10 ms·

I remember being taught in school about the important Muslim contributions to science, philosophy, and mathematics. It has been interesting to learn over time t

by fwlr 4y ago

I remember being taught in school about the important Muslim contributions to science, philosophy, and mathematics. It has been interesting to learn over time that much of this was inherited from Indian scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians (and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for).

jhbadger 4y ago
True, but in turn when we do hear about the Indian contributions, we tend to think they were all Hindus, rather than recognizing the great contributions of the Buddhists at Nalanda. While Buddhism has little presence in India today, that's where it started.
- pankajdoharey 4y ago
  Buddhists were the only folks who were building universities at the time Hindus didnt even have a school leave alone universities. The so called "Gurukul" has never been found at any archaeological site.
  - sudhirc 4y ago
    Ofcourse millions of Sanskrit manuscript were produced in fictional Gurukuls by fictional characters who never existed. > The so called "Gurukul" has never been found at any archaeological site. Chariot were considered fiction until they were not[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhigarhi&ved=2ahUKEwjwktvMmMn9AhUCUGwGHccLB0EQFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2O98GNSgFiY0SSa31iUe2U https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhigarhi&ved=2ahUKEwjwktvM...
    - Anglican34 4y ago
      [dead]
    - pankajdoharey 4y ago
      Show one Sanskrit manuscript older than 1446. Not a single Stone inscription, Copper plate, Terracotta inscription of classical sanskrit has ever been found nor any Hindu site. Show a single evidence? The evidence of sanskrit found are of Buddhist Sanskrit at Buddhist schools like Nalanda here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#/media/File:Nalanda_clay_seal_of_Kumaragupta_III.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#/media/File:Nalanda_cl... Not a single archeological evidence of Hindu (Brahman) dharm exist, if you have any evidence older that 1446 you have to furnish the proof. Brahmins were writing Allahupanishad at the time of mughals praising Allah to be the supreme god and greater than Vishnu. During the British Rule They wrote Bhavishya Puran and praising queen victoria to be the great ruler and even mentioned Macaulay. All those sanskrit books of Hindus religion were written much later infact they couldnt be written before teh invention of Devanagari script. And devanagari script itself was invented between 11th and 13th century. Also your link doesnt work.
      - sudhirc 4y ago
        > Not a single Stone inscription, Copper plate, Terracotta inscription of classical sanskrit has ever been found nor any Hindu site Ok here you go. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathibada_Ghosundi_inscriptions#:~:text=Dated%20to%20the%201st%2Dcentury,of%20ancient%20India%2C%20particularly%20Vaishnavism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathibada_Ghosundi_inscripti.... > All those sanskrit books of Hindus religion were written much later infact they couldnt be written before teh invention of Devanagari script. Sanskrit is script agnostic language so Sanskrit manuscript are found in every Indian script. If you do not know this then you are not qualified to talk about Sanskrit. Edit: Hinduism is neither doctrine based nor centralised so every single purana and upnishad isn't authentic. Hindus and are free to discard what doesn't align with Dharma as described in Vedas. What make you think Allopnishad wasn't written by Muslims to convince Hindus?
        pankajdoharey 4y ago
        First of all you clearly have no clue that the Modern Classical Sanskrit is a newer language an earlier language existed known as BHS(Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) this language was written in a script older than Devanagri script. There are ample Buddhists manuscripts of this language written in various scripts like Kharoshti. Why do we not find a single Brahman Dharm manuscript? Simply because much of (Brahman Dharm) Hinduism was invented after the invention of Devanagri script in 11 century. Also The classical sanskrit in which all Brahman Text (Hindu text) is written cannot be written in any Indian script before 11th century. Simply because the very basic sounds of sanskrit "Chha" (छ), "Tri" (त्र), "Gya"(ज्ञ), compound sounds, halants and visargas are not present in any script before that. In the end what is the basis of your claim? All your claims are sand castles without archaeological evidence which is non existent for Brahman Dharm (Hinduism). Vedas dont prescribe anything in terms of rejecting books, 33% of Rig Veda is only talk fire burning rituals and Indra, i suggest you first read it before speaking about it. You must also address Bhavishya Puran.
- sudhirc 4y ago
  Buddhism is not that different from Hinduism. Both coexisted and debated with each other for centuries until islamic invasions started. Buddhism being a pacifist sect fell first.
  - random314 4y ago
    Buddhism is very distinct from Hinduism. In particular, there aren't multiple deities to worship and there is no caste system. Buddhism, the dominant religion of India circa 400AD (as per Chinese travellers), was already under attack from Brahmins who made it a key strategy to get royal patronage, set up the religious rules for society which heavily favored themselves and also focused on acting as confidantes to kings, leading to the elimination of Buddhism(focused on monastic life) from much of the Indian subcontinent even before Islam was founded.
    - raincom 4y ago
      Nah, the so-called 'isms' of India ('Buddhism', 'Jainism', 'Saivism') are called agama traditions. The question scholars face or faced is this: what was earlier? Indologist story that both left wing and right scholars accept is that: there was Vedism, corrupted to become 'popular' hinduism, later Indian Martin Luther (Buddha) fought against the veil immorality of Hindus (because caste system forces immoral obligations on everyone), thereby Buddhism emerging. This is the standard story.
      - random314 4y ago
        It is not clear that Vedism was created before Jainism, which has a strong archeological presence in South India. There is also speculation that Shaivism is much older and was merged in to Hinduism quite late, some what contemporaneous with the elimination of Brahma (Brahmism) as a deity to be worshipped. Also, it is weird to talk about left/right wrt history. History is just history, not left or right. In the Indian context, left has come to mean the actual history by historians, while right implies pseudohistory of PN Oak, out of India hypotheses and various other fantasies.
rramadass 4y ago
Not only India, but Persia, countries in The Levant, North Africa and Mediterranean were highly developed before the advent of Islam (which originated amongst desert tribes). It is their knowledge which gave rise to the so called "Golden Age of Islam". Islamic conquest merely acted as a conduit for the spread of these ideas from one geographical region to another (a la the later Mongol Empire).
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Central Asia certainly played its role too. I invite you to consider that when Jai Singh II built Jantar Mantar, he used "Islamic" sources (Zij) as well from there.
  - rramadass 4y ago
    Central Asia's prominence before Islam was mainly due to trade routes (later named the "Silk Road").
  - random314 4y ago
    It is fairly standard in Indian right wing media to be dismissive of anything positive of Islamic origin, by constructing a short alternative history as per the writers imagination. So any post Islamic Arab contributions to math would have to be stolen from India, using bloodshed - as if math is a treasure that can be lifted or looted or were existing amongst Arabs before Islam.
    - rramadass 4y ago
      Nobody is talking about "right wing media" etc other than you. What is being pointed out is the achievements of civilizations predating Islam in those countries which are today Islamic. It is simple factual History.
      - selimthegrim 4y ago
        Very well, so what is wrong about mentioning Al Biruni or Ulugh Beg or Zij-i-Sultani as well?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
> and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for To be blunt: Islamic invaders to the Indian subcontinent were by and large iconoclastic, at best intolerant and at worst genocidal (by forced conversions, marriages, outright murder, etc) of the native Dharmic (read: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain) population, and burned down, looted, and deconstructed Hindu and Buddhist places of worship to construct their own mosques on top of said ruins. The India-Pakistan debacle today is an extension of a nearly millennium-long Hindu-Muslim feud. The burning of Nalanda University (whether or not it is a 'university' is an orthogonal matter) is another facet in this feud. The decline of Buddhism in the late classical era in the Indian subcontinent—already on a somewhat downhill slope, due to Hinduism co-opting much Buddhist thought, and in general being more popular and accessible than the ascetic demands of monastic Buddhism—was drastically accelerated by the Islamic incursions into the Indian subcontinent. The Ayodhya mosque-temple riots are another facet of this clash. Western commentators glibly say 'Hindus are anti-Muslim'. The issue in India is so much more nuanced than that; there is bad blood on both sides going back a thousand years. Islam cannot escape from these charges: the religion is fundamentally intolerant of non-Abrahamic ones, especially ones with liberal iconography (like Hinduism and Buddhism). There is a reason why (most of) the oldest and largest Hindu temples are in South India, which mostly escaped from the period of Muslim rule relatively unscathed. There are (possibly apocryphal) stories about how the idols at several temples (such as the one in Srirangam, Trichy) were relocated to mountain redoubts to prevent them being stolen and melted down by 'the invaders'. The destruction of Buddhist iconography by Islam (or its followers) continues to this day: the Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.
- u801e 4y ago
  > The India-Pakistan debacle today is an extension of a nearly millennium-long Hindu-Muslim feud. Not really. A lot of these arbitrary borders in modern times came about due to actions of former colonial powers. Prior to colonial times, there were many individual kingdoms/territories throughout the subcontinent. Other examples of arbitrary borders include the Durand line, and the Wakhan corridor.
  - 4y ago
msravi 4y ago
The Destruction of Nalanda, as chronicled in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri by the Persian historian Minhaj-i-Siraj written a couple of decades after Bhaktiyar Khilji's death [1]: "There were two brothers of Farghanah, men of learning, one Nizam-ud-Din, the other Samsam-ud-Din [by name], in the service of Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar; and the author of this book met with Sam-sim-ud-Din at Lakhanawati in the year 641 H., and this account is from him. These two wise brothers were soldiers among that band of holy warriors when they reached the gateway of the fortress and began the attack, at which time Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar, by the force of his intrepidity, threw himself into the postern of the gateway of the place, and they captured the fortress, and acquired great booty. The greater number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans, and the whole of those Brahmans had their heads shaven; and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and, when all these books came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of those books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed. On becoming acquainted [with the contents of those books], it was found that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindu tongue, they call a college Bihar. When that victory was effected, Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar returned with great booty, and came to the presence of the beneficent Sultan, Kutb-ud-Din, I-bak, and received great honour and distinction." 1. https://archive.org/details/tabaqat-i-nasiri-volume-1/page/552/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/tabaqat-i-nasiri-volume-1/page/5...
random314 4y ago
> It has been interesting to learn over time that much of this was inherited from Indian scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians (and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for). This is a fairly standard line in the Indian middle class. However, apart from the decimal system none of the Arabic contributions are of Indian origin, and I am not aware of any philosophical ideas being borrowed at all. For instance, the key contribution - the invention of algebra is clearly of Arabic origin by Al Khawrizmi. This is a fairly comprehensive list of Arabic contributions. Which of these (apart from non fractional decimal systems) are if Indian origin? . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_the_medieval_Is... Also, it would be helpful to clarify what was disquieting about the confirmed borrowed idea - the decimal system. Most of the time I only come across vague references with nothing concrete stated. There is also a lot of speculation about ancient Indian mathematics being borrowed from Sumerian sources (where the first Pythagorean triples were observed etc)
- fwlr 4y ago
  I know there’s a lot of political discussion going on under my post (it’s impressively restrained for how strongly felt the emotions involved are!), but I assure you I’m coming from an uninvolved/uninformed perspective - I’m lower-class white Australian (very Australian - my ancestry traces back to both the convicts and the officers on the prison ships) and I have no idea what the common Indian or Muslim views on this topic are, nor am I trying to pass much judgment on them. I’m also not equipped to debate the subtleties - what was going through my head when I made the comment was “I remember prominent caveats that Edison stole from Tesla when we learned about electricity, that Bell stole from Gray when we learned about telephones, that Watson and Crick stole from their secretary when we learned about DNA, that Grace Hopper was robbed when we learned about computers, etc., but those caveats were missing when we learned about Islam’s contributions to math and science.”
- agileAlligator 4y ago
  > Which of these (apart from non fractional decimal systems) are if Indian origin? There is in fact a wikipedia article on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_science#Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_sc... I am sure that the references there will provide a jumping off point to learn more
amriksohata 4y ago
indeed hindu sages invented the zero and numerical system, sanskrit etc, that became hindi, then somehow the muslims and christians started calling it hindi-arabic numbers when the script itself is much older and founded by hindus

by fwlr 4y ago

jhbadger 4y ago

True, but in turn when we do hear about the Indian contributions, we tend to think they were all Hindus, rather than recognizing the great contributions of the Buddhists at Nalanda. While Buddhism has little presence in India today, that's where it started.

pankajdoharey 4y ago
Buddhists were the only folks who were building universities at the time Hindus didnt even have a school leave alone universities. The so called "Gurukul" has never been found at any archaeological site.
- sudhirc 4y ago
  Ofcourse millions of Sanskrit manuscript were produced in fictional Gurukuls by fictional characters who never existed. > The so called "Gurukul" has never been found at any archaeological site. Chariot were considered fiction until they were not[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhigarhi&ved=2ahUKEwjwktvMmMn9AhUCUGwGHccLB0EQFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2O98GNSgFiY0SSa31iUe2U https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhigarhi&ved=2ahUKEwjwktvM...
  - Anglican34 4y ago
    [dead]
  - pankajdoharey 4y ago
    Show one Sanskrit manuscript older than 1446. Not a single Stone inscription, Copper plate, Terracotta inscription of classical sanskrit has ever been found nor any Hindu site. Show a single evidence? The evidence of sanskrit found are of Buddhist Sanskrit at Buddhist schools like Nalanda here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#/media/File:Nalanda_clay_seal_of_Kumaragupta_III.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#/media/File:Nalanda_cl... Not a single archeological evidence of Hindu (Brahman) dharm exist, if you have any evidence older that 1446 you have to furnish the proof. Brahmins were writing Allahupanishad at the time of mughals praising Allah to be the supreme god and greater than Vishnu. During the British Rule They wrote Bhavishya Puran and praising queen victoria to be the great ruler and even mentioned Macaulay. All those sanskrit books of Hindus religion were written much later infact they couldnt be written before teh invention of Devanagari script. And devanagari script itself was invented between 11th and 13th century. Also your link doesnt work.
    - sudhirc 4y ago
      > Not a single Stone inscription, Copper plate, Terracotta inscription of classical sanskrit has ever been found nor any Hindu site Ok here you go. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathibada_Ghosundi_inscriptions#:~:text=Dated%20to%20the%201st%2Dcentury,of%20ancient%20India%2C%20particularly%20Vaishnavism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathibada_Ghosundi_inscripti.... > All those sanskrit books of Hindus religion were written much later infact they couldnt be written before teh invention of Devanagari script. Sanskrit is script agnostic language so Sanskrit manuscript are found in every Indian script. If you do not know this then you are not qualified to talk about Sanskrit. Edit: Hinduism is neither doctrine based nor centralised so every single purana and upnishad isn't authentic. Hindus and are free to discard what doesn't align with Dharma as described in Vedas. What make you think Allopnishad wasn't written by Muslims to convince Hindus?
      - pankajdoharey 4y ago
        First of all you clearly have no clue that the Modern Classical Sanskrit is a newer language an earlier language existed known as BHS(Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) this language was written in a script older than Devanagri script. There are ample Buddhists manuscripts of this language written in various scripts like Kharoshti. Why do we not find a single Brahman Dharm manuscript? Simply because much of (Brahman Dharm) Hinduism was invented after the invention of Devanagri script in 11 century. Also The classical sanskrit in which all Brahman Text (Hindu text) is written cannot be written in any Indian script before 11th century. Simply because the very basic sounds of sanskrit "Chha" (छ), "Tri" (त्र), "Gya"(ज्ञ), compound sounds, halants and visargas are not present in any script before that. In the end what is the basis of your claim? All your claims are sand castles without archaeological evidence which is non existent for Brahman Dharm (Hinduism). Vedas dont prescribe anything in terms of rejecting books, 33% of Rig Veda is only talk fire burning rituals and Indra, i suggest you first read it before speaking about it. You must also address Bhavishya Puran.
sudhirc 4y ago
Buddhism is not that different from Hinduism. Both coexisted and debated with each other for centuries until islamic invasions started. Buddhism being a pacifist sect fell first.
- random314 4y ago
  Buddhism is very distinct from Hinduism. In particular, there aren't multiple deities to worship and there is no caste system. Buddhism, the dominant religion of India circa 400AD (as per Chinese travellers), was already under attack from Brahmins who made it a key strategy to get royal patronage, set up the religious rules for society which heavily favored themselves and also focused on acting as confidantes to kings, leading to the elimination of Buddhism(focused on monastic life) from much of the Indian subcontinent even before Islam was founded.
  - raincom 4y ago
    Nah, the so-called 'isms' of India ('Buddhism', 'Jainism', 'Saivism') are called agama traditions. The question scholars face or faced is this: what was earlier? Indologist story that both left wing and right scholars accept is that: there was Vedism, corrupted to become 'popular' hinduism, later Indian Martin Luther (Buddha) fought against the veil immorality of Hindus (because caste system forces immoral obligations on everyone), thereby Buddhism emerging. This is the standard story.
    - random314 4y ago
      It is not clear that Vedism was created before Jainism, which has a strong archeological presence in South India. There is also speculation that Shaivism is much older and was merged in to Hinduism quite late, some what contemporaneous with the elimination of Brahma (Brahmism) as a deity to be worshipped. Also, it is weird to talk about left/right wrt history. History is just history, not left or right. In the Indian context, left has come to mean the actual history by historians, while right implies pseudohistory of PN Oak, out of India hypotheses and various other fantasies.

rramadass 4y ago

Not only India, but Persia, countries in The Levant, North Africa and Mediterranean were highly developed before the advent of Islam (which originated amongst desert tribes). It is their knowledge which gave rise to the so called "Golden Age of Islam". Islamic conquest merely acted as a conduit for the spread of these ideas from one geographical region to another (a la the later Mongol Empire).

selimthegrim 4y ago
Central Asia certainly played its role too. I invite you to consider that when Jai Singh II built Jantar Mantar, he used "Islamic" sources (Zij) as well from there.
- rramadass 4y ago
  Central Asia's prominence before Islam was mainly due to trade routes (later named the "Silk Road").
- random314 4y ago
  It is fairly standard in Indian right wing media to be dismissive of anything positive of Islamic origin, by constructing a short alternative history as per the writers imagination. So any post Islamic Arab contributions to math would have to be stolen from India, using bloodshed - as if math is a treasure that can be lifted or looted or were existing amongst Arabs before Islam.
  - rramadass 4y ago
    Nobody is talking about "right wing media" etc other than you. What is being pointed out is the achievements of civilizations predating Islam in those countries which are today Islamic. It is simple factual History.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      Very well, so what is wrong about mentioning Al Biruni or Ulugh Beg or Zij-i-Sultani as well?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago

> and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for To be blunt: Islamic invaders to the Indian subcontinent were by and large iconoclastic, at best intolerant and at worst genocidal (by forced conversions, marriages, outright murder, etc) of the native Dharmic (read: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain) population, and burned down, looted, and deconstructed Hindu and Buddhist places of worship to construct their own mosques on top of said ruins. The India-Pakistan debacle today is an extension of a nearly millennium-long Hindu-Muslim feud. The burning of Nalanda University (whether or not it is a 'university' is an orthogonal matter) is another facet in this feud. The decline of Buddhism in the late classical era in the Indian subcontinent—already on a somewhat downhill slope, due to Hinduism co-opting much Buddhist thought, and in general being more popular and accessible than the ascetic demands of monastic Buddhism—was drastically accelerated by the Islamic incursions into the Indian subcontinent. The Ayodhya mosque-temple riots are another facet of this clash. Western commentators glibly say 'Hindus are anti-Muslim'. The issue in India is so much more nuanced than that; there is bad blood on both sides going back a thousand years. Islam cannot escape from these charges: the religion is fundamentally intolerant of non-Abrahamic ones, especially ones with liberal iconography (like Hinduism and Buddhism). There is a reason why (most of) the oldest and largest Hindu temples are in South India, which mostly escaped from the period of Muslim rule relatively unscathed. There are (possibly apocryphal) stories about how the idols at several temples (such as the one in Srirangam, Trichy) were relocated to mountain redoubts to prevent them being stolen and melted down by 'the invaders'. The destruction of Buddhist iconography by Islam (or its followers) continues to this day: the Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

u801e 4y ago
> The India-Pakistan debacle today is an extension of a nearly millennium-long Hindu-Muslim feud. Not really. A lot of these arbitrary borders in modern times came about due to actions of former colonial powers. Prior to colonial times, there were many individual kingdoms/territories throughout the subcontinent. Other examples of arbitrary borders include the Durand line, and the Wakhan corridor.
- 4y ago

msravi 4y ago

The Destruction of Nalanda, as chronicled in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri by the Persian historian Minhaj-i-Siraj written a couple of decades after Bhaktiyar Khilji's death [1]: "There were two brothers of Farghanah, men of learning, one Nizam-ud-Din, the other Samsam-ud-Din [by name], in the service of Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar; and the author of this book met with Sam-sim-ud-Din at Lakhanawati in the year 641 H., and this account is from him. These two wise brothers were soldiers among that band of holy warriors when they reached the gateway of the fortress and began the attack, at which time Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar, by the force of his intrepidity, threw himself into the postern of the gateway of the place, and they captured the fortress, and acquired great booty. The greater number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans, and the whole of those Brahmans had their heads shaven; and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and, when all these books came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of those books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed. On becoming acquainted [with the contents of those books], it was found that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindu tongue, they call a college Bihar. When that victory was effected, Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar returned with great booty, and came to the presence of the beneficent Sultan, Kutb-ud-Din, I-bak, and received great honour and distinction." 1. https://archive.org/details/tabaqat-i-nasiri-volume-1/page/552/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/tabaqat-i-nasiri-volume-1/page/5...

random314 4y ago

> It has been interesting to learn over time that much of this was inherited from Indian scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians (and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for). This is a fairly standard line in the Indian middle class. However, apart from the decimal system none of the Arabic contributions are of Indian origin, and I am not aware of any philosophical ideas being borrowed at all. For instance, the key contribution - the invention of algebra is clearly of Arabic origin by Al Khawrizmi. This is a fairly comprehensive list of Arabic contributions. Which of these (apart from non fractional decimal systems) are if Indian origin? . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_the_medieval_Is... Also, it would be helpful to clarify what was disquieting about the confirmed borrowed idea - the decimal system. Most of the time I only come across vague references with nothing concrete stated. There is also a lot of speculation about ancient Indian mathematics being borrowed from Sumerian sources (where the first Pythagorean triples were observed etc)

fwlr 4y ago
I know there’s a lot of political discussion going on under my post (it’s impressively restrained for how strongly felt the emotions involved are!), but I assure you I’m coming from an uninvolved/uninformed perspective - I’m lower-class white Australian (very Australian - my ancestry traces back to both the convicts and the officers on the prison ships) and I have no idea what the common Indian or Muslim views on this topic are, nor am I trying to pass much judgment on them. I’m also not equipped to debate the subtleties - what was going through my head when I made the comment was “I remember prominent caveats that Edison stole from Tesla when we learned about electricity, that Bell stole from Gray when we learned about telephones, that Watson and Crick stole from their secretary when we learned about DNA, that Grace Hopper was robbed when we learned about computers, etc., but those caveats were missing when we learned about Islam’s contributions to math and science.”
agileAlligator 4y ago
> Which of these (apart from non fractional decimal systems) are if Indian origin? There is in fact a wikipedia article on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_science#Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_sc... I am sure that the references there will provide a jumping off point to learn more

amriksohata 4y ago

indeed hindu sages invented the zero and numerical system, sanskrit etc, that became hindi, then somehow the muslims and christians started calling it hindi-arabic numbers when the script itself is much older and founded by hindus