دانلود کتاب Science and Society in Ancient India

The present study is divided into three parts, intended to answer three main questions. Despite ramifications, the questions are interconnected and may be viewed as three aspects of one basic question, namely that of the tension in ancient India between science and its opposite. From the viewpoint of science, the latter is referred to as the counter-ideology.

The first part of the study discusses the question of science and its decline in ancient India. It begins with a brief sketch of some of the prominent theoretical achievements of Indian science during its creative period. This is followed by an account of how the ideological requirements of the hierarchical society militate against these and finally stifle science.

At the present stage of research, however, the propositions from which the discussion starts may appear to be highly controversial. The real theoretical achievements of ancient Indian science are on the whole ignored and are sometimes even grossly misunderstood. An important reason for this is apparently peculiar. These achievements remain strangely muddled with many features of the counter-ideology even in the source-books of Indian science, i.e. in the form in which these reach us. Anything found in these sources therefore cannot be taken on its face-value, as indicative of science proper. It is neccessary to raise the rather unusual question : What is intrinsic and what is extrinsic to Indian science even in the extant basic works of it ? A good deal of textual analysis is needed to answer this.

In order not to be arbitrary, however, the analysis presupposes a clear criterion for the differentiation.

What then is this criterion ? This is sought to be answered in the second part of the present study, in which—depending on the criterion settled—an attempt is made to re-explore some of the more important source-books of Indian science.

Logically speaking, the present study should have begun with this textual analysis, on the legitimacy of which hinges its central argument. The only reason for putting it off for the second part is consideration of communicational advantage. Long digressions
into textual details make it exceedingly difficult to bring the central argument into focus, without which the reader’s interest in a book is not easily sustained.

But what accounts for the strange form in which the source-books of Indian science reach us ? Why, in other words, all sorts of alien ideas and attitudes remain mixed up with science in these texts ? This is answered partly in the first and partly also in the second part of the present study. The alien elements are of the nature of later grafts, and the grafts take place sometimes before these works attain their present form.

The motivation—conscious or unconscious—of grafting these on works of science may be inferred from their very nature. These are hostages given to the counter-ideology, when the law-givers’ demand for it becomes increasingly oppressive. This does not rule out the possibility that the tendency of accommodating the counter-ideology within science results in course of time in a situation in which the former also becomes a part of the make-believe of the scientists. When this takes place, the scientists behave like split-personalities ; while accepting science they also prostrate themselves before its opposite. The tradition set up by them continues to create formidable difficulties for the development of science in India today. But that is another story, into which we need not at present digress.

In the ancient period, the hostages given to the counter-ideology presumably helped the scientists to evade at least partially the censorship of the law-givers. The works of science would not have perhaps otherwise survived, as in fact those of the plain-speaking heretics called the Lokayatas did not. But these also crippled and maimed science. Its internal decay and eventual collapse are largely due to these.

But what happens to the theoretical positions once gained by science ? These are not entirely lost. They survive in the general fund of Indian philosophical thought. Though usually neglected by the historians of Indian philosophy, what Indian science bequeaths to Indian philosophy is of immense significance. Without noting this, we can hardly understand the real source of some of the important trends of ancient Indian philosophy, particularly those that have an overtly secular and empirical interest. This is discussed in the third part of the present study. It tries also to analyse how the basic tension between science and the counter-ideology continues in the philosophical field and what damage is done by it to the development of philosophy.

Such, in brief, is the plan of the present study. It may be useful to follow it, if we begin with a brief sketch of its main argument.