History of Science in Early South Asia

*Note Special Date*
 
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
 
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
 
The primary function of works within the alchemical (rasaśāstra) corpus is to provide written technical instructions for iatrochemical processes. These medical interventions require the user to be skilled in botany, metallurgy, and mineral- and gemologies. The specifications themselves are often incomplete, demonstrating that the user must have the practical experience and technical training to complete operations successfully. Though largely focused on the purification of mercury for use in medicinal elixirs to rejuvenate the body and cure disease, rasaśāstra works contain detailed descriptions of plants, substances, and the apparatuses used in alchemical production. The practicalities of rasaśāstra make the works more akin to āyurvedic manuals than religious ones. Alchemy includes the chemical arts of pharmacy and metallurgy, the transmutation of imperfect metals (dhātuvāda), and the search for a universal medicine that is both panacea (sarvārha) and elixir of longevity (rasāyana).
 
However, unlike their āyurvedic counterparts, rasaśāstra works contain specific medico-religious technologies required for the efficacy of their medicines. Where āyurveda points back to the sages, rasaśāstra looks directly toward god. While early works, such as the Rasahṛdayatantra discusses an immortal body, it is longevity, not immortality proper, that is the goal of the alchemist. The perfected body (dehasiddhi) of the alchemical patient is one with long life and free of disease. Once this perfect body is achieved, one can then work toward the attainment of superhuman powers and enter into the transcendent states familiar to tantric and yoga practitioners.
 

 
Some reflections on the practices of proofs in Sanskrit mathematical texts, with a special emphasis on Śaṅkara Vāriyar’s work on Mādhava’s procedure to approximate the circumference of a circle.
 
Agathe Keller (Sphere, CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
 
In his commentary on the Līlāvatī—Bhāksara (b.1114) ’s very popular arithmetical text—Śaṅkara Vāriyar (fl. ca. 1540) launches into a spectacular presentation of the values that Mādhava (14th century) can provide to approximate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He then offers an elaborate proof of one of the highlights of the “Kerala School of Mathematics” attributed to the same Mādhava: a rule to approximate the circumference of a circle which is seen as an equivalent of formulas given later by Gotfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and James Gregory (1638-1675) prefigurating the birth of calculus. In this presentation, I will show how Śaṅkara Vāriyar commentary testifies to new ways of thinking about reasonings and proofs in mathematics, offering many contrasts with the practices of earlier authors writing in Sanskrit. More largely I will describe how authors of mathematical texts in Sanskrit had a great variety of practices of mathematical reasonings. Not all of these practices were about “proving” mathematical truths; reasonings could have many different aims— such as showing that a procedure could be used in different mathematical disciplines, or that a formal computation could be explained by providing each step with a meaning. My aim will be to look at how authors carried out “explanations” (vāsanā) or sought to “establish” a procedure (sadh-, upapad-), and how this questions standard historiographies of proof in Sanskrit mathematical literature on the one hand and of the “Kerala school of mathematics” on the other.

 
The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
 
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
 
Although certain objects from South Arabia exhibit hybridity, a fragmentary bronze female figurine currently in the collection of the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian (accession # S2013.2.378) excavated from Khor Rori (aka. ancient Sumhuram), which is in modern-day Oman, is of Indian manufacture and was brought to its findspot via maritime networks in the early centuries CE. Discussion of this figurine has considered its iconographic similarity to larger scale salabhanjika (also śālabhañjikā) sculptural motifs and its corroboration of the Western Indian Ocean trade linking South Asia with the Mediterranean via ports on the Arabian Peninsula. In this talk, I will review the art historical and archaeological arguments, before suggesting a more robust understanding of the Sumhuram yaḳsī requiring greater future engagement with texts and material science. My discussion emerges from a 2021-2022 collaboration with scholars specializing in South Asian art history, literature, and Ancient Near East art and archaeology.

 
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
 
Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. Pre-circulated readings TBD.