Did our space accomplishments find roots in the Vedic times? ISRO chief S Somanath expressed this notion in May.
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00:00Surya, the concept of Surya, and equally important is the concept of infinity.
00:05I think both of these are the findings of those great rishis.
00:08It is more important how we can use Sanskrit, the language for conveying the messages of modern technology and science.
00:30I come from a domain of science and technology. I am a rocket scientist.
00:57I have been building rockets. So, when I look at this journey of language in Sanskrit and the rocket science,
01:04the aeronautics that connects them, I am really fascinated many a times by the work of great scholars and that they have created such great books.
01:12The very first book which I have come across in Sanskrit which talks about the domain which I am familiar with is the Surya Siddhanta.
01:19Many of you would have known about this book. And this is the book specifically talks about the solar system,
01:25the sun, the planets and how the planets move around the sun, the periodicity of this movement, the time scales which are involved,
01:33the size of this whole structure, even the size of the earth. I think all these thoughts that happened there at that time,
01:40it didn't stay here. It travelled all the way through the Arabic travellers. It went to Europe.
01:46And thousands of years later, the knowledge came back to us in the form of discovery by the great scientists of the western world.
01:54Though it was all found out here, it was written down in this language. You know that many of the literature written in terms of the ideas like zero.
02:02If you subtract one from the one, you get zero. Shunya, the concept of Shunya. And equally important is the concept of infinity.
02:10I think both of these are the findings of those great rishis expressed in very beautiful poetic ways.
02:16Even you know the algebra, the concept of the mathematical concepts called algebra, the square root of numbers, very precisely expressed.
02:24Even Othayana equated to Pythagoras theorem. You know, Othayana was living in during 800 B.C. Pythagoras came much later.
02:33Many other concepts like the concept of vimana, architecture, the construction technologies, the concept of time which is beautifully expressed in many, many literature.
02:42The structure of the universe and how it evolves and grows bigger and bigger with the time.
02:47Metallurgy and manufacturing, chemical technologies, medicines, treatment, languages, the structure of the grammar.
02:53But the difficulty that is faced by the scientists at that time was this language was expressed more in sruti and not in written form.
03:01And because of this sruti nature of learning and teaching, the Sanskrit attained a beautiful nature that it is very easy to listen and buy heart it.
03:09Unlike many other languages. It's a rule based, formula based and logical syntax.
03:14For people like us who are engineers, scientists like it very much. Any language which is rule based, syntax based is something that suits into computer languages.
03:22And you know, computer people who are especially working in the artificial intelligence, machine learning, they like Sanskrit.
03:28And there is lot of research being done how Sanskrit can be used for bringing into computation, natural language processing.
03:36It is not the old literature and science that we must propagate. It is more important how we can use Sanskrit, the language for conveying the messages of modern technology and science.
03:47Then only it will survive.