Science and technology

Why is science in a chapter on culture? Because, since ancient times, Indians have had a culture of enquiry: asking questions, experimenting, learning, and also learning from other cultures, in the spirit of 'let noble thoughts come to us from all directions'.

These traditions kept growing in this period, with support from regional courts and temples.

Some achievements:

• making pure zinc reached its peak, using a special distillation process used for the first time anywhere in the world;
• important books on chemistry and medicine were written;
• in the 14th century, Narayana Pandita wrote the Gaṇitakaumudī, a huge mathematics book with new ideas.

In the South, Madhava made pioneering steps in calculus: the series expansion of trigonometric functions (a world first), which led to an exact value of π as an infinite series (another world first).

Madhava and his followers are called the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics. They produced important work until the 19th century.

In 1500, Nilakantha Somayaji described a model in which Mercury and Venus go around the Sun. That was decades before Copernicus published his Sun-centred model in 1543.

Applied chemistry gave cooling and perfumes:

• Indian saltpetre (potassium nitrate) was used to make gunpowder in Akbar's time, and to cool water and drinks;
• Itr Jahangir, a rose perfume, was developed.

Three medical systems were widely used:

• Ayurveda, across India;
• Unani, in the north, brought from West Asia;
• Siddha, in Tamil Nadu, which shares Ayurveda's basic ideas.

Much of this knowledge was kept in books, in palm-leaf manuscripts, or passed on by word of mouth.