A Living Portrait of India
A Living Portrait of India |
India Heritage:Science:Physics |
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SPACE & TIME - THE CO-ORDINATES OF EXISTENCE The solar day was the natural divider - 24 hours with 1,944,000 ksana (units of time), as the Nyaya-Vaisesikas saw it. Each ksana was thus .044 seconds. This is interesting because the modern unit is accepted as 1/86400 of a mean solar day. The ancient Indian astronomers accepted the truti as the smallest unit of time i.e. 2.9623 x 10-4. Further study was prevented by the lack of appropriate instruments. The Silpasastra records the smallest measure of length as the paramanu i.e. -1/349525 of an inch. This measurement corresponds to the smallest thickness of the Nyaya-Vaisesika school - the trasarenu, which was the size of the smallest mote visible on a sunbeam as it shone into a dark room. Varahamihira (circa AD sixth century) accorded that 86 trasarenu were equal to one anguli i.e. three-fourths of an inch. However, he also stated that 64 trasarenu are equal to the thickness of a hair. Bhaskaracharya (circa AD 1150), in his Siddhanta Siromani and Ganitadhyaya, measured average velocity as v=s/t where v is the average velocity, s is distance covered, and t is time. His method of calculating the differential of a planet's longitude is that of differential calculus. The instantaneous position of a planet, according to Bhaskaracharya, was to be determined through the position of particles in two successive instants having uniform velocity. Eight centuries before Descartes (AD 1644), Vacaspati Misra (circa AD 840) anticipated solid (co-ordinate) geometry. In his Nyayasuchi-nibandha, he states that the position of a particle in space could be calculated by assuming it relative to another and measuring along three (imaginary) axes. SOURCES : The Cultural Heritage of India History of Science & Technology in India Concise Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Masters of the Millennium - 100 Indians who
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