History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.71.3

v6.c82.71.3

It has been found that the Greeks were inferior to the Babylonians in several respects, that their vaunted geometric lore was not as great intellectually as supposed, that out of 200 propositions in Euclid's twelve books only about a dozen are necessary as a preparation for modern mathematics and that the Greeks much developed geometry because they could not easily employ ordinary arithmetical methods owing to their dependence on the abacus.⁶⁹⁵ It was further found that the sexagesimal system of degrees, minutes and seconds used by Ptolemy was of Babylonian origin and according to Herodotus (II. 109) the Greeks derived two kinds of Sun-dials and the division of the day into 12 parts from the Babylonians.⁶⁹⁶ At present such nations as England, France, Germany, U. S. S. R. and U. S. A. are the foremost nations in Science, Technology and Industry but they clung for about 1400 years to the Almagest of Ptolemy as their astronomical Bible, were ignorant of the decimal place value system and the use of a sign for zero till the so-called 'Arabic numerals' (borrowed from India) were introduced into Europe.⁶⁹⁷ The intolerance of ignorant and bigoted priests in Europe went so far as to condemn Galileo, one of the greatest intellects in mechanics and astronomy, to perpetual imprisonment at the age of 70 for no greater offence than holding fast to the Copernican theory.