Indian Science and Technology- In The Eighteenth Century (Some Contemporary European Accounts)

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Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971) is the first of Dharampalji's books based on the materials collected in the course of his extensive study in the British archives. It compiles several articles by early British officers, scholars and observers about the Indian sciences of astronomy and mathematics and the Indian technological practices in metallurgy, agriculture, architecture and medicine, etc. The book created a new appreciation of the sophistication and efficacy of Indian sciences and technologies before the coming of the British.

DHARAMPAL (1922-2006) authored several books that sought to present different aspects of the Indian society and polity from an Indian perspective. These rigorously documented books disrupted the scholarly consensus about the backwardness and dis-functionality of pre-British India and presented the picture of a society that in fact was highly sophisticated and advanced in its political ideas and arrangements and in its sciences, technologies and education systems. These works are of abiding interest and importance.
In the Dharampal Classics Series, we present his major works in their original authentic version and in an aesthetically rich format. The Series is being brought out by the Centre for Policy Studies, a research institute with which Sri Dharampal was associated for several years, and Rashtrotthana Parishat, an organisation that had the good fortune to host Dharampalji at Bengaluru on several occasions and to introduce him and his work to the Kannada readers.

THE PRESENT VOLUME is part of an attempt to understand the functioning of Indian state and society some eight to ten genera tions back, i.e., around the period 1750, when India began to fall under European domination-firstly in the Tamil and Telugu areas. and afterwards in Bengal and elsewhere. This attempt consisted in a perusal, during 1966-70, of some of the vast Indian archival material in the English language lodged in the archives of Britain. This volume presents some of the major eighteenth and early nine teenth century documents found during this search on the subject of science and technology.
The authors of these documents came to India in various capaci ties: as military, medical and civilian servants of the European governments, as travellers, sometimes coming on their own, but more often sent by wealthy patrons or the newly established learned societies (like the Royal Societies of Paris and London: the Society of Arts in London, etc.) and some, like the Jesuits, came on behalf of the various Christian religious orders. According to the European scholarly canons of the time, all these were experts in their respective fields and were considered to be competent to report on what they observed or studied. Most of those included here, spent a substantial part of their active lives in different parts of India.

SHRI DHARAMPAL has done a valuable service to the history of science and technology in India by compiling this collection of highly interesting and informative articles by British scientists and travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These have been reproduced from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and material available in the British Museum and the India Office. Shri Dharampal has spent much time and labour in the preparation of this which represents a significant contribution to the meagre, but growing, literature on the history of science in India. We are grateful to Shri Dharampal for his efforts and look forward to his further contributions. We are indebted to Dr. W. A. Blanpied, a distinguished physicist keenly interested in the history of Indian science, who has contributed an introduction which adds considerably to the value of the publication.

I WAS HONOURED when Dr. D. S. Kothari suggested that I con sider writing a preface to Shri Dharampal's book. At the same time, I felt unequal to the task. The development of science and tech nology in a culture is very much a function of its prevailing social, economic and political institutions. It is not easy for a foreigner who has lived in India for little more than two years to contribute much of significance about the history of science in the country. Yet as I thought more about Dr. Kothari's challenge the wisdom inher ent in his suggestion became clear. Shri Dharampal has collected a series of articles on Indian science and technology written by various British travelers during the late 18th and early 19th cen turies. He himself has written a thoughtful preface placing these articles in the context of the India and the Britain of that period. I agreed with Dr. Kothari that it might be fitting to have a sympa thetic foreign scientist record a few of the thoughts he had as he read the accounts of Indian science and technology written by other foreigners one hundred fifty to two hundred years ago.
Frequently the study of political history leaves one with the impression that human beings in all ages and all places have done little more than struggle for power, forge alliances, plot assassi nations, and fight wars. The history of ideas tends to balance this extreme view by providing insight into the intellectual and social fabric of the world's cultures.