WISDOM OF THE MASTERS

"THE WISDOM OF THE MASTERS"

We have all been reading about how, thousands of years back , Sanjay watched the great Mahabharata war (apparently on a colour TV) far awsy from the battle field  and kept giving a running commentary to the blind Dhritarastra about the progress of the Mahabharat war..We have been told that the great ancient indians had aeroplanes, nuclear weapons and much more. It is good to feel belonging to a great ancient civilisation.

Unfortunately,  the matter ends there -  in just feeling great  !!

If Thomas Macaulay had said that the total  output of ancient india's sanskrit works  on various subjects was dismal and worth nothing, he was speaking out of total ignorance. The Germans were better. They got hold of priceless sanskrit works , carried them to Germany and got them translated.The world was awe struck at the phenomenal treasure trove of ancient  knowledge.

Leave aside the world, even Indians have little idea about the enormousness of  knowledge buried in ancient texts.The mind blowing information in the ancient SURYA SIDDHANT is a case in point. Hundreds of years before Newton, the ancient scientists had accurately measured distances and movement  in solar system and the universe with astonishing accuracy. Here is just one example:

"The Surya Siddhanta also estimates the diameters of the planets . The estimate for the diameter of Mercury is 3,008 miles, an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 3,032 miles".

Incidentally it is the oldest ever book in world which describes earth as sphere but not flat and gravity being reason for objects falling on earth. That was hundreds of years before Newton and his falling apple !!

What we need today is not just FEELING PROUD of our heritage.. We need highly paid sanskrit scholars to translate all our ancient literature, to ferret out the knowledge buried in ancient texts and make it available to the world in the languages of today.

This is not a routine job..These translators should not be  "Assistants"  in a department of  Govt. of India,  with a hierarchy of senior bureaucrats breathing down their neck.That will not  do..They should be emminent sanskrit schlors  drawn from talent pool in the teaching staff of universities.  And they should be given high status, high salary and facilities.

We have wasted almost seventy years since independence  in doing nothing in this direction. It is time we set about discovering ancient wisdom.