From the very start of our primary school, we have been taught that the great scientist Isaac Newton discovered the concept of gravity and gave the three momentous laws of motion which founded classical mechanics.
As we are aware the famous apple story says that on seeing an apple fall from a tree, Newton in the 17th century AD got the notion that the earth must be identical to a magnet.
It is time to unlearn the old facts because the real fact is that Indian rishis were familiar with the phenomenon of Gravity millennia before Issac Newton.
There are notions to support the aforesaid that even the country’s leading scientist, former ISRO chairman, G Madhavan Nair, acknowledged in a press conference.
Prasnopanishad (6000 BC) defines the force that pulls things down and keeps us grounded on Earth without floating.
In the Vedas, the gravitational pull is called “gurutva akarshan shakti”. To simplify this the word gurutva means mass and akarshan means attractive pull.
The very name demonstrates that the ancient Indians and the Vedas observed some connection between the gravitational pull and mass of a body.
Krishna Yajurveda's Taittiriya branch says – Mitrodhaar prithvimutdyham | Mitra kreeshti rnimishabhi chest ||
In simple terms this means, the sun is holding heaven and earth in space. The sun has the strength of attraction (kristih) and shines without any interruption.
In the above shloka, the word krishti is derived from the root krish, which has no other significance but attraction. Saying that the sun is carrying the earth in space through its capacity of attraction implies that the earth also is a body with a distinct kind of force of attraction.
The shloka further says that if the earth is like an iron ball and the sun is like a magnetic ball, they would have clashed with each other long back.
In 598 AD a renowned mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta was born in Rajasthan, India. His unwavering study of the universe was the reason that Indian rishis got the exact measurement of the Earth’s circumference before any Western astronomer.
He accurately indicated the positions of the planets and framed a term still used for gravity in India, गुरुत्वाकर्षण or gurutvakarshan.
He devised the solar and lunar eclipses and estimated that the earth took 365 days, six hours, five minutes, and 19 seconds to complete its one rotation.
Brahmagupta in his scriptures described ‘gurutvakarshan’ as the attractive force that made all objects fall towards Earth.
Next in line is the greatest scientist to exist Acharya Kanad (600 BC), apart from giving the atomic theory, he also framed the so-called Newton’s three laws of motion. In his book, Kanabhaksha, he says:
वेगः निमित्तविशेषात कर्मणो जायते |
Translation: Change of motion is due to impressed force.
वेगः निमित्तापेक्षात कर्मणो जायते नियतदिक क्रियाप्रबन्धहेतु |
Translation: Change of motion is proportionate to the impressed force and is in the direction of the force.
वेगः संयोगविशेषविरोधी |
Translation: Action and reaction are opposite and equal.
Another scientist Bhaskaracharya defined gravity in the context of a geocentric model and not in a heliocentric one.
The works of these Vedic scientists exist in history centuries before Newton or any other Astronomer. So why is it still said that it's Isaac Newton who discovered gravity?
The Indian Vedic society was miles ahead of its Western counterparts. The very fact that the rishis knew how the celestial bodies and earth functioned that too without the presence of modern apparatus and tools was enough to tell how advanced they were before anyone.
Taking what's not theirs is the old habit of Britishers and as Indians, it's high time for Indians to understand that the West plagiarizes all the available visible information and wisdom stored in the Indian's Vedas and Puranas.
