (emphasis added):
K. Ramasubramanian is the head of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) research Cell for Indian Science and Technology in Sanskrit (CISTS), the only one of its kind in the country, where doctoral students translate the work of ancient Indian scientists into English, study language technology in Sanskrit that will help computers to analyse a wide range of speech and …

Start this weekend reading about “Maccha Yantra” – which might have been the precursor to the mariner’s compass of today…
Next, read former Governor of J&K, Jagmohan’s account of  his trek to Amarnath…
…and finally, ponder over Chandan Mitra’s provocative piece on the purpose of history
Excerpts from all the three articles below, as always.

Stumbled across this remarkable fact recently:
The first report of the use of ‘phototherapy’ in the treatment of skin disorders dates from 1400 BC from India…
A liitle bit of digging led me to the following references:
Historical aspects
The first report of the use of ‘phototherapy’ in the treatment of skin disorders dates from 1400 BC from India when patients with vitiligo were given certain plant extracts (whose active ingredients included psoralens) and then exposed to the sun.[1] Fitzpatrick TB, Pathak MA. Historical aspects of methoxsalen and other furocoumarins. J Invest Dermatol 1959;31:229-31 …

Many of you must have read a report in The Hindu from a few weeks ago by unnamed “Eminent Historians” titled, “From ‘India Shining’ to ‘India was Shining’“. The report (dt. 3rd May) appeared to be an amateurish attempt at trashing some of the claims made in the BJP’s manifesto regarding India’s past and heritage.
It had excerpts from the BJP’s manifesto and brief counter-points dismissing the claims and assertions. Curiously – in spite of being authored by “Eminent Historians” – it was surprisingly light on references and historical sources.
Dr. …

I have moved the last few comments on the discussion on Islam, Hindutva, Dr Zakir Naik, Godhra post here to prevent comment overload.
Please continue discussing your thoughts on this thread.
The extract below picks up from the last few comments.
*** Comments Begin ***
*** Comment by Naved

There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad (pbuh) is the Messenger of Allah.
A Muslim believes in the existence of that which is beyond human perception. A Muslim believes in Allah and His attributes. A Muslim believes in the angels, the scriptures, and the Prophets. …

Lord Curzon, the late Viceroy of India, in an address delivered at the Delhi Durbar in 1901:
Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India] while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle.
India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the universe. [ link ]
Related Posts:
The Myth of a Benevolent “Raj” 
India in the 1820s
Loot – in search of East India Co. (excerpts) 
Clearing the dust off …