The positive sciences of the ancient Hindus / by Brajendranath Seal.

  • Seal, Brajendranath, Sir, 1864-1938.
Date:
1915
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The positive sciences of the ancient Hindus / by Brajendranath Seal. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the Hindu scientific mind is that, without being content with the general concepts of Science and a general Methodology, it elaborated the fundamental categories and concepts of such of the special sciences as it cultivated with assiduity, and systematically adapted the general principles of Scientific Method to the requirements of the subject-matter in each case. The most signal example of applied logic (or Scientific Method) worked out with systematic carefulness is the Logic of Therapeutics in Charaka, a Logic which adapts the general concepts of cause, effect, energy, operation, etc., and the general methodology of science, to the special problems presented in the study of diseases, their causes, symptoms, and remedies (vide Charaka, Vimanasthana, Chap. IV.; also Sutrasthana ; vide my Paper on Hindu Logic). Here I will give an illustra¬ tion of Applied Methodology from the science of Analytical and Descriptive Grammar. Patanjali, in the Mahabhashya (circa 150 b.c.), is very careful as regards Methodology. I take no note now of the philosophical presuppositions of his philology (vide my Paper on the Hindu Science of Language), but will con¬ fine myself to his presentation of the Applied Logic of Descriptive and Analytical Grammar. The sentence is the unit of speech, as every Hindu philologer contends, but the first business of Analytical Grammar is to analyse the sentence into its significant parts and their coherent relations to one another. Assuming that articulate sounds are significant, the question is : how is the sentence, which is the unit of articulate speech, broken up into significant words and their mutual