Shri Ganesh Swaminathan had written a book titled "From the Beginning of Time" (Sep. 2020) on Puranic Cosmology. The book had been promoted by INDICA.
He has been pursuing a Master’s program at The Institute of Vaishnava Studies in Florida and working on a thesis. His program guide has been Prof. Jonathan Edelmann, a scholar who has published books and articles on the Puranas.
The paper explores the dispute in Indian Cosmology, which was first identified by David Pingree. It is the dispute between the Siddhantins and the Pauranikas. Christopher Minkowski went on to articulate the issue as having five parts, including the Earth’s share and size and dubbed it as the virodha (dispute) problem. The paper titled “Reconciling cosmologies of the Purāṇas and the Sūrya Siddhānta; Arguments to bridge a 1,400-year-old divide” demonstrates that the Puranas and the Surya Siddhanta are avirodha on all the five aspects of the problem as formulated by Prof. Minkowski. The paper has been ‘blind-reviewed,’ and the reviewer's suggestions for improvement have been incorporated. The reviewer begins the conclusion of the review with the statement:
The article "Reconciling Cosmologies of the Purāṇas and the Sūrya Siddhānta: Arguments to Bridge a 1,400-Year-Old Divide" makes a significant contribution to the field of Vedic astronomy by offering a fresh perspective on ancient cosmological texts. Its well-structured argumentation, backed by innovative models, presents a compelling case for the compatibility of Puranic and Siddhantic cosmologies.
In this interview he answers questions based on his work on the Puranas. Trained as an engineer, his interest has been primarily in the 'hard' sciences.
How did you get interested in Indian cosmology?
I got interested in space science during my days in school. This was when the early space flights and the first Moon landing took place, so there was a lot of buzz at this time. As time went on, I went into technology (applied sciences), but my interest in the space sciences was later fed by reading and listening to podcasts and YouTube videos.
Dr Roddam Narasimha, one of India's great scientists has said that while he researched Indian science at CalTech he couldn't find many books. The first he found was by was Al Biruni, "Verifying All That the Indians Recount, the Reasonable and the Unreasonable"--Ed, and while the Arab celebrates Indian science, he mocked the Puranas. Several chapters were on Astronomy. Do Indians today also hold the same view on the scientific basis of Puranas?
This is a good question, Aparna, and I touch on it briefly in the paper. A couple of things as context: the Puranas offer great cosmological insights. I have made a couple of presentations on the science of the Sun in the Puranas. It is hard to imagine the material the texts contain. Assuming you have not read the book, here is a link to a presentation on Sangam Talks on the Sun and the Moon
https://tinyurl.com/SangamTalksSunMoon
The important thing to understand is that science has just caught up and is helping us understand some of what is in the texts. Even a century back, Pargiter dismissed the texts as being made up by Brahmins, and I refer to his comment in the paper. For Al-Biruni, more than a millennium ago, it would have likely made no sense at all, so it is not surprising he said what he did. Given few Indians have read the Puranas, while they may not use such strong words, they are nevertheless unsure of what the texts contain.
Is the Drg.ganit which signifies an important concept in the Indian philosophy of astronomical science where the major objective was to achieve agreement between drik (seeing, observation) and ganita (calculation) to be seen in both the Puranas and Surya Siddhanta?
I am not familiar with the phrase, but it seems appropriate. Today, we understand the Earth and the planets move around the Sun. We use computers to calculate the positions of the planets in the sky from the perspective of an Earth-based observer.
This has been done manually in India for many centuries and, as I understand, continues to be done so in some parts of the country. The technique uses mathematical shortcuts to achieve results that have proven to be accurate over the centuries. These are approximations, and the actual/observed positions of the planets would drift over the course of some years. The computations, therefore, need to be adjusted to align with the observations. That would be my interpretation of this phrase.
The technique has worked exceptionally well for more than a millennium. The Surya Siddhanta is a text meant for scholars that focuses on the computation of the precise positions of the planets. We can get an idea of the accuracy of the computation by how precisely parts of a temple are made to align with the Sun's position on a certain day of the year. These are temples that were constructed centuries back. The Puranas incorporate some of this knowledge, often in a simple fashion. The Puranic texts are intended for a lay audience, as I explain in the paper.
Puranas have a definition -
सर्गश्च प्रतिसर्गश्च वंशो मन्वन्तराणि च.
वंशानुचरितं चेति पुराणं पंचलक्षणम्.
So puranas have creation, secondary creation, and history of kings who ruled and are going to rule etc. How does Surya siddhanta deal with creation?
The Surya Siddhanta has a chapter (12) that describes the nature of the cosmos. Most of the rest is about computations for planetary positions. The first few dozen verses in chapter 12 of the Surya Siddhanta deal with Creation. The Puranas deal with this topic in a lot more detail. My belief is that this narrative requires a lot more work for us to fully understand.
ls there any research possible to establish Puranas as Historical texts and not mythology based on the aforementioned definition? Also, for instance taking the lineage of kings described in Bhavishya Purana and its relatability to history?
The first thing to understand is that the Puranas talk about events deep in the Earth's past. The time scales in the Puranas include a Yuga (5 years), a Chatur Yuga (4.32 million years), a Manvantara (about 307 million years) and finally, a Kalpa (4.32 billion years). Each of these scales of time has a specific reason for being mentioned. These time scales are well beyond what we consider to be history. The Puranas have been mocked because scholars were not able to comprehend the need for such large time scales and assumed they had just been made up. The book I wrote earlier (From the Beginning of Time) describes events in the Earth's past over such large time scales, as suggested by the Puranic texts.
There are some king lists that represent a very small part of the Puranic texts. I guess that they should not be very far off from what was historical. However, this is not an area I have worked on.
What is your take on the predictive aspect of Jyotisha? And how do citations related the positions of grahas of Sri Rama or Parashurama help us understand the time they lived?
Jyotisha probably needs a book or a series of papers all to itself. I have consciously stayed away from this topic, as we do not even have a vocabulary to have a discussion on this topic, let alone an in-depth understanding.
It is essential to understand that Jyotisha rests on a foundation of solid Astronomy, which is incredibly precise, especially given its times. The unfortunate part is that most people associate the Nakshatra system only with astrology. While astrology is dismissed as pseudo-science, the high-quality astronomy that it rides on gets ignored.
The position of the stars in the sky in the Ramayana and Mahabharata serve both as time stamps for the events and provide an astrological perspective to the narrative. The events in the Puranas are generally located in time using a chatur yuga or a manvantara. Time stamps, such as star positions, are rare in the Puranic texts.
Could you explain using the following example how the two vary in terminologies and meaning. What is the difference between Graha and planet? Graha is different, it is not only restricted to the physical aspect of planet. It is beyond that. That is why we accept rahu and ketu as grahas. They are not planets. How do you address this in your paper?
One of the meanings of the word 'graha' is 'planet,' and the online dictionary shows that there are about a dozen words in Sanskrit for 'planet.' Graha seems to be the most commonly used, but I am not sure of its etymology. Rahu and Ketu are discussed at length in the paper. They are not planets like those from Mercury to Saturn. They are Nodes, and this is explained in some detail in the paper. They have positions in space that can be computed with precision and are an inherent part of the process of eclipses. These Nodes also orbit the Earth, as does the Moon. The incorporation of Rahu and Ketu into the Nakshatra system is probably unique to Indian astronomy.
A.K. Ramanujan asked in a famous essay: "Is there an Indian way of thinking? What is your conclusion on the basis of your paper?
We need to handle this quote with some care; it can provide fertile ground for an assumption that the Western way of thinking is context-independent and logical and uses proofs, whereas the Indian way is not. All thinking is context-dependent. The context may be provided by the prevailing culture or the discipline being studied.
Take an extreme example in mathematics/geometry. We have planar geometry; based on the proposition, the sum of the angles of a triangle is 1800. We have another geometry that is completely consistent internally, where the sum of the angles of a triangle is greater than 1800 (Lobachevsky). Practitioners of the two understand that differences in starting assumptions lead to different results. An insufficient understanding of the assumptions in Indian thinking may lead to such statements.
There is a well-documented system of logic and reasoning in India, long before modern Western science (from around the Renaissance in Europe), so care should be taken when making such a statement. There is a verse in the Brahmanda Purana that states:
- The learned man should comprehend and retain in belief, by means of scripture, [ आगम ] inference, perception, and reasoning after testing [ परीक्ष्य ] intelligently and carefully. (BrP 1.2.24.151, p. 246)
This is probably the only text that is considered canon anywhere in the world that declares that all sources of knowledge, including itself, should be subject to analysis and testing. So, logic and proof are not alien to the Indian knowledge system. There is a deeper context that we are just beginning to discover.
Kerala mathematician Neelakantha proclaimed that his results were "rooted in yukti and not in aagamas". Yukti, which may loosely be translated as clever reasoning or approach – employing human intelligence, skill, to synthesise – in conjunction with observation, leading to validated conclusions – siddhanta is seen as playing the role of proof in Western mathematics. Are we running the risk of westernising our texts?
I am not familiar with the context of this statement. We need to be careful that this, again, is not seen as lacking proof. The nature of the proofs offered may be different. That said, the Agamas, as mentioned in the verse above, constitute just one source of knowledge. Logic, observation, etc., are valid if that is what Neelakatha mmeant.
In the Vedic world the Rishis saw that an inner cosmos mirrored the out one. Reality was seen to be in triplicate. Prof Kak notes that in the outer, we have the earth, the space above us, and the sky overarching it all. Correspondingly, in the inward direction, we start with the physical body, the breath (prana) and the mind. Did you come across this in your work?
At a high level, this may well be the case.
The Puranas describe the cosmos in amazing detail. The presentation in the link above should give you a good idea. I have not found the same level of detail about the inner self to make a good comparison. Also, I do not recall having come across verses in the Puranas that explicitly call this out.
As a last question please could you summarize why you took up this research and what are the takeaways for readers?
There are two parts to your question, Aparna; both are good.
The first part relates to why I undertook this study. I did not start this research serendipitously. After I wrote the book on cosmology, I realized I was up against two problems. First, while it was well received by a generalist audience, there was no interest, even curiosity, from the academic community.
Second, the academics who had knowledge of the Puranas were all scholars of Sanskrit and maybe some of the 'soft' sciences. Few would have any training in the 'hard' sciences, let alone something specialized such as cosmology, to be able to offer an opinion.
In the case of the first, I realized that academia places a greater burden on proof, using citations, literature reviews, and the rest, than the generalist reading audience. The only way I could address this was to take on a Master's program, which I did with the Institute of Vaishnava Studies in Florida, thanks to the Director, Prof. Abhishek Ghosh. The program, essentially, gave me the opportunity and the tools to write such a thesis.
As far as the second issue was concerned, no Sanskrit scholar would offer an opinion on the lifecycle of the Sun; that is not their domain of expertise. But the planet Earth is something everybody knows about from school. I came across this topic during the course of my research, thanks to my guide, Prof. Jonathan Edelmann. I thought it might be the right topic to write about, as it would illustrate the depth of the Puranas to both the academic and the general audience.
As far as what I would like readers to take away, I would put in three parts:
At the most fundamental level, the paper seeks to resolve a problem that has been a source of dispute for over 1,000 years. Its genesis was likely much earlier but was first formulated by the astronomer Lalla in the 8th century CE. The problem has been brought into focus by David Pingree, and Christopher Minkowski has contributed an enormous amount of scholarship to flesh this out. The upshot of all this work is that it adds to the aura of incredulity around the Puranas, and I am glad that the paper offers a path to resolution.
Second, the Puranas have an incredible amount of knowledge. It is a text that has been misunderstood not just by colonials but even by modern-day Indian scholars. It has, as I demonstrate in the paper, knowledge of the geography of the planet, including the Americas and the Polar regions, well before they were 'discovered' by the West. The book (From the Beginning of Time) explores the other aspects of cosmology from the Puranas in some detail. The stories in the Puranas are personifications of cosmological events. The story of the Asura Rahu swallowing the Moon during an eclipse is a personification of the Moon entering a Node and disappearing from sight. Other stories of the Sun and Moon have similarly been explored in the book. In this context, I would urge readers to add the Puranas to their reading list of ancient Indian texts and not just limit themselves to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
Finally, the paper should be a small window to the large body of knowledge that is the Puranas.
It demonstrates the level of detail that is available in the texts about our planet, from a time when the word was thought to be flat. I am hoping that those in the 'hard' sciences who are interested in the Itihasas will also take the time to read the Puranas and help uncover additional insights from the texts.