Ike, how can you even suggest that Golden age of Islam was influenced by Vedic influence, I can understand Sassanid, but what polytheist Hinduism had to offer monotheist Islam ? What else the influence was if not Byzantine, the Sassanid and the Vedic? Desert Arabs were a clean slate, they had no idea of contemporary society or knowledge. They amalgamated three strongest cultures the Byzantine, the Sassanid and the Vedic to create what was an era of leaning when the cradle of civilisation needed it the most. Let me repeat and make an interesting observation from my vantage point. Connecting points of history to ‘Vedic Mathematics’, which is acknowledged by every Arab that I have talked with in Alazhar and every Iranian intellectual, even the Vedic influence on Qurraysh pre-Jahilliiyah is very much accepted.Al-Beruni’s ability to find the correct circumference of the earth that was the closest and nearest call of the circumference of the planet earth to what was determined contemporarily was made by Abu Rayhan Biruni (973-1048), after Eratosthenes(300 B.C.) close estimates, depending on what stadia he was referring to Egyptian or Greek. Abu Rayhan Biruni studied closely, the work of famous Indian mathematician named Aryabhata, who lived around 500 A.D. Al- Biruni, actually calculated the Earths circumference in a small town on a mountain top of Pind Dadan Khan, District Jhelum, Punjab, presently Pakistan. His method was different from Eratosthenes. He used Vedic methods, and development of Algebra. My point is simple, that Ibn Battuta, Averroes, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Moayyeduddin Urdi, and Ibn al-Shatir were few of these scholars who benefitted from Vedic mathematics and helped the age of enlightenment within Moorish Spain and Abbasid Baghdad. Islamic scholars owed their knowledge of a moving earth and zero to Vedic Hindu philosophy. Lets trace the root of the Arabic word for restoration, al-jabru, is the root of the word algebra. Algebra, this ancient knowledge of solutions of equations found a home early in the Islamic world, where it was known as the science of restoration and balancing. In the 9th century al-Khwarizmi wrote Arabic algebra, it is theoretical not in a formula form, both the examples and proofs. The system of mathematics that they and their Sassanid ancestors observed in India was adapted by them and given the name Al-Jabr meaning the reunion of broken parts. Al means The & Jabr mean reunion. This name gives a clear indication that they imported it from Vedic resources and amalgamated it with their concepts of mathematics. This external root source was Bijaganitam Vedic. The Sassanid civilization that the Arabs conquered at Qadisiyyah was pragmatic and inclusive, it inculcated in them the spirit of fine tuning Mecca and inheritance and sea faring astrolabes. The Ummayads and Abbasids fine tuned the mix of Byzantium, Sassanid, and Vedic into a rich academic culture. This whole chain of knowledge finds its roots in ancient India, conventional mathematics termed Ganitam, this was what science of restoration and balancing was known before the development of algebra. This is borne out by the name - Bijaganitam, which was given to the algebraic form of computation. By the end of the 9th century, the Egyptian mathematician Abu Kamil had stated and proved the basic laws and identities of algebra and solved such complicated problems as finding x, y, and z such that x + y + z = 10, x2 + y2 = z2, and xz = y2. Mathematics represents a high level of abstraction attained by the human mind. The Indian system of mathematics could not have escaped the attention of invading Arabs. At the beginning of the age of the Islamic invasions and expansion as they had an intercourse of the rich cultures of Arabs being a clean plate adopted to Knowledge very well. It was only after the rift between knowledge of the world and knowledge of Allah where the schism between Islam led to Asharites and Mutazallites. The Arab wars and Renaissance were interbred, and the Arabs improved upon the arts and sciences that they imbibed from India.*** It was the desert Arab amalgamation of cradles of eastern civilizations that spewed elite luminaries responsible for the enlightenment of a whole era. Centuries earlier Aryabhata held to a view in which the Earth rotated. (Zero was invented by the ancient Indian scientists; most people accept that it was invented by great mathematician Aryabhata). If zero was not discovered mankind would be zero. The rules governing the use of zero appeared for the first time in Brahmaguptas book Brahmasputha Siddhanta (The Opening of the Universe), written in 628. Here Brahmagupta considers not only zero, but negative numbers, and the algebraic rules for the elementary operations of arithmetic with such numbers. Without numbers below zero, risk could not be ascertained. Insurance would not have evolved and so trade would have remained in infancy. The world, subject to vagaries of weather and anger of seas, would not flourish. ‘Zero’ that symbolizes nothingness is one of the major discoveries for western thought and sciences. Arab contributions to human civilization are noteworthy. In arithmetic, the style of writing digits from right to left is an evidence of its Arab/Hindu origin. For instance, the numeral for five hundred in English should be written as 005, not as 500 according to the English left-to-right reading style.*** Thus, the technique of algebraic computation known and developed in Vedic nation was subject to invasions of the Islamized communities, the Sassanid’s, the Arabs, the Turks and the Afghans got their basic knowledge from rich mathematicians of Hind. The likes of Khayyam and Beruni, were born out of vacuum, they were the bosom buddy culture of India and it helped enrich the Sassanid dynasties. Mathematics has its roots in Vedic literature which is nearly 4000 years old. Science progresses with a funeral, and to search for todays advancement back in medieval times is a misplaced location of precious resources. To look for advanced calculus in the Archimedes circles is nothing but an unnecessary waste of time. To claim that the Einstein’s theory of relativity has its roots in Aryabhata is rich fishing, like looking for a 20 ton whale in your bath tub. Therefore, I unashamedly, and so do all the Arabs, call it the Vedic Mathematics, that is a salute to India of ideas. ****Please refer to Algebra Britannica, Wiki, and Vedic mathematics Encyclopedia..
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 08:17:45 +0000
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