Science in Ancient India

At times music, dance and drama went together in Indian tradition. Most of the details concerning scientific achievements and their adoption in everyday life of Indians were observed by foreign visitors, Arab, Persian, European and Chinese, from time to time. Indians were not keen on laying down all scientific norms in book form. They lived them. Let me quote examples from supashastra:

Without bothering to name them, average Indians used green vegetables, sprouted grams and fibrous food in plenty. Though wheat, and rice were staple food, daily meal consisted of vegetables, dairy products, pulses, (proteins), fish, meat etc. Nourishment quality of these items may not have been analysed and named in laboratories in the modern sense. But the diet was a balanced one. Salads of raw vegetables were common. Their vitamin contents were arrived at by empirical methods. Nellikai (Myrobalan) was used in, plenty for jams, sauce, and oil for hair. Today its richness in vitamin "C" has been fully, recognized. Turmeric, a regular cooking ingredient, was also an antiseptic.

I was once invited to give a talk on preserved food and drinks in ancient times by cultural Association of BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) at Mumbai. I checked the details of extracting juice from various fruits, mango jambolina, citrus fruit, jack fruit, pomegranate etc in ancient supashatra texts from an Officer in Chemistry department of that centre, whether they were scientific. He confirmed that they were. The fruits were mixed with rock-salt and kept in the sun. "We boil them in the laboratories and our ancients used natural Sunshine. It was free from dust and pollution in earlier times" he stated. Food items like payasam (pudding) and curd-rice were preserved for longer period by cooking the rice in water, medicated with herbs. Artificial ways of obtaining milk from coconuts and peas was known. Ways of refrigeration was worked out using earthen pots with pores immersed in water which help containers and continuous fanning was applied.

Care was taken to keep the potable water clean. Itsing the Chinese monk, (8th century C.E) has mentioned that it was compulsory to carry specially pored napkins for students which they used for sieving water.