History of Science and Technology in Ancient India

The present book is the second volume of the History of Science and Technology in Ancient India, the first volume of which was published in 1986. The main theme covered in the previous volume is the beginnings of science during the period of the first urbanization (ancient Indus Valley Civilization), while the present volume discusses the formation of the theoretical fundamentals of natural science. During the first urbanization science came into being only in the restricted sense of mathematics and astronomy, discarding the possibility of "natural" science or the knowledge of nature as it is without any alien addition, or the deities imagined to preside over nature. The present volume thus opens with the question : why there could not be natural science in this sense during the first urbanization? The answer is sought in the administrative infrastructure of the earliest cities which as much required mathematics and astronomy as superstition in a massive scale. Roundabout the eighth or seventh century B.C., however, Indian history started taking a dramatic turn towards the second urbanization with a changed administrative infrastructure and hence also a changed intellectual climate, allowing a secular view of nature to come to the fore. There was a profound intellectual turmoil and thinkers are found to explore various alternative avenues to understand nature. Thus came into being the first scientist with a supurb scientific method, which paved the path for the revolutionary move forward from magico-religious medicine to rationalist medicine. A number of Appendices as invited contributions from various specialists discussing details of the main story, is likely to add particular attraction to the present volume.