A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c35.8

v2.c35.8

and eclipses, matters in which the Hindus had a practical ceremonial interest, reached a remarkable degree of approximation (much above Græco-Arab computations) to the figures in Laplace's Tables, which can only be explained by the circumstance that in the case of these constants the Hindus carried out for more than a thousand years a systematic process of verification and correction by comparison of the computed with the observed results (like the navigator's correction of the course of the ship at sea), a process which was termed दृग्गणितैक्य. In Zoology, the enumeration of the species of Vermes, Insecta, Reptilia, Batrachia, Aves, etc., makes a fair beginning, but the classification proceeds on external characters and habits of life, and not on an anatomical basis. In Botany, the observation was mainly in the interests of Materia Medica, and the classification was as superficial as possible. (Vide my paper on the Hindu Classification of Plants and Animals).