Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s3.8

c6.s3.8

Among many subjects of wonder which the study of these ancient fragments cannot fail to suggest, it is not one of the least that algebra has existed in India, and has been cultivated for more than 1200 years, without any signal improvement, or the addition of any material discovery. The works of the ancient teachers of science have been commented on, elucidated, and explained with skill and learning; but no new methods have been invented, nor any new principle introduced. The method of resolving indeterminate problems, that constitute the highest merit of their analytical science, were known to Brahmagupta hardly less accurately than to Bhascara; and they appear to have been understood even by Aryabhata, more ancient by several centuries than either. A long series of scholiasts display in their annotations great acuteness, intelligence, and judgement; but they never pass far beyond the line drawn by their predecessors, which probably seemed even to those learned and intelligent men as the barrier within which it was to be confined. In India, indeed, everything seems equally insurmountable, and truth and error are equally assured of permanence in the stations they have once occupied. The politics, the laws, the religion, the science, and the manners, seem all nearly the same as at the remotest period to which history extends. Is it because the power which brought about a certain degree of civilisation, and advanced science to a certain height, has either ceased to act, or has met with such a resistance as it is barely able to overcome? Or is it because the discoveries which the Hindoos are in possession of are an inheritance from some more inventive and more ancient people, of whom no memorial remains but some of their attainments in science?52