The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c2: Foreword
The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c2
- Language
- English
Foreword
c2.1
The following pages comprise a series of monographs on the Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus. In the present state of Indian chronology it is not possible to assign dates to the original sources from which the materials have been drawn. Practically the main body of positive knowledge here presented may be assigned to the millennium 500 b.c.—500 a.d. Colebrooke's account of Hindu Algebra, and Hœrnle's of Hindu Osteology, have made it unnecessary for me to write separate monographs on these subjects. The former, however, requires to be brought up to date. The progress of Indian Algebra (mainly in Southern India) after Bháskara, parallel to the developments in China and Japan, is a subject that remains for future investigation.
c2.2
The chapter on the "Mechanical, Physical, and Chemical Theories of the Ancient Hindus" appeared in Dr. P. C. Ray's *Hindu Chemistry* (Vol. II.), and that on the "Scientific Method of the Hindus" as an appendix to the same work.
c2.3
My direct aim in the present work is to furnish the historians of the special sciences with new material which will serve to widen the scope of their survey. The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigation of physical phenomena, as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindu scientific ideas and methodology (*e.g.* the inductive method or methods of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia—in the East as well as the West—in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire. A comparative estimate of Greek and Hindu science may now be undertaken with some measure of success—and finality.
c2.4
These studies in Hindu Positive Science are also intended to serve as a preliminary to my "Studies in Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy in its rise and development is necessarily governed by the body of positive knowledge preceding or accompanying it. Hindu Philosophy *on its empirical side* was dominated by concepts derived from physiology and philology, just as Greek Philosophy was similarly dominated by geometrical concepts and methods. Comparative Philosophy, then, in its criticism and estimate of Hindu thought, must take note of the empirical basis on which the speculative superstructure was raised.
c2.5
I have not written one line which is not supported by the clearest texts. The ground trodden is, for the most part, absolutely new. Fortunately, the Sanskrit philosophico-scientific terminology, however difficult from its technical character, is exceedingly precise, consistent, and expressive. I may add that I have occasionally used (perhaps with a questionable freedom) scientific terms like isomeric, polymeric, potential, etc., in a broad sense, as convenient symbols to express ideas nearly or remotely allied.
c2.6
BRAJENDRANATH SEAL.