UPSC History Religious Movement - Jainism, Bhudhism, Bhagavatism and Brahmanism NCERT Extracts - Legacy in Science and Civilization

 Religion

• In addition to Brahmanism, India gave rise to Jainism and Buddhism.
• Buddhism disappeared from India in course of time, though it had spread as far as. Japan in the north-west. In the process of diffusion. Buddhism projected a good deal of art, language and literature in the eighbouring areas.
• Jainism continued in India and helped the development of its art and literature.

The Varna System

• Religion influenced the formation of social classes in India in a peculiar way.
• In India vama laws enjoyed the sanction of both the state and religion.
• The functions of priests, warriors, peasants and labourers were defined in law and supposed to have been laid down by divine agencies.
• Those who departed from their functions and were found guilty of offences were subject to secular punishments.
• In course of time social classes and castes were made hereditary by law and religion.
• All this was done to ensure that vaishyas produce and pay taxes and shudras serve as labourers so that brahmanas act as priests and kshatriyas as rulers.
• The need of carrying out their respective functions was so strongly ingrained in the minds of the various classes that ordinarily they would never think of deviating from their dharm.
• The Bhagavadgita taught that people should lay down their lives in defence of their own dharma rather than adopt the dharma of others, which would prove dangerous.
• The lower orders worked hard in the firm belief that they would deserve a better life the next world or birth,
• What was done by slaves and other producing sections in Greece and Rome under the threat of whip was done by the vaishyas and shudras out of conviction formed through brahmanical indoctrination and the vama system.

Philosophical System

• Ancient India is considered famous for its contribution to philosophy and spiritualism but the Indians also developed a materialistic view of the world.
• In the six system of philosophy which the Indians created we find elements of materialist philosophy in the samkhya system of kapila, who was born around 580 B.C.
• He believed that the soul can attain liberation only through real knowledge, which can fee acquired through observation, inference and world.
• The samkhya system does not recognize the existence of God.
• According to it, the world has not been created by God but by nature, and the world and human life are regulated by natural forces.
• Materialist philosophy received the greatest impetus from Charvaka, who lived in about the sixth century B.C. The philosophy that he propounded is known as lokayata.
• He argued that what is not experienced by man through his sensual organs does not really exist. The idealist system taught that the world is an illusion.
• People were asked by the Upanishads to abandon the world and to strive for real knowledge.
• Western thinkers have taken to the teachings of the Upanishads because they are unable to solve the human problem created by modem technology.

Crafts and Technology

• The Indian craftsmen were great experts in dyeing and making various kinds of colours.
• The basic colours made in India were so shining and lasting that the beautiful paintings of Ajanta are still intact.
• Similarly, the Indians were great experts in the art of the making steel.
• This craft was developed first in India.
• The Indian steel was exported to many countries of the world since very early times and came to be called wootz in later times. They were in great demand in the entire region from Asia to Eastern Europe.

Polity

• The Arthashastra of Kautilya leaves no doubt that the Indians could run the administration of a large empire and tackle the problems of a complex society.
• The country produced a great ruler in Ashoka, who in spite of his great victory over Kaiinga, adopted a policy of peace and non-aggression,
• Ashoka and several other Indian kings practised religious toleration and stressed that the wishes of the followers of the other religions should be respected,
• Furthermore,, India was the only other country with Greece to make experiments in some kind of democracy.

Science and Mathematics

• India made an important contribution to science.
• In ancient times religion and science were inextricably linked together
• Astronomy made great progress in the country because the planets came to be regarded as gods, and their movements began to be closely observed.
• Their study became essential on account of their connections with changes in seasons and weather conditions which were important for agricultural activities.
• The science of grammar and linguistics arose because the ancient brahmanas stressed that every Vedic prayer and every mantra should be recited with meticulous correctness,
• In the fourth century B.C Panini systematized the rules governing Sanskrit and produced a grammar called the AshtadhyayL
• In the field of mathematics the ancient Indians; made three distinct contributions – the notation system, the decimal system and the use of zero.
• The earliest epigraphic evidence for the use of the decimal system is in the beginning of the fifth century A.D.
• The Indian notational system was adopted by the Arabs who spread it in the Western world. The Indian numerals are called Arabic in English, but the Arabs themselves called their numerals
• The Indians were the first to use the decimal system.
• The famous mathematician Aryabhata (A.D. 476-500) was acquainted with it.
• The Chinese leamt this system from the Buddhist missionaries.
• Zero was discovered by the Indians in about the second century B.C.
• The Arabs leamt and adopted it from India and spread it in Europe.
• Although both the Indians and the Greeks contributed to the discipline of algebra, in Western Europe its knowledge was borrowed not from Greece but from the Arabs who had acquired it from India.
• The brick constructions of Harappa show that in north-western India people possess) a good knowledge of measurement and geometry, which appears in the Sulvasutras of about the fifth century B.C.
• In the second century B.C. Apastamba produced a practical geometry for the construction of altars at which the kings could offer sacrifices. It describes acute angle, obtuse angle and right angle.
• Aryabhata formulated the rule for finding the area of a triangle, which led to the origin of trigonometry. The most famous work of this time is the
• The most renowned scholars of astronomy were Aryabhata and Varahamihira.
• Aryabhata belonged to the fifth century, and Varahamihira to the sixth.
• Aryabhata calculated the position of the planets according to the Babylonian method.
• He discovered the cause of lunar and solar eclipses.
• The circumference of the earth which he measured on the basis of speculation is considered to be correct even now.
• He pointed out that the sun is stationary and the earth rotates.
• The book of Aryabhata is called the
• Varahamihira "s well-known works is called the Brihatsamhita, belongs to the 600 A.D
• He stated that the moon rotates round the earth and the earth rotates round the sun
• He utilized several Greek works to explain the movement of the planets and some other astronomical problem. The Greek knowledge influenced Indian astronomy.
• Indians craftsmen contributed much to the progress of chemistry.
• The Indian dyers invented lasting colours and they also discovered the blue colour.

Medicine

• The earliest mention of medicines is in the Atharva Veda.
• In the second century A.D. India produced two famous scholars of the Ayurveda, Sushruta and Charaka. In the Sushrutasamhita, Sushruta describes the method of operating cataract, stone disease and several other ailments. He mentions as many as 121 implement to be used for operations.
• Charaka's Charakasamhita is like an encyclopaedia of Indian medicine.
• It describes various types of fever, leprosy, hysteria (mirgi) and tuberculosis.
• His book contains the names of a large number of medicinal plants and herbs.
• Charakasamhita is thus useful for that of ancient Indian flora and chemistry.

Geography

• Indians were acquainted with China and Western countries but they neither had any clear idea of where they lay nor of their distances from India.
• In early times the ancient Indians obtained some knowledge of navigation and they contributed to the craft of shipbuilding.

Art and Literature

• The ancient Indian masons and craftsmen produced beautiful works of art.
• The monolithic pillars erected by Ashoka are famous for their shining polish.
• The Mauryan polished pillars were mounted by statues of animals, especially lions.
• The lion capital has been adopted as the national emblem of the Republic of India.
• Ajanta is the birth-place of Asian art.
• It contains as many as 30 cave temples, constructed between the 200 B.C. - 700 A.D.
• The paintings appeared in the 200 A.D., and most of them belong to Gupta times.
• Their themes were borrowed from stories about previous incarnations of the Buddha and from other ancient literature.