Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath has said that theories and principles of science originated in the Vedas, but were taken through the Arab world to the Western countries, where scientists claimed them as their discoveries.
Somnath, who is also secretary of the Department of Space and the chairman of the Space Commission, asserted that scientific principles for aeronautics, concepts of time, structure of the universe, mathematics, metallurgy and aviation were first found in the Vedas.
Speaking as chief guest at the fourth convocation ceremony of the ‘Maharishi Panini Sanskrit and Vedic University’ at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday, the ISRO chairman pointed out that the scientific theories of Indian scientists during those times were not written. He said the reason behind that was that the language of the scientists in India during those times was Sanskrit, which had no written script then.
He said it was later that people began using the Devanagri script to write Sanskrit. Panini is believed to have laid down the rules of grammar in the Sanskrit language.
Somanath claimed that Sanskrit is a favourite language of scientists and engineers, as the language is ideal to convey scientific thoughts through computerization and Artificial Intelligence.
He further said that theories and findings in various fields of science, astronomy, medicine, physics and other subjects were written in Sanskrit but could not be fully researched and utilized.
He said being a rocket scientist he was fascinated by a Sanskrit book on astronomy, ‘Surya Siddhanta’, written sometime in the 8th Century, which talks about the solar system, time-scale, the earth’s size and circumference and other scientific principles.
Somanath said India was a knowledge society since Vedic times, involving mathematics, medicine, metaphysics, astronomy and other subjects written in Sanskrit, but all such learning came back to the country several thousand years later, as discoveries by western scientists.