Science And Philosophy In Ancient India

Introduction

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918-1993) generally preferred to present his research in the form of book-length studies. Although best known for his highly influential work, Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism (1959), in the last years of his life he had concentrated on the study of History and Philosophy of Science in ancient India. It began with Science and Society in Ancient India (1977), a work devoted exclusively to the sociology and philosophy of medicine and surgery as found in the two great medical compilations, the Caraka Samhita and the Suśruta Samhitā respectively. Later he led a whole team of collaborators to study the origin and development of science and technology in India from a radically novel point of view. Unlike his predecessors he chose to begin from the pre-Vedic Harappan civilisation. Thus archaeological findings were given precedence over purely literary sources. An avowed externalist in his approach, Chattopadhyaya followed the line formulated by Joseph Needham whose first two volumes of Science and Civilisation in China were his constant companions. Yet he knew that the development of science and technology in India had been quite dissimilar to that of China.

Chattopadhyaya, therefore, was forced to build a new model for his study and the first volume of his magnum opus was a path-breaking work. It went against all previous attempts at constructing the history of science and technology in India and gave birth to a new method, combining