MUSLIM LEARNT SCIENCE AND ASTROLOGY FROM HINDUS

 

MUSLIM LEARNT SCIENCE AND ASTROLOGY FROM HINDUS

LEGACY OF MUSLIM RULE IN INDIA  BY  K S LalPage 28

In the early years of Islam the Muslims concentrated mainly on translating and adopting Creek scholarship. Aristotle was their favourite philosopher. Scientific and mathematical knowledge they adopted from the Greeks and Hindus. This was the period when the Arabs imbibed as much knowledge from the West and the East as possible. In the West they learnt from Plato and Aristotle and in India Arab scholars sat at the feet of Buddhist monks and Brahman Pandits to learn philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry and other subjects. Caliph Mansurs (754- 76) zeal for learning attracted many Hindu scholars to the Abbasid court. A deputation of Sindhi representatives in 771 C.E. presented many treatises to the Caliph and the Brahma Siddhanta of Brahmagupta and his KhandaKhadyaka, works on the science of astronomy, were translated by Ibrahim al-Fazari into Arabic with the help of Indian scholars in Baghdad. The Barmak (originally Buddhist Pramukh) family of ministers who had been converted to Islam and served under the Khilafat of Harun-ur-Rashid (786- 808 C.E.) sent Muslim scholars to India and welcomed Hindu scholars to Baghdad. Once when Caliph Harun-ur-Rashid suffered from a serious disease which baffled his physicians, he called for an Indian physician, Manka (Manikya), who cured him. Manka settled at Baghdad, was attached to the hospital of the Barmaks, and translated several books from Sanskrit into Persian and Arabic. Many Indian physicians like Ibn Dhan and Salih, reputed to be descendants of Dhanapti and Bhola respectively, were superintendents of hospitals at Baghdad. Indian medical works of Charak, Sushruta, the Ashtangahrdaya, the Nidana, the Siddhayoga, and other works on diseases of women, poisons and their antidotes, drugs, intoxicants, nervous diseases etc. were translated into Pahlavi and Arabic during the Abbasid Caliphate. Such works helped the Muslims in extending their knowledge about numerals and medicine.78 Havell goes even as far as to say that it was India, not Greece, that taught Islam in the impressionable years of its youth, formed its philosophy and esoteric religious ideals, and inspired its most characteristic expression in literature, art and architecture.79 Avicenna (Ibn Sina) was a Persian Muslim who lived in the early eleventh century and is known for his great canon of medicine. Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the jurist, physician and philosopher was a Spanish Muslim who lived in the twelfth Century. Al Khwarizmi (ninth century) developed the Hindu nine numbers and the zero (hindisa). Al Kindi (ninth century) wrote on physics, meteorology and optics. Al Hazen (Al Hatim C. 965-1039) wrote extensively on optics and the manner in which the human eye is able to perceive objects. Their best known geographers were Al Masudi, a globe-trotter who finished his works in 956 and the renowned Al Idrisi (1101-1154). Although there is little that is peculiarly Islamic in the contributions which Occidental and Oriental Muslims have made to European culture,80 even this endeavour had ceased by the time Muslim rule was established in India. In the words of Easton, when the barbarous Turks entered into the Muslim heritage, after it had been in decay for centuries, did Islam destroy more than it created or preserved.81 For instance, Ibn Sina had died in Hamadan in 1037 and in 1150 the Caliph at Baghdad was committing to the flames a philosophical library, and among its contents the writings of Ibn Sina himself. In days such as these the Latins of the East were hardly likely to become scholars of the Muhammadans nor were they stimulated by the novelty of their surroundings to any original production.82