Sushruta: The Father of Surgery and His Lasting Legacy

Sushruta, a pioneer of surgery in ancient India, is often revered as the “Father of Surgery” due to his groundbreaking contributions to the medical field in the 6th century BCE. His extensive work, documented in the Sushruta Samhita, stands as one of the most significant ancient texts on medicine and surgery. The Sushruta Samhita is not merely a medical text; it is a comprehensive guide that details various surgical procedures and techniques that were revolutionary for its time.

Among Sushruta’s many contributions, his work in plastic surgery is particularly noteworthy. He is credited with performing one of the earliest known forms of rhinoplasty, a procedure to reconstruct the nose. In ancient India, nasal injuries or amputations were common due to punishments or warfare, and Sushruta’s techniques provided a way to restore both function and appearance. His method involved taking a flap of skin from the forehead to reconstruct the nose, a technique that laid the foundation for modern plastic surgery.

Sushruta also made significant advancements in ophthalmic surgery, particularly in the treatment of cataracts. His description of the procedure to remove cataracts, known as “couching,” involved using a curved needle to dislodge the lens of the eye, thus restoring vision to the patient. Although the procedure is vastly different from modern techniques, it demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of eye anatomy and surgical intervention.

In addition to plastic and ophthalmic surgery, Sushruta’s work encompassed orthopedics, including the treatment of fractures and dislocations. He devised various methods for setting bones and even described the use of traction to correct deformities. Sushruta’s approach was holistic, emphasizing not only surgical intervention but also post-operative care, diet, and the overall well-being of the patient.

The Sushruta Samhita remains a testament to the advanced state of medical knowledge in ancient India, showcasing Sushruta’s legacy as a true pioneer in the field of surgery.
Sushruta: The Father of Surgery and His Lasting Legacy

Brahmagupta: Pioneer of Indian Astronomy and Mathematics

Brahmagupta, a luminary of the seventh century, stands as a monumental figure in the realms of astronomy and mathematics. Born in 598 AD in the vibrant town of Ujjain, India, Brahmagupta’s contributions resonated far beyond his time and place.

Ujjain, nestled in the heart of Central India, served as the epicenter of Hindu scientific inquiry during Brahmagupta’s era. It was here, amidst the scholarly ambiance, that Brahmagupta honed his skills and crafted his magnum opus, the Brahmasphutasiddhanta, or "The Opening of the Universe."

The Brahmasphutasiddhanta, completed in 628 AD, remains a cornerstone of ancient Indian astronomy. Comprising twenty-five chapters, this seminal work delves into the celestial mechanics with chapters dedicated to planetary movements, lunar and solar eclipses, and cosmic alignments. Notably, Brahmagupta’s treatise wasn’t confined to astronomy alone; it embraced mathematics with equal fervor.

Within the Brahmasphutasiddhanta, Brahmagupta expounds on the decimal place value system, a revolutionary concept that laid the groundwork for modern mathematical notation. He also championed the inclusion of zero as a legitimate numerical entity, a notion that profoundly influenced mathematical thought for centuries to come.

The versatility of Brahmagupta’s intellect is evident as he seamlessly transitions from astronomical calculations to mathematical principles. Chapter 7 of his treatise, for instance, delves into elementary arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, showcasing his mastery over diverse mathematical domains.

Brahmagupta’s ingenuity extended beyond his scholarly pursuits; his methodologies transformed astronomical calculations, rendering them more precise and efficient. His genius, as remarked by George Sarton, the doyen of the history of science, solidifies his place as "one of the greatest scientists of his race and the greatest of his time."

Brahmagupta's contributions to astronomy were multifaceted. He accurately calculated the durations of planetary revolutions, the positions of celestial bodies, and even provided methods to predict solar and lunar eclipses. His work was not merely theoretical but practical, aiding in the creation of accurate calendars, essential for agricultural and religious purposes.

In addition to his theoretical and practical contributions, Brahmagupta’s legacy also includes his influence on future generations. His works were translated into various languages, including Arabic, Persian, and Latin, spreading his ideas across continents and centuries. Renaissance mathematicians and astronomers drew heavily upon his works, recognizing their foundational importance in shaping modern mathematical and astronomical thought.

Brahmagupta’s enduring legacy transcends temporal and geographical boundaries, inspiring generations of mathematicians and astronomers worldwide. Through his pioneering work, he illuminated the cosmos and reshaped the landscape of mathematical inquiry, leaving an indelible mark on the annals of human knowledge.
Brahmagupta: Pioneer of Indian Astronomy and Mathematics

Aryabhatiya by Aryabhata I

Aryabhata, potentially born in 476 in either Ashmaka or Kusumapura, India, achieved fame as a mathematician and astronomer. His sole surviving work, Aryabhatiya, is a comprehensive compilation of mathematics and astronomy, covering various subjects like arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. The book also includes discussions on continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, and even features a table of sines.

Aryabhatiya systematically explores the composition of the Solar System, the characteristics of its planets, and provides explanations for solar and lunar eclipses. In its mathematical section, Aryabhatiya thoroughly addresses arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry.

The text is also referred to as Arya-status-ash, signifying Aryabhata's 108, denoting the presence of 108 verses in the book. Written in the form of a sutra, comprising aphorisms, it offers a concise and effective means of presenting scientific principles.

Written in Sanskrit, Aryabhatiya is divided into four sections, totaling 121 verses, following a mnemonic writing style commonly used in Indian works:

~Gitikapada (13 verses) - Explores cosmology, mentioning the planetary revolutions in a maha yuga, which spans up to 4.32 million years.
~Ganitapada (33 verses) - Focuses on Ganita, referring to calculations, with 33 verses dedicated to mathematics. This section explains various topics, including mensuration, simple and quadratic equations, as well as indeterminate and arithmetic and geometric equations.
~Kalakriyapada (25 verses) - Consists of 25 verses, providing insights into the measurement of days, weeks, and months using different units of time.
~Golapada (50 verses) - Contains 50 verses that delve into the causes of days and nights, the rising of zodiac signs, eclipses, the celestial equator, nodes, and the shape of the earth.
Aryabhatiya by Aryabhata I

Pingala - Indian poet and mathematician

Pingala was an ancient Indian poet and mathematician who lived around 300 BCE. Pingala is the author of the Chandaḥśāstra, the earliest known Sanskrit treatise on prosody. Prosody is concerned with elements of speech — the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech — provides important information beyond a sentence's literal word meaning.

Pingala presents the first known description of a binary numeral system. He described the binary numeral system in connection with the listing of Vedic meters with short and long syllables. Pingala was the first to use the zero as a notational symbol, although its use as a numerical value came about six or seven centuries later.

In Chandaḥśāstra, he analyzed Sanskrit poetry mathematically. It also contained the first known explanations of binary numbers, Fibonacci numbers and Pascal’s triangle.
Pingala (c. 200 BC) - Indian poet and mathematician

Ancient Indian scholar - Charaka

Considered the father of ancient Indian science of medicine, Charaka was one of the major contributors to Ayurveda. Charaka is thought to have flourished sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE.

Charaka was the royal doctor in the Kanishka’s court. He is known as an editor of the medical treatise entitled Charaka Samhita, the oldest and the most authentic treatise on Ayurveda and is the ancient medical science of India.

Charaka was the first physician to present the concept of digestion, metabolism and immunity. According to his translations of the Vedas, a body functions because it contains three dosha or principles, namely movement (vata), transformation (pitta) and lubrication and stability (kapha).

Additionally, he emphasized, illness is caused when the balance among the three doshas in a human body is disturbed. To restore the balance, he prescribed ayurvedic medicines.

Charaka studied the anatomy of the human body and various organs. He gave 360 as the total number of bones, including teeth, present in the body. He recognized that the heart is the controlling center ad is connected ton the entire body thorough 13 channels.
Ancient Indian scholar - Charaka

Âryabhatta (476–550 CE): Indian famous mathematician

Âryabhatta was born in Aśmaka but later lived in Kusumapura, which was identifies with Pāṭaliputra (modern Patna).

He studied at the University of Nalanda. It appears that he was the kulapati (head) of the University at Nālandā in Magadha.

Âryabhatta (476–550 AD) is the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. Āryabhaṭa wrote at least two books: the Āryabhaṭīya and the Āryabhaṭa-siddhānta, of which the latter is known only through references in other works.

Āryabhaṭīya dealt with many topics like astronomy, spherical trigonometry, arithmetic, algebra and plane trigonometry. Aryabhatta's contribution in mathematics is unparalleled. He suggested formula to calculate the areas of a triangle and a circle, which were correct.

He invented zero as well as discovered many things in math and space. He also made model of the solar system where the sun was the center.
Âryabhatta (476–550 CE): Indian famous mathematician

Hemachandra (1089- 1173): Indian scholar

Hemachandra was born to Chachig Sresthi and Pahini in Dhandhuka, Gujarat. He was a Sanskrit scholar who published works on science, languages and philosophy.

Though born of Hindu parents he was covered Jainism when he was merely a child of five years by Jain monk named Devendra Suri. He was taken to various places of pilgrimage and lastly to Karnavati.

He was taken to a Jain temple where he became a monk and changed his name to Somacandra. Hemachandra studied under him and soon became close disciple of his teacher. He was instructed in religion, Indian philosophy, the sacred scriptures, logic and grammar.

Hemachandra received royal patronage of kings Jayasimha Siddharaja and Kumarapala his successor. King Kumarapala was proud ot consider himself his humble and obedient disciple. By the advice of Hemachandra, Kumarapala encourage Jainism, and ordered his subjects to abstain from the destruction of animal life and from the use of meat as food.

Hemachandra also convinced the King to make the Jain religion the official religion of Gujarat.

His contribution to the Fibonacci numbers was made fifty years before Fibonacci wrote Liber Abaci with its famous rabbit problem. Hemachandra not only independently studied the Fibonacci sequence but also introduced a generalization of Fibonacci sequence known as the Gopala-Hemachandra Sequence.

In the field of political science, he also authored a book entitled Laghu-arthaniti which is supposed to be an abbreviation of another larger work of the author written in Prakrit. It deals with war, punishment law and penance.
Hemachandra (1089- 1173): Indian scholar

Dhanvantari-Father of Ayurveda

Born in 1000 BCE, Kashirau Divodas Dhanvantari, the king of Kashi is hailed as the father of surgery in Ayurveda. He taught Ayurveda orally to the sages and rishis who became his disciples.

Dhanvantari’s teachings and surgical techniques were compiled by his foremost people, Sushrut, in the Sushrut Samhita, which has survived over the ages.

He laid great emphasis on the study of anatomy using cadavers. Dhanvantari was an efficient and strict teacher. In order that his disciples strictly learn well, he would enforce certain principles strictly, like giving up the six vices, viz. lust anger, covetousness, infatuation, pride, and jealousy.

Dhanvantari also made contributions in the fields of physiology and anatomy, as well as pharmacology, material medica and therapeutics.
Dhanvantari-Father of Ayurveda

Aryabhata I (476–550 CE)

Little is known of the life of Aryabhata, who is called Aryabhata I in order to distinguish him from another mathematician of the same name who lived four centuries later.

Born in India, Aryabhata is considered to be one of the most brilliant original thinkers on mathematics and astronomy, making computations and explaining the nature of solar system some 1000 years before Nicolas Copernicus suggested the heliocentric system.

Aryabhata played a role in the development of the modern current number system and made contribution number theory which has become universal today.

Aryabhata wrote two works: the Aryabhatiya in 499 and another treatise, Arya-Siddhanta which has been lost. He wrote Aryabhatiya when he was 23 years old after completing his studies at the University of Nalanda.

His Aryabhatiya work is fairly advanced. It apparently was preceded by many generation of mathematical research. It has relevance even today.

The Arya-Siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations contained the description of several astronomical instruments, the gnomon, a shadow instrument possibly an angle measuring device, semi circle and circle shaped device etc.

Aryabhata was the first to deduce that the earth its round and that it rotate on its own axis causing day and night. He also declared that the moon is dark and shines only because of sunlight.

In measuring time, Aryabhata determined that the length of a year is 365 days, six hours, 12 minutes, 30 seconds, an extremely close calculation to the modern standard of 365 days, six hours.
Aryabhata I (476–550 CE)

Bhaskara (1114-1185 CE)

Aryabhata (476-550), Brahmaguta (598-665) and later on Bhaskara (1114-1185), were the most famous members of the Indian school of astronomy and mathematics that flourished from the 6th through the 12th centuries.

Bhaskara was a brilliant astronomer, mathematician and engineer and the most influential of the early Indian mathematicians.

He became the head of the astronomical observatory in Ujjain, which was a major center for mathematical studies.

He was born on the site of the modern city of Bijabur, in southwestern India. He is the oathero fo the SIddhanta Siromani, in four parts, a treatise on algebra and geometric astronomy. Bhaskara said that his work is a compendium of knowledge a sort of textbook of astronomy and mathematics.

Bhaskara advanced greatly the acceptance of negative and irrational numbers in algebraic calculations: he acknowledged that the square root of a positive number could be positive or negative had formally operated upon irrational numbers, providing algebraic expressions for the sum, product and quotient of two irrational numbers.
Bhaskara (1114-1185 CE)

Aryabhata II (c. 920 – 1000)

Aryabhata II was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He composed an astronomical treatise, Maha-Siddhanta.

It has been established indirectly that he lived and worked around the 10th century.

Maha-Siddhanta is an astronomical compendium based on the orthodox tradition of Smrtis (passages from Vedic literature). The treatise written in Sanskrit consists of 18 chapters and 625 verses. The first 12 chapters deal with mathematical astronomy.

He covered the positions of the planets and their conjunctions with each other and the stars, eclipses of the sun and moon, and the phases and rising and setting of the moon and planets.

His extensive work also covered algebra and geometry, specially giving rules for solving the indeterminate equation by=ax+c, an calculating cube roots the rule of three and fractions.
Aryabhata II (c. 920 – 1000)

Mahāvīra -Indian mathematician

The most celebrated mathematician of the ninth century AD is Mahaviracharya, well known as Mahāvīra (AD 817-875). Mahāvīra was a Jain by religion. He was born in Mysore, India and as a young man became familiar with the mathematics of southern India.

He was in the Royal Court of Karnataka Rastrakuta King, Amoghavarsha Nrpatunga who ruled from AD 815 to AD 874.

He wrote his work called ‘Ganita Sara Sangraha’ in AD 850. Ganita Sara Sangraha is te first book in the Indian mathematical tradition that confines its attention to pure mathematics.  This text contains nine chapters of about 1100 slokas dealing with arithmetic, algebra, geometry and mensuration.

The book is an ambitious attempt to summarize, improve upon and teach Indian mathematical knowledge as he understood it.

He provided methods for squaring numbers and determining the cube root of a number. He also gave a formula that approximately the perimeter and are of an ellipse.

Ganita Sara Sangraha served as a textbook in South India, where Vallabha and Varadaraja wrote commentaries on it and Pavaluri Mallana in translated it into Telugu.
Mahāvīra -Indian mathematician

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta is a renowned astronomer and mathematician of the seventh century. It was he who taught the Arabs astronomy before they became acquainted with Ptolemy. Brahmagupta was born in Ujjain, India in 598 AD.

Brahmagupta worked in the great astronomical center of Hindu science, Ujjain, a town in the state o Gwalior, Central India, said to have been the vice-regal seat of Asoka during his father reign at Patna.

His famous text Brahmasphutasiddhanta (The opening of the universe). Brahmasphutasiddhanta is Brahmagupta most important work. It is a standard treatise on ancient India astronomy. 

Brahmasphutasiddhanta composed in 628 Ad contains twenty five chapters including Dhyanagrahopadesadhyaya, is also observed by Al-Biruni – Muslim scholar and polymath of the 11th century.

The first 10 chapters pertain solely to astronomy, discussing the longitude of the planets, lunar and solar and solar eclipses and the timing alignments.

Chapter 7 is on mathematics. It deals with elementary arithmetic, algebra and geometry.

Brahmagupta goes on to describe the decimal place value system use in India. He permits zero as a valid number in all of his computations. Brahmagupta genius made use of mathematics in providing better astronomical methods.

George Sarton, the founder of the disciple of historian of science called him ‘one of the greatest scientist of his race and the greatest of his time’.

He died in 665 AD
Brahmagupta