Looking at the imprecision of vedical units of time and length the range of what the speed could be is pretty big http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana http://en.

Looking at the imprecision of vedical units of time and length the range of what the speed could be is pretty big http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana But I have to admit it's still stunning that the people had an idea that light travels that "slow" as opposed to infinitely fast. EDIT: also it seems the calculation for time is wrong, wiki says "30 Kālas are one Muhūrta" and not 30.3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhurta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhurta EDIT 2: Perhaps they learned that light has finite speed from the Arabs who knew already in 11th century thanks to the "first scientist" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen