When China and India Shared Knowledge and Trade
Posted : August 20, 2005 at 8:46 pm [IST]
Hundreds of Indian scholars went to China and worked there between the first century and eleventh. Some translated Sanskrit documents into Chinese, but many were engaged in other activities, such as the pursuit of mathematics and science. There are records of the lives and works of hundreds of such scholars and translators.
There are detailed Chinese records of the fact that several astronomers and mathematicians were employed in high positions in the Astronomical Bureau at the Chinese capital in this period. One of them, Gautama (Quatan Xida), became the President of the Board of Astronomy in China. He produced the great Chinese compendium of astronomy Kaiyvan Zhanjing- an eighth century scientific classic. He was also engaged in adapting a number of Indian astronomical works into Chinese. For example, Jiuzhi li, which draws on a particular planetary calendar in India (”Navagraha” calendar), is clearly based on the classical ‘Panccasiddhantika’, produced around 550CE by Varahamihira. It is mainly an algorithmic guide to computation, estimating such things as the duration of eclipses based on the diameter of the moon andother relevant parameters. The techniques involved drew on methods that were established by Aryabhata and then further developed by his followers in India such as Varahamihira and Brahmagupta.
Yang Jingfeng, an eighth century Chinese astronomer, described the mixed background of offical Chines astronomy thus:
“Those who wish to know the positions of the five planets adopt Indian calendrical methods… So we have three clans of Indian calendar experts, Chiayeb (Kasyapa), Chhuthan (Gautama), and Chumolo (Kumara), all of the calendrical methods of Master Chhuthan (Qutan), together with his ‘Great Art’, in the work, which is carried out for the government.”
Calendrical studies made good use of the progress of trigonometry that had already occurred in India by then (going much beyond the original Greek roots of Indian trigonometry). The movement east of Indian trigonometry to China was part of a global exchange of ideas that also went west around that time. Indeed, this was also about the time when Indian trigonometry was having a major impact on the Arab world (with widely used Arabic translations of the works of Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Brahmagupta, and others), which would later influence European mathematics as well, through the Arabs. Some verbal signposts to the global movement of ideas can be readily traced. A good example is the transformation of Aryabhata’s Sanskrit term- ‘jya’ for what we now call sine; ‘jya’ was translated, through proximity of sound, into Arabic ‘jiba’ (a meaningless word in Arabic), and ultimately into the Latin word ’sinus’ (meaning a bay or cove), from which the modern term ’sine’ is derived. Aryabhata’s ‘jya’ was translated in Chinese as ‘ming’ and was used in such tables as ‘yue jianliang ming’, literally’ sine of lunar intervals’.
Is not all interesting and fascinating to read in Amartya Sen’s ‘ The Argumentative Indian‘?
And then, he writes on the trade between the two countries:
Indian traders were engaged in importing goods from China for re-export to Central Asia more than two thousands years ago. Zhang Qian, an early emissary to Bactriana in the second century BCE, was surprised to find, in the local markets, Chinese goods from Yunnan (cotton and bamboo products). And on enquiry he learned that they had been brought there by Indian caravans through India and Afghanistan. Indian intermediation in trade between china and the west of Asia continued over the centuries. Silk was very important initially, but ‘ by the eleventh century…. Porcelain had already replaced silk as the leading Chinese commodity transshipped through India.
And there is extensive reference of ’silk and silk-cloth’ and other consumer products from the land of China in the literature of the time- Kautilya’s ‘Arthasastra’, Kalidas’s ‘Abhigyan Sakuntalam’, and Bana’s Harasacarita.
Today the Chinese are the largest trading country of the world. Indian manufacturers also are trying to explore the manufacturing capability of China. And the famous knowledge sector companies such as TCS, WIPRO, and Infosys are increasing their presence in China to take advantage of its huge market.
- Indra
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