Event — IIAS lecture

Science and history in the debate over Vedic astronomy

IIAS Public Lecture

Wednesday, 13 July 2005
15.15-16.30 hrs.
Nonnensteeg 1-3, Room 329

Science and history in the debate over Vedic astronomy

Presented by: Prof. Kim Plofker (IIAS affiliated fellow)

The chronological uncertainty of ancient Indian history has long been a source of controversy among historians. While most scholars nowadays concur that the earliest Vedic language and culture, descended from Indo-Iranian ancestors, probably emerged on the Indian subcontinent sometime in the second millennium BCE, some argue that this date should be pushed back by thousands of years.

Proponents of this "indigenist" hypothesis from the nineteenth century onward employed astrochronological arguments to support it. These involve identifying datable astronomical events in Vedic texts and computing, according to modern physical models, the moments in the past at which they must have occurred. Such "retrodictions" depend, of course, on the accuracy of the textual descriptions of celestial events. Consequently, the nature and extent of early Indian astronomical practices became an issue of the first importance, giving to the astrochronology debate the popular name "Vedic Astronomy".

This talk will survey the history of the "Vedic Astronomy" controversy and its consequences for the history of Indian science. In particular, we will explore its connections to European Orientalism and the colonial structure in the nineteenth century, and to "Hindutva" or Hindu communalism in more recent times.

Dr Plofker is an affiliated fellow at IIAS and currently writing a monograph surveying the history of mathematics in India from 500 BCE to 1800 CE, to be published in 2006 by Princeton University Press. She is an expert in the mathematics and astronomy of ancient and medieval India and their connections to the science of Europe and the Islamic world.


For more information, please contact:
International Institute for Asian Studies
Ms Lena Scheen
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden
T 071-527 4159
F 071-527 4162
iiasfellowships@let.leidenuniv.nl