EP2: 5000-Year-Old Weather Forecasts: Vedic Texts on Climate and Celestial Phenomenal with Professor Iyengar

Professor Iyengar, a civil engineer and expert in Vedic sciences, discusses his research on ancient Sanskrit texts and their connection to natural sciences. He explores the interplay between the sky, earth, and time in these texts, highlighting the astronomical knowledge and understanding of celestial bodies that predates modern science.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right, welcome back everyone toanother episode of the Justin the Sapien
podcast.
And today I have a very special guest,Professor Iyengar, who is a, I believe a
civil engineer originally in India, but Icame across him in my studies of Vedic

(00:21):
sciences and particularly with weatherforecasting in the ancient Vedic texts.
as well as just some of his other veryfascinating work.
I also believe he's done a lot of workwith earthquakes, but we'll let him kind
of take us through that.
But Professor Younger, welcome.
Thank you for being on the show tonight.

(00:41):
And yeah, go ahead and tell us a littlebit about what you're currently doing.
Are you currently affiliated with anyuniversities?
And give us kind of a little bit ofbackground about yourself.
You want me to say something about what Iam doing right now?
Your background in essence.

(01:03):
Okay.
Well.
Around 80 years right now, I have spentmuch of my time working at the Indian
Institute of Science as a professional,that is, as a professor of structural
engineering and engineering seismology.

(01:30):
On the other side, the city is Bangalorewhere I live.
Bangalore, you might have heard, it's abeautiful city, no doubt, but affected by
very heavy traffic.
So is the traffic is the problem in thiscity, otherwise it is a nice city to live.
So I have been living here in this part ofIndia, South India.

(01:53):
My hometown is Mysore.
Mysore is...
town very near to Bangalore.
That's where I was brought up, spend mychildhood, my education.
My family is rather, if I should saysomething about my parents, very orthodox

(02:17):
South Indian Brahmins, so to say.
And you know, the Ayyengars areparticularly orthodox from Tamil Nadu.
They are originally from Tamil Nadu,migrated to Karnataka at the instance of
one of the kings of Mysore because of thescholarship that

(02:38):
My forefathers were supposed to be happy,which I don't know much about anyway.
That is how it settled in Mysore.
That was a beautiful town.
And I was educated both in the school.
The schools mean the English type ofschools, where English is also taught.

(03:02):
That is the Westernized school, so to say.
That was quite popular.
in the 20th century.
Now, of course, they're the mostly that isthe kind of schooling you get in this
country.
But when I was a kid, two things werepossible.
You will know theoretically that ispossible, but nobody takes it very

(03:24):
seriously.
That is a traditional education inSanskrit, so to say.
There is a Sanskrit part of college.
So I was sent as a boy.
to both the places.
So early in the morning I would go for mySanskrit education from 11 o 'clock I

(03:44):
would take to my school education.
That is how I grew up.
So I have always been attracted by theintellectual traditions and other
traditions in this country.
So to say my cultural background.
Nevertheless, the rational approach.

(04:06):
and the mathematical and the scientificapproach that has been taught to me in the
schools and the colleges and later on whenI did my research work on theory of
nonlinear systems, mathematical modelingand weather forecasting, rainfall
predictions in the modern day by dataanalysis, large scale data modeling and

(04:31):
all that.
So I was always curious.
how this country has come so much in aboutmaybe 4 ,000 years or maybe less, maybe
more.
So after my formal retirement from theIndian Institute of Science, I've been
more concentrating on understanding theancient Sanskrit texts, starting from the

(04:55):
Vedas.
That has been my primary work right now,but I haven't forgotten my mathematics.
nor of my engineering approach toearthquakes and other problems which are
problems of natural sciences that isalways of interest whether for the
ancients or for whether for the moderns.

(05:19):
Like for example recently I read a notethat NASA has found out a crater in Luna
called the Luna crater which is in theGujarat.
run of kutch region.
That crater was known but recently I readthat NASA has done some further

(05:40):
investigation into it and fixed the dateof that crater that it happened about 7000
years ago or so.
That is somewhere let us say the fourth orthe fifth millennium BC.
These are the things which have interestedme because in the Rig Veda there is

(06:00):
mention of
craters, there is mention of celestialbodies falling on ground, but they are
kind of metaphorical.
So they would say that a huge demon felldown on the earth and he went down deep
inside the earth and the gods were happyonce he went down and things like that.

(06:26):
They would look like mythological, butthere is always
There has to be a physical connectionbecause the human mind wants some
background to create a poetry or to createa story or to create a theory.
And these are concerning nature,concerning earth, concerning atmosphere,

(06:51):
concerning the sky.
And hence my interest has been to lookinto natural sciences.
in Sanskrit text starting from the mostancient period.
I think that should be okay for anintroduction.
Yes, excellent.

(07:11):
You couldn't have done a betterintroduction.
So you go through these ancient texts andare you going through them kind of
one area at a time, are you lookingparticularly at astronomy and weather, or

(07:32):
is it kind of any part of the naturalsciences is fascinating to you?
See the ancient texts, they are mostlyconcerning the sky and the atmosphere.
Less with the earth, so to say, in the waythat we look nowadays.

(07:54):
But you know, all the three areinterconnected.
The picture that I get in the ancientperiod,
They were thinking that the whole universeis one.
It is a whole.
Not that we are separate, sky is separate,the stars are separate, the planets are

(08:18):
separate like that.
So there was always an appeal.
It would say that, that would mean for me,the sky is the father, earth is the
mother.
That is the kind of text which is there inthe Vedas.

(08:40):
So they were looking at it from adifferent perspective.
And that perspective was more about whatthey could see, what they could hear.
And that was, you can understand that inthe ancient geographical situation they

(09:00):
had in the Indian subcontinent,
Maybe they did not have a full idea ofwhat we today call Earth.
They would have considered it as Prithvi,which would extend up to the horizon,
whatever they could see.
And then the world, which was the sky.

(09:23):
And in between was the Antariksham or theatmosphere or the open space.
So what they could see, they explainedmore.
And they were could what they couldmeditate on.
That is what they were explained morerather than about the continents on Earth,

(09:44):
whether the Earth is round or it is flator which river is there in Russia or even
Europe.
No such things are there.
So you can only relate it correlate, so tosay, mostly with India that also
particularly the northern part of India.

(10:06):
Okay, I didn't.
So I'm just taking it as it comes.
Whatever is there.
I'm studying it and trying to see how Ican internalize that text and how this
country or this culture has evolved.

(10:27):
In the three to four thousand years oftime.
Of course, today, everything is topsy-turvy.
It is not like.
in the same old time.
But you know that has come through as afiltered information and that cannot be
avoided.
It is like a river which has come and theriver where some reaches are highly

(10:49):
polluted and some reaches are beautiful.
But nevertheless, the starting point isthe same point, is the same river.
Yes, yes, I love it.
So.
For the audience listening, I mean,obviously you would have to be finding

(11:10):
that there are accurate things that arebeing spoken of in these ancient texts or
in the Vedas, and that there are thingsthat were discovered long before the
modern world discovered them.
I mean, can you tell us about kind of acouple examples that stick out to you that

(11:32):
are...
things that were known thousands of yearsago that weren't discovered until much
later by a more modern science.
Well, that's a rather, I mean, loadedquestion.

(11:53):
We have to see what is known in moderntimes.
And then, you know, a comparison can beheld on that.
If your question is about...
In modern times, we have nuclear bombs andwe have nuclear reactors.
And whether in the way those nuclearreactors are known, my answer is no.

(12:17):
No, it is not there.
I mean, that is not the kind of thing thatis there.
But if you ask in the modern science,there are concepts like relativity, that
time can be relative if somebody moves atthe light of
as a speed of light.
Then one can extend time dilation as theysay and all that.

(12:42):
Such concepts were there that you couldsee.
I would say that the Brahma's period isdifferent.
His hundred years is equivalent to ourmaybe four million years and things like
that.
So such concepts are there and that mayalso be extension.

(13:05):
of what they understood during meditationand by analyzing sleep.
Like in sleep, many times we have a dreamas though so many things happened.
But when you open your eyes and look atthe watch, maybe only two minutes would

(13:26):
have passed or maybe three minutes wouldhave passed.
But you would have seen your whole schooleducation gone through in three minutes.
like that.
So people would have come to theconclusion that such things are possible
in this world.
Now, and then would you say that there'squite a few, if we were to focus on

(13:50):
astronomical information or understandingof celestial bodies, planets or things of
that nature, that there are things thatwere very early on discovered.
you know, thousands of years ago that arein the Vedas that weren't necessarily
discovered in modern science till only therecent only recent times.

(14:15):
Please repeat your question.
So would you also say that for the Vedasthat there is a there's quite a bit of
astronomical information that wasdiscovered thousands of years ago that's
that's only been discovered in recenttimes, but particularly.
Maybe that's you know formation of planetsor stars or different different components

(14:39):
of astronomical information that were verymuch known for example, they you know, I'm
forgetting the the name of the tribe Ithink is the Dogon or I can't remember the
tribe in Africa, but they knew aboutanother star I believe connected with
Sirius that

(15:00):
We didn't even know existed way untilafter the telescope was invented and they
thought that, you know, there's no waypeople could know this without modern
telescopes, but they have it in theirculture, in their stories, very clear
information.
Is there things like that happening in theVedas?

(15:21):
They do.
They do.
There are many such questions which arenot very clear even to this day.
which are celestial.
Now, how do we interpret this text?
They're in Sanskrit.

(15:41):
And you know, the traditionally in India,we have at least today more than 200 or
250 textbooks.
That means by that I mean printed books.
concerning Vedas, what we call Veda,traditionally in India.

(16:05):
What language it is?
Generally, it is said Sanskrit.
But by Sanskrit, people have differentopinions, different interpretations.
If you talk to the linguists, you know thestory that William Jones was the chief
justice in the Kolkata High Court wholearned Sanskrit.

(16:28):
from pundits in Kolkata and later on hetook it to Europe and he spread Sanskrit
grammar and Sanskrit as a language whichis linked with Latin, Greek and then the
Indo -European language concept came up inEurope and the Germans took it up in great

(16:50):
detail with great interest.
And then, you know, a new theory oflinguistics started.
The modern theory of linguistics is onlyabout 200 years old.
Whereas in India, the kind of linguisticsare the traditional Sanskrit grammar, so
to say, so about 2000 years.

(17:10):
That is from the time of Parnini, so tosay.
But Parnini himself, he did not doanything.
He only talked about the spoken Sanskrit,which is prevalent during his period.
By that time, the Vedas had already beenfixed.
So everybody agrees, even the modernIndologists who have looked into this,

(17:33):
that the Rig Veda ended by 1500 BC.
So the other Vedas have come after 1500BC.
So to understand the language, which isalready 3000 years older than the grammar
of Sanskrit, is going to be highlyquestionable and is going to be a...

(17:53):
Tough proposition.
I will give one example.
Many of the modern scholars, particularlythe Westerners, they have tried to date,
fix a date for Rig Veda.
And that is all dependent on what theywould call an Aryan invasion into India.

(18:18):
It's a theory that around 1500 BC,
so -called Aryans entered India, theybrought their language also Sanskrit into
India and all that kind of thing.
It's a huge theory which is taught eventoday in the schools and colleges all over
the world.

(18:38):
But if you look into the Vedas proper,there is nothing like that.
And on the other hand, astronomically,there is a mention of a pole star.
pole star in a celestial region in thenorthern region in a constellation called

(19:02):
Shishumara.
Shishumara is roughly a whale or anaquatic animal which has four legs.
It is not a fish.
It has four legs.
And that constellation with 14 stars, itis described.
And the tip of the

(19:23):
star at the end of that constellation, itis said there is a star which is fixed
that doesn't move in the sky and that iscalled the Dhruva.
Dhruva in Sanskrit means fixed.
So Dhruva can mean a tree which is fixed,earth which is fixed, a star which is

(19:48):
fixed or anything which is true.
See the language is fluid like that.
But in the celestial context, it has to beonly a star.
It cannot be anything else because ittalks of other things which are moving.
Now, if by modern astronomy you analyzethis situation, we know that today we have

(20:11):
a pole star that is Polaris or the UrsaMinor, the Alpha Ursa Minor.
This star came to the pole position.
only around 500 years back.
Before that, there was no pole star.
There was, yes, there was one during 2850BC.

(20:34):
That is roughly in the third millenniumBC.
That was Thuban.
That is called today Thuban by modernastronomers.
And it is agreed that, you know, theEgyptian pyramids were also built
approximately during the same period.
Now, why would the Vedic text, which arerepeated today, even in our temples in

(20:57):
South India, they would use this mantra,this hymn, Bhuvah prapadye, Bhuvah
prapadye, it starts like that.
Why would they do it?
And they say that there is a star in thenorthern sky which looks fixed.
It is called abhaya and all that.
So my question is, today I may use it.

(21:19):
for some other purpose.
It is emotional, so to say.
But it clearly indicates somebody had seenthat.
Otherwise, they would not have known that.
You may argue that it might be a inheritedmemory.
Fine.
For me, my culture is an inherited memoryonly.
There is nothing else.

(21:40):
So for them also, it might have beeninherited.
But the cultural footprint which is there,it is chronological.
That chronological thing is actuallycelestial.
And why did they do that?
That with reference to that, theydeveloped their social structure.

(22:01):
Because even today in the marriages, inthe Hindu marriage, there is one small
item called Dhruva Darshanam.
That means looking at Dhruva.
Now the bride has to look at Dhruva and
A mantra is uttered by the husband and hehas to say that you be fixed in my family

(22:26):
like Dhruva.
Dhruva is fixed in the sky and he rotatesall the planets and stars.
You be like that in my family and we willall go around you.
And that is an empowerment mantra.
And you know, in 5000 years ago,

(22:47):
When they saw this and they decided theywill bring it into the social custom.
Don't ask me today whether the priest knowbecause you have been in India, you might
have observed some of the marriages.
Many of these things are finished in themorning itself where they can't look at
any of the things, but you will show insome direction and finish the mantra.

(23:09):
That is a different matter.
That is a ritual.
But the meaning behind the ritual.
And what we can understand from ourancient text is that they had a one -to
-one relationship with the sky.
And later they have observed that therehave been disturbances in the sky, like

(23:31):
the comets and like the asteroids.
And they talk about the demons falling onthe ground, as I told you already.
And in fact, I had written about this thatin the runoff region, in the Gujarat
region,
Today it is a desert.
It's a salt desert.
That means there is nothing which growsthere.

(23:53):
It's a highly earthquake prone region.
And there are craters there.
And in that region, as I said in thebeginning, there seems to have been an
impact crater created about five to sixthousand years ago.
This has been studied by modernastronomers also.

(24:14):
So it seems that there is a connection andthis is something which is useful to
humanity as a whole, not just to a fewIndians or to a few orthodox people.
That means there is a climatic changewhich can occur.
And there are large descriptions in theVedas where they pray to sun that don't go

(24:41):
away from us.
We want to see you and you have beenabsconding for a very long time.
Please show us.
And what would they mean?
They count.
They can know that so many days havepassed.
Nevertheless, the bright sun they couldnot see.

(25:02):
And he says you are covered by a wholeveil or a mask.
Now, this has been interpreted by manySanskritas.
as a mythological thing or somethingconcerning the dark night of the soul and

(25:22):
they take it into philosophical issuesthat you know the human being he doesn't
know what it is true.
This could have arisen out of it.
See when intellectual beings when humanbeings they see something in the sky
physically that is happening suddenly theywill wonder.

(25:42):
What is the position of human beings inthis universe?
What is the relationship between thehumans and the sky?
And what is the universe?
And all these questions come up.
And obviously, Vedanta, what we say isphilosophy in India, which has come up in

(26:03):
the Upanishads, which questions, is timereally true?
Is life really true?
Is the world really an imagination or isit a reality?
All these philosophical questions havecome up.
They are mentioned in the text.
So if you combine all of this, you get adifferent opinion.

(26:25):
But if you analyze them, you can see adevelopment for about three to four
thousand years of the tradition of theintellectual tradition before the common
era.
The common era, you can say that.
roughly from the time of Buddha.
Buddha was about 500 BC, let us say.

(26:47):
There is a historical period, as it issaid.
This is far behind.
It is about two to three thousand yearsbehind that.
But you can see through Buddhism and alsoJainism.
Jainism is not so well known outside.
They all have these concepts.
They also carry the similar celestialpictures.

(27:10):
which are there in the Vedic text, butinterpreted in different ways and give
different meanings to them, developdifferent philosophies.
For example, in the Vedic philosophy, onewould say, Sarvam Brahmamayam, everything
is Brahman, everything is God.

(27:31):
Whereas the Jains would say that truth canbe in six ways.
It can be this or that.
are neither this nor that and kind ofthing.
So different things come up.
And in the Buddhist philosophy, I don'twant to, you may know better than me on
those things, they would go in a slightlydifferent way, but they're all connected.

(27:55):
So these three together, they owe theirorigin to the Vedic civilization and the
Vedic culture, which was essentially acelestial culture.
That means it got all its inspiration bylooking at the sky.
Whether positive, whether negative,whether good, whether bad.

(28:19):
Yeah.
Wow.
And measurement of time, measurement oftime by observing sunrises.
Even to this day, the religious day issunrise to sunrise in India.
From one sunrise to the other sunrise isconsidered a religious day.

(28:41):
So for religious purpose, that is the one.
And you can see any person.
any culture which would like to know howtime flows.
The first thing is sun is a morning,evening, morning, evening.
They did that.
They did it and this preserved thatinformation.

(29:02):
The important thing is that.
But that information was oral.
You know that there are no written texttill about 500 B .C.
So, orally it was transmitted.
That is what I meant.
The ancient
educational tradition in India whichcontinues to this day.

(29:23):
There are schools where Vedas are taughtorally.
Of course they learn a few other things.
But in the most ancient time, I don't knowwhat they learned.
All their learning would have been onlywith the nature.
What I do is I take the printed text.

(29:44):
Not all are yet printed.
Many of them are in script form andmanuscript.
And many are lost because of the oraltradition.
If that family dies, then you know thatoral tradition is gone.
Nobody knows what it is.
So that is the situation when it concerns.

(30:06):
The corpus of knowledge India has.
the ancient Carpus, which is essentiallySanskrit later on brought into other
languages.
So my concentration or my focus is mainlySanskrit, even though I look into other
text also.

(30:26):
Okay.
Yeah, it's it's it's curious of how, youknow, India does, even though India went
through colonization, how
Sanskrit is still alive in the culture,how it is still moving in the culture
every day.
I was just reading about, you know,essentially the Incas in Peru, where I

(30:51):
currently live, they were very similar.
They seem to be an astronomical society.
And actually there's been a lot ofresearchers who've come to Cusco.
And what they found is essentially thatCusco was originally mapped.
to match the sky.
So this idea of bringing the sky down intomarriage with the earth, and you can also

(31:15):
see how in Indian culture that was donealso just in terms of culturally, right,
in terms of how it manifests and how themythos evolves.
And I think that's something that is moreand more curious because it's...

(31:35):
I think it's really easy to look at theseancient traditions and now the one view is
very much of like, it's all spiritual,it's all about your soul, it's all about,
you know, consciousness and these things.
But the more and more that I really seethings, it's very much first and foremost,

(31:59):
it was...
astronomical and it was geography, it'slandscape, it's how the land and the
seasons and the animals and all of thesethings in combination.
And then that was used to create themythos in order to remember because that's

(32:20):
a big thing is how do you pass this downin an oral tradition.
And so, but India is so unique becausethere's not a lot of ancient
culture that's as intact as India and alot has been lost, but there's still a lot
that's there.
And so, I mean, you talked a little bitabout this in some ways, but I mean,

(32:43):
essentially, what's the hardest part ofthis kind of discovery and research?
Is it primarily the linguistic challengesof different interpretations or...
Is it now that you kind of understand thegeneral idea that it is describing the sky

(33:07):
and the combination of how the skyinteracts with the earth?
Is it getting easier to understand thetext?
Any question is with the modern knowledge,whether we understand the text?
No, what I'm saying is as you, because youread Sanskrit, right?

(33:31):
And how traditionally with these texts,like you talked about, there's all sorts
of debates happening all the time of doesthis part of the script mean this or does
it mean that?
Is it getting easier for you?
Do you feel like, like what's thechallenge for you?

(33:51):
Or is it, is it getting easier over time?
I mean, your question is not very clear tome.
OK, OK, no worries.
Is the interpretation of the text gettingeasier for you with time, or is the

(34:12):
interpretation still one of the biggestchallenges leading to further
understanding?
No, the interpretation is in between.
Once...
It is neither very challenging nor it iseasy.
But the

(34:34):
background that we are having because whenI study a book, I'm having my own bias.
biases.
For example, when I started studyingIndian history, I read all kinds of books,

(34:55):
not just Sanskrit, I was taught in Englishand in other languages.
It would say that, like I said, theaudience entered India, Max Muller, you
know, was a very great scholar, no doubt,because he was the first person to
print Rig Veda, a critical edition of RigVeda and all that.

(35:18):
So he's held in high regard even to thisday.
There is no doubt on that.
But he said, he proposed the theory thatthe Aryans entered India from Asia Minor
and they were originally with theIranians.
And all these people came from thissteppes in Germany or somewhere like these
kinds of things.

(35:39):
I started with the same bias.
When I started,
reading the text.
Then I wondered why I don't get any ofthese there in the text.
So I had to change my thinking totally.
One aspect is I have an advantage thatI've been brought up in a particular

(35:59):
culture.
As I said, I'm in a river.
I'm at one end of the river.
It belongs to the river.
But I can go up and then see what may bethere.
that advantage a foreigner may not havebecause he may come from some other place.
He has an objectivity, whereas mine may besubjective.

(36:21):
So in that sense, my problem is more timeconsuming and to keep my brain and mind
dispassionate that I should not go eitherthis way nor go that way.
I should not become too emotional.
not chauvinistic, are trying to glorifythat Vedas new nuclear reactors, Vedas new

(36:48):
planetary travel, things like that.
On the other hand, I don't accept what theHarvard professors would say about
linguistics, that Sanskrit, you know,Latin is this and there is a PIE language
they propose.
There's a Proto Indo -European.

(37:09):
which was spoken somewhere in a corner ina place called Anatolia and then try to
analyze how it might have spread and allthat.
And you know, that's an academic work.
I agree.
And that is published in the best of thejournals today.
That is in one area that is happening.
I have great regard for that, but that isnot my interest.

(37:33):
I don't believe that is the truth.
The issue is going to be what is true.
It's a very hazy subject.
Truth again becomes sometimes prettyrelative and it would depend on time, not
just on the people.
Now, I mean, to give an example, we knowtoday Earth is going around Sun.

(37:59):
Maybe a thousand years back, the majorityof the people thought, no, it is not so.
It was Earth was fixed.
Even in India, it was geocentricastronomy.
And the best of the astronomers, thesiddhantic astronomers, Aryabhatta,
Brahmagupta, Bhaskara, Leelavati, they areall the mathematicsians.

(38:19):
and mathematical astronomy people, theygot their correct results which fixed us.
So the position of the planets they hadand the eclipse prediction they did, they
were all true.
How accurate is another matter?
And hence the question comes up.
And all this is concerning time.

(38:42):
Time, what does time mean to human beings?
That is the single question as I have seenin the Vedas.
If you ask a question which is common toall humanity, that is what is time.
And you know, there are so manydescriptions of that, like Kala, then

(39:08):
there is a being, a form is given and youknow, he is worshipped as this.
Now moon is called Kala, sun is calledKala.
They all represent time, no doubt.
Nevertheless, is it time?
There is something deeper than that.
And in some, in one of the ways, veryinteresting.
It says before birth of sun, it was non-time.

(39:37):
Akala.
It doesn't say there was no time.
It was non -time.
From the birth of sun only, time hasstarted.
That is kala.
Kala means discretization.
The time is discreet, which we humanbeings understand as a day or a second or

(39:58):
as a month, year and all that.
It is only after the birth of...
And all the questions, whether in the RigVeda, Sama Veda, in the Upanishads, what
is time?
Even today, the same question, I'm surethe physicists will be asking.
You can't answer.

(40:20):
And the yogis will say something else.
The Vedanta, they would say, self is sameas time.
And they would say it's all same and allthat.
Well, you get into another area together.
Very interesting.
It's all human beings have to wonderabout.
And this is what has been talked to us inthe traditional system also.

(40:43):
And that is how I got interested.
It is not simply proving some theorem,whether the Pythagorean theorem was known
in India or not, things like that.
They were all, okay, they have becomesecondary, but it's all connected.
And that gives something for human beingsalso because human beings have to continue

(41:05):
on this planet, right?
So they have to wonder what it is.
We may be thinking that we would like togo to moon.
We may like to go to Mars and all thatancient people also thought like that.
There have been many statements.
There are some ancient astronomical books,one which I am right now editing about

(41:27):
cosmology and things like it.
It says I've just given an example ofthat.
You see a mark on moon with naked eye.
I am sure you would have seen it, youknow.
You see a mark on moon that looks like arabbit.
So in Sanskrit, a rabbit is called Shasha.

(41:52):
So the Sanskrit word for moon, one of theword is Shashi.
Shashi means one who has a rabbit.
Moon has a rabbit, so he can be calledShashi and Shashanka.
That means he's keeping a rabbit in him.

(42:12):
That is the meaning which is there.
That is used in Sanskrit even to this day.
There are many people whose name isShashanka, Shashi, Shashi.
You might have come across some Indianslike that.
They may not know what it means, but it isall connected with moon.
Now the text I am editing, it says thereis water and moon.

(42:39):
And sun is heat, but the sun's heat is notthe ordinary fire.
It is the primal fire out of which theother planets came up, like the Venus, the
Jupiter and all that.
But moon, he has water and he's cold.

(43:02):
That is the first statement, cosmologicalstatement which comes.
And then...
The mark which is there, it reflects earthbecause it has water and it reflects earth
and it says the mark is the form of earthon moon.

(43:25):
And if you see, you take a map and seethat there are people who have constructed
this map also.
It looks like a reflection of Asia and thetwo Americas put together.
There is a tree kind of thing.
Then there is a rabbit kind of thing.
You take the two together.

(43:46):
It looks like a 90 degree, like a mirrorreflection.
Now, this is all already 3000 years old.
No, it can be dated.
The text can be dated.
I am working on the dating also.
And there may be imagination and maybebeautiful thinking, whatever it may be.
So they thought about this.

(44:08):
And one of the names for Mars is Sun ofEarth.
So some of them knew Mars looks likeEarth.
And the recent photographs which NASA hasput up,
Sometimes I wonder whether I'm seeing aphotograph of a dried up canal or a dried

(44:31):
up river or something like that.
Maybe imagination, but it is there.
But I can't conclude that they were ableto know all of this from modern methods.
Right.
And so with...
so many fascinating things.

(44:53):
You mentioned earlier being kind ofeducated in these two different streams of
a more, I don't want to use the wordWestern, but let's use the word Western
right now, and then a more traditionaleducation.
And so are you...

(45:14):
I've seen you speak as well about kind of,you know, the fact that there are other
ways of knowing and other sciences.
And are you, I'm curious to know about thelandscape of Indian, Indian thought in
these ways today, right?
From my experience, a lot of Indianculture at the,

(45:40):
At the government level, as well as inmost of the education system, it is very
much more Western focused.
And already you have, you know, you havelots of doctors who are practicing more of
a Western biomedical medicine.
They're losing all your VEDA.
They don't think about all your VEDA asmuch.

(46:01):
And you're seeing this, you know, in thegovernment, right, in their meteorology,
they're using a much more...
Western reductionist science approach.
Is that kind of the general landscapetoday in India or is this kind of research
something that there's a lot of otherpeople excited about the type of work that

(46:25):
you're doing?
Is that is it happening a lot or is itvery little?
This kind of work is very esoteric, ratherelitistic.
And hence it is limited.
But it has been happening in many places.

(46:48):
And always there is a question.
It has something to do with, I don't knowwhat you call it, epistemology or the
knowledge generation.
How do I get knowledge?
Theory of knowledge, yeah.
Yeah, theory of knowledge and all.
So...

(47:09):
There are people who look at the yogicapproach for knowledge, the yoga approach.
I'm sure you might have heard about it,which should be a meditative approach.
that may not give the same informationwhat you may get through a telescope or

(47:33):
through a microscope, but it may give youa holistic knowledge.
So the information and the knowledge, isit analytical or is it synthetic?
It is like looking at a beautiful paintingand then trying to see what threads are

(47:54):
used, what colors are used.
That is analysis.
Analysis we may do.
We may get some information, but theholistic picture is important.
That is actually the yogic or you may sayphilosophical approach.
And somehow or other, even though therehas been a lot of intellectual work in
this country,

(48:15):
before the Western system came up.
That is, you see the mathematics, so tosay.
The analytical mathematics was developedextraordinarily.
And I can say even to this day, much ofthe mathematics which is studied all over
the world up to the high school level, Iwon't say about the pure mathematics, but

(48:38):
about the practical mathematics developedin India by 12th century, 12th and 15th
century.
That is what has been given up in otherlanguage and doing.
On the other hand, there is also atraditional yoga where you get knowledge
intuitively.
And that is a parallel.

(49:00):
It is not something opposing.
It is not an enemy to intellectualism.
Intuition is not an enemy tointellectualism.
Many people think like that is wrong.
Actually, the proponents of that.
in recent years was Arabindo.
You would have heard of Arabindo maybe.
Have you heard of Arabindo?

(49:21):
No.
He started in Pondicherry and he wasactually educated in Cambridge, but he
came to India during was a freedomfighter.
And now there is a French lady who went toPondicherry to be with him.
And there is a Auroville in Tamil Naduwhere there is a huge colony in.

(49:45):
He was the prime mover in recent years ofproposing this kind of thing, which is
possible.
And you know, one important example ofthis was a mathematician by name
Ramanujan.
Have you heard of him?
Yes, I believe.
Isn't there a famous movie?

(50:06):
There's a movie about that.
Right, right, right.
And also a person who knew infinity.
That is the name.
Yeah.
He got all his theorems till he went toHardy to be in UK with Hardy.
He did not know what is a proof.
And he said, I simply meditate in the, Imean, my dream, the goddess who is there

(50:34):
in a place called Namakkal, very nearBangalore actually.
And she tells me, she shows me thisequation I write.
And most of them are correct.
And they're being verified even to thisday in United States.
I think a professor in Florida somewhereworking on that.

(50:54):
How did he get this knowledge?
So there is an approach that knowledge ofyou may say, what is this roots of the
months theta function may have no bearingon people eating or doing their day to day
work.
But there is some kind of knowledge whichis there.

(51:19):
Yeah.
So this is there.
And recently there was one because youtalked about medicine.
There is a lot of interest in Ayurveda, nodoubt, even in the Western countries.
There's one professor by name Dimitrian.
Have you heard of him?

(51:40):
No.
A Romanian who during the communist regimeescaped from Romania.
came to India, he was basically a medicaldoctor.
He studied philosophy and all that.
He became a disciple for a verytraditional guru, an orthodox traditional

(52:05):
person.
If you know about orthodoxy in India, youwould know how orthodox they may be.
They won't even look at people.
They would stay at a distance and kind ofthing.
It is a Matham called in Kanchipuram.
Have you visited Kanchipuram?
No, no, no.

(52:27):
He became his disciple.
He was accepted.
But taught by silence.
Can you believe it?
I can actually.
His diary is printed.
His diary he wrote.

(52:47):
He was also a professor of medicine inParis.
After being in India for about 10 years,he went back.
He wrote his diary, which is about 800pages available in French, available in
English.
I'm reading the English version.
It is printed in India, so I'm reading it.

(53:10):
I am myself amazed because that Swami...
He clearly writes what he understood, howthe ray came from the eye.
The title is, The Sage with the Eyes ofLight is the title of that book.

(53:31):
The name of the author is SergeiDimitriyan.
I am amazed at that.
And he says blocks of information wastransmitted to him.
And this is the tradition.
Because the text to say that you cancommunicate in silence much better than by

(53:51):
talking.
But now I am talking.
Yeah, I mean, it's.
It's interesting.
I mean, you also mentioned dreams.
I mean, there's there's lots and lots ofinventions and ideas, many more than we
realize that have come from the dreamspace.

(54:13):
There's many.
many and we don't know how many haveactually come that just the stories
haven't been told but the dream spaceseems to be very fruitful and then you get
into meditation and states of silence andall sorts of different information can

(54:35):
come through but in a different way.
It's not the...
the standard intellectual way that modernscience favors, right?
Modern science only favors this one formthat can be packaged in this nice little
box and is perfect experimentation, butthere's so much more going on.

(54:57):
And that's what I really find interestingabout these traditions.
I'm curious to know about, because for me,
And a previous guest on the podcast.
He is what he calls himself a a noviceVedic Meteorologist right so he's focused

(55:20):
on trying to predict Major weatherpatterns in India and around the world but
using formulas from ancient texts in inIndia
and based on astronomy, essentially.
The reason that I bring this up is becausesome of the work that you're doing is

(55:44):
actually very important to his work,because I believe he reads a little bit of
Sanskrit, but he actually needs help onthe Sanskrit part sometimes.
And this weather forecasting is becomingmore and more important because...
we were not able to predict very far outand you can see kind of how you can

(56:07):
predict much longer term weather with thecycles presented in the old ancient texts.
Is this something that people are avidlyinterested in in terms of research at all
right now?
In terms of research, the long termmodeling in India, I don't think anybody

(56:29):
is interested.
And unfortunately, the research in ouruniversities and in the institution of
higher learning, they're strictlyimitating the West.

(56:50):
It is not even original Western.
Sometimes it simply imitates what peopleare doing in other countries and try to...
replicate and try to extend it here.
That may not work.
I doubt very much because you have toverify.
There is no verification for such things.

(57:12):
So whatever one says, it goes.
But I have my own doubts.
On the other hand, sorry.
The you are a friend.
I don't know what he predicted aboutrainfall patterns and all that.

(57:34):
See the medieval India that is around thesixth century AD.
There was a person by name Varahamahira.
He wrote a book called Brihat Sambhita.
That is roughly the Gupta period and late.
They were all interested in measurement ofrain and trying to find out the patterns

(57:58):
and all that.
That is what I have analyzed in some of mypublications.
They were rational.
They were database based on the data.
They were trying to develop some theorythat was not based on fluid mechanics or

(58:18):
the modern atmospheric sciences.
or celestial mechanics or Newtonianmechanics.
It was purely observation.
That was all right for their period.
Will that be all right 2000 years later?
Now the books are there.
You may write the same thing even now.

(58:41):
That is what many people do.
But they may not come right.
That aspect has to be understood.
Right.
And do you think that that's partiallybecause of?
Well, let me just ask you this.
Do you do you personally believe that?

(59:03):
That the weather forecasting capabilitiesof some of these ancient text was in fact
accurate?
Do you think that they were?
they were able to predict larger events ofdrought or good rain and all these types
of things using celestial bodies inastronomy.

(59:25):
not using the astronomy that they had.
They might have done something based onpast observation as precursors.
See, your question takes me to a totallydifferent topic, very important, that is

(59:49):
astrology.
Astrology.
imagines or it is based on some kind ofastronomy.
That doesn't mean the predictions ofastrology.
or scientific or whatever.

(01:00:14):
So, but precursors are used even today bymoderns for rainfall and drought because
there are cycles.
These cycles, we know, sunspot cycle, 11to 12 years.
That was known even in the ancient period.
So they would suspect something mayhappen.

(01:00:37):
Right.
So, so do you think that like, let's focuson that part, right?
Like the,
the idea that, hey, when Mercury is cominginto this nakshatra and it's in this
alignment with Jupiter or Mars, that weare expecting the general idea of the

(01:00:58):
weather for this year or this time periodto be like this based on historical
observation and that there is, that's onepart of the question.
But then is there the potential?
for a lot of astronomy and physics andmathematics and possibly artificial

(01:01:20):
intelligence to kind of take some of theseold ideas from the Vedas and this
understanding and to work backwards andcreate some mathematical models to
potentially predict longer term trends inthe world today in terms of weather and
these types of events.

(01:01:42):
Well, one can do that.
You will get a model.
But how do you verify it?
In fact, you see some of the work that Idid was on rainfall modeling using neural
networks.
I create a neural network which is 90 %accurate for the last 100 years of

(01:02:09):
rainfall data.
How do I verify it?
I have to use the remaining independentdata for about 10 years.
I have a database of 120 years.
I use 100 years as my data for developingthe model, verify it for the remaining 20

(01:02:30):
years.
I get an accuracy about 60%.
The data fit is very good 90 % 95%.
But the independent verification for theindependent set of data that also you have

(01:02:50):
to verify.
Otherwise, nobody would believe me.
It's about 60%.
Then I have to make a prediction for nextyear.
That time hasn't yet come for the nextyear.
I have to do.
It may come out correct, it may not comeout.
So it is a dicey picture.

(01:03:11):
People tend to believe if somebody elsedoes my work and it tells me you do this,
I'm happy I simply do it.
99 % of human beings are like that.
They will do that.
They will think what machine intelligence,what artificial intelligence, what this is

(01:03:31):
creating, what Google is throwing out iscorrect.
But how do you know?
How?
What is the truth?
Yeah.
So this is a question.
This is all right for when the data wasthere.
See, when in the sixth century or the 10thcentury, they made the statements, the

(01:03:55):
observant made that statement that if Marsis near Jesta, that is Antares, or near
the Leonis,
There will be no rain.
That is in the rain rain is season that isin India.
It is not for any other country.
These things we had to factor it out.

(01:04:17):
But was the true it might have been true.
Now I have to see is there a cycle of thatkind?
In rainfall rainfall data have only for100 years.
The longest rainfall data.
Official is only in India.
because after the British came, they had avery systematic measurement of rainfall.

(01:04:39):
Even though during Chandragupta's time,there was a rainfall measurement part.
That part measurement is given in some ofthe texts.
But for the 2000 years, nobody measuredthe rainfall.
They believed what was said there.
But after the British came, they startedmeasuring the rainfall.

(01:05:01):
That is a good thing.
Now all over the world, we have about 100years, 120 years, but we have paleo
rainfall data.
But paleo data is for something else.
Paleo rainfall, I cannot use it for modernrainfall prediction.
That may give something for a longerprediction.

(01:05:23):
Like ice age is going to be a new ice agecoming.
Those things will be helpful.
But...
The variation is also large.
And that is a question for humanity as awhole.
And you know, as you go to longer timeperiod, the standard deviation keeps on

(01:05:47):
increasing.
For short time, my prediction will be verycorrect because the standard variation is
very small.
So we have to wonder what is meant byprediction.
Is it with zero error you want aprediction?
If it is not, then what is statistical?

(01:06:11):
Then what is probability?
Now what is truth per se?
Can truth be probabilistic?
Or is the universe really deterministic oris the universe probabilistic?
So the Vedic people, if you see, they didnot think universe is deterministic.

(01:06:33):
It goes in some way, they would say thatis not fatalism.
It is not fatalistic.
You do some work, but your freedom islimited.
You can change nearby.
But the large field will not get affected.
That goes in some direction and thatitself will have variations.

(01:06:57):
So there is no point in thinking of adeterministic world.
That is what it says.
It may be confusing, but that is howthings are.
Yeah, yeah, no, I get it.
It's and it's almost it's it's back to theJane idea earlier.

(01:07:18):
It's both and it's neither or it's bothneither.
And, you know, it's it's all of that typeof thing.
But it's it's interesting because with theWestern research that I do read.
more and more it seems like and there'shardly any researchers looking at these

(01:07:39):
things but you know now they'recorrelating the sunspot activity or the
sun's magnetic cycle to the El Ninophenomena and to me these are all very
practical things that we need tounderstand and I'm just curious of how

(01:08:00):
much potential is there for
Let's put truth and those things aside forsome time.
Let's just say our goal is to beat thecurrent meteorological algorithms being
used with atmospheric sciences by theIndian government today or other

(01:08:26):
forecasting places.
Is there a large space for...
Vedic science and Vedic observation tocome in and move, let's say if they're
accurate 50 % for the coming monsoonseason prediction or the cyclones, is

(01:08:47):
there the ability for the Vedic sciencesin combination with something like
artificial intelligence, mapping the sky,going backwards in time?
and looking at how they viewed it and thenbringing it forward, aligning the time and
all these things.
Do you feel like there's a big potentialthere or is it something that you just,

(01:09:12):
what do you think on that?
There is some semantics involved here.
Like you said about the Western scienceand Western approach of sunspot, all these
things.
Why don't you call it Greek science?

(01:09:32):
Why do you call it Western science?
Why don't you call it Greek?
It should be called Greek science, mostlikely.
If we were to say it specifically, itwould that would be the most correct way
to say it.
Then why do you call in India whetherVedic science can be included?
Because the word Vedic, what do youunderstand by that?

(01:09:56):
Right.
Even that.
You're right.
You know, it is a very serious issue.
People with little bit of astrology, whichdeveloped in the 6th century onwards, they
call it Vedic.
That is wrong.

(01:10:18):
If you simply because it is the samelanguage, it is written in Sanskrit, the
text, you call it Vedic.
Why?
You should not.
Because the Vedic things, the corpus, itgot fixed by about 500 BC.

(01:10:39):
After that, traditionally, I'm not talkingabout what Westerners say.
The traditional people themselves will notcall the others as Vedic.
For example, Aryabhata's astronomy, hemight have taken something from the Vedic
because he was a learned man.

(01:11:00):
Like, you know, in United States, youwould have taken something from Aristotle
or Socrates or Galileo and all that.
But you don't every time say this isItalian, this is Greek, this is this and
that kind of thing.
But why here only you have to say that?
That is a wrong thing.
Because in the Vedic, as I said, they areholistic.

(01:11:24):
In the Rig Veda, how much they werebothered about rain?
Rain was important.
Did they measure rain?
Did they talk about rain?
That all comes in the mundane day to daygovernance.
That is for the kings.
Obviously, Kautilya during theChandrakirtha Maurya's time, he had to run

(01:11:48):
an empire which was almost whole of India.
So he measured rain for.
But that is not the way the crime youcan't call it like that.
Right.
Right.
OK.
So so yeah.
Yeah.
Whatever is given there that is allsubject to the phenomenon of precision.

(01:12:13):
Like I talked about the Polestar, thePolestar, which was there in 3000 B .C.
because of the 26000 year precision cycle.
because the earth rotates slowly for 26,000 years, the polestar vanished for some
time.
Vedas say that.
Vedas question in one of the Vedas, whereis the polestar?

(01:12:36):
Why the polestar is not seen?
It asks that.
That is science.
That is Vedic science.
Now, if you want to adopt what is given inthe so -called Vedic meteorology as it is
propagated by some of the mistakenastrologists in India, that is how we

(01:13:01):
would call them.
They don't know about precision.
They don't know that the equinoctial starhas shifted.
They don't know that even the pole star isdifferent today because they have stopped
observing.
So you have to see that the people whocarried this knowledge, are they bona fide

(01:13:28):
or are they just namesake they havecarried on some tradition for their
livelihood?
Right.
90 % are livelihoods.
Most of its livelihood, yeah.
And you mentioned this with like with thebachongs, right?
In the in the monsoon rainfall articlethat you had written with the traditional

(01:13:53):
calendar in India that's used that thetiming if they were to be mathematically
accurate that the timing is off by atleast you said like three weeks, I believe
something like that.
Correct.
You're right.
You're right.
Right.
You're right.
This is what
If the government of India shouldrecognize it.

(01:14:15):
If they want to integrate the ancientdata, I have no objection.
I'm very much willing to do that.
That was my interest, actually.
I worked in the Center for AtmosphericSciences in Indian Institute of Science
when I wrote this paper.
It's possible.
To some extent, it is possible.
And the ancient data can be reanalyzedwith the modern computers and the facility

(01:14:40):
available and the power.
that the government of India has today andthe interest it has in understanding the
ancient culture and all that.
But it has to be sincere.
It cannot be something hand waving.
It cannot happen like that.

(01:15:01):
It is a hard work.
Yeah, that is a lot of work.
It has to be done.
And so so this is one of my core questionsis, is anyone
actively doing that in India?
Is anyone pursuing this from looking atthe ancient text, the information there in

(01:15:22):
combination with proper mathematics andcomputer modeling and the ability to look
back in time and then to use whateverrainfall data is there or earthquake data
or whatever is there?
I mean, is anyone actively doing this inIndia today?

(01:15:43):
Well, let me say for the earthquake data,we did, myself and one of my students, we
joined and we did that.
That report is available in the NationalDisaster Management Agency.
But you know, for many of the governmentagencies, I mean, all over the world, I'm

(01:16:11):
sure about it.
Disasters are rare.
Disasters have to be managed.
Disasters cannot be prevented.
I mean, that is a kind of a policy issuewhich comes up.
Science is one, the policy is the other.

(01:16:34):
So when they look at from the policypoint, because I worked with them also
closely, with the government peoplesometime, economically it makes sense you
manage it.
In the sense, if there is going to be adrought, they know in India there is going
to be a drought once in three years orfour years.

(01:16:55):
That means the rainfall goes down andfluctuation happens.
If you have sufficient food stock, thequestion is one of distributing.
So if you are so much dependent onrainfall prediction only, they're going to
be troublesome.
So they manage it like this.

(01:17:16):
And I think that is quite sound.
The problems that are going to be thereare how to distribute.
There's the country's very vast, where therainfall is deficient, where the rainfall
may be more.
That if you can know three months inadvance, you can book the railway wagons
and send the fertilizer to that place.

(01:17:36):
People have come and discussed with methese questions also.
That's why I am specifically telling.
For the earthquakes, it is very dicey.
You can't predict anything in advance.
We can only know in a particular placewhat is the kind of shaking that may
happen.
That is what we would call in seismologythe hazard.

(01:17:58):
And the hazard has to be quantified.
And you design the building for this kindof force.
for this kind of acceleration you designthe building.
Now the building people, the question isgoing to be, is it a multi -story
building, a 40 story apartment or anindividual flat?

(01:18:22):
That depends on the size condition.
Earthquakes happen very deep.
The origination of an earthquake default,but the earth vibrates at the top 10
meters or so.
That is what causes the damage.
So there is a whole chain which happens.

(01:18:43):
So at what scale you look at it?
A building is of a scale of only 10meters, 20 meters, 30 meters.
Whereas if fault.
is of 100 kilometers and the groundshaking is for 1000, 2000 kilometers.
So you have to balance that isprobabilistic.

(01:19:06):
In fact, is the probabilistic hazard iswhat is done all over the world.
Even in India, we have done that.
This all comes up very important for largedams, for nuclear reactors, because they
have to be safe for a longer period oftime.
That is where humanity has to be involved,the whole of the world.

(01:19:30):
Whereas at the city level, urban level, itis the real estate people who are
controlling it, because the land cost ishigher than the building cost.
I hope you get the point.
In a city like New York, even inBangalore,

(01:19:53):
The land cost is higher than the buildingcost.
The building falls down, doesn't matter.
The loss is less.
The land has to be there.
That is how they look at it.
In other words, we have become somaterialistic, you know.
Human beings all over the earth, we havebecome so materialistic.

(01:20:14):
We don't look at it from the long timehumanity angle, from the sustainability
angle.
It is only by talked sustainability,climate change, they're being talked
about.
We are not contributing to that.
Let me ask you this because you mentionedsomething earlier of when you're looking

(01:20:39):
at these ancient texts that there arethese larger and these different climatic
shifts and things happening.
And so it's interesting to play in thisspace because...
there's the potential of, well, what doesthat mean for climate change?

(01:21:02):
Is climate change, quote, real in the waythat it's currently being discussed in the
reductionistic science world and by thegovernments?
And I mean, everywhere you look, you gethammered with the idea of climate change.
Yet when you start to go back in time,it's clear that...

(01:21:26):
It's always moving and shifting and Ithink in the monsoon article that you had
written, you talked about there's anancient description of like a 12 year
drought, right?
A very long, prolonged drought.
Now, if any type of drought like thathappens today, immediately in the news and

(01:21:50):
on the articles online, it will say this.
drought happening in India, Africa,Greece, Spain because of climate change or
increase because of climate change.
What do you think about those kind ofdynamics?
Yeah, I'm quite right now clear,particularly from the Vedic textual

(01:22:19):
information.
The long droughts are due to someatmospheric or what you may call celestial
phenomenon.
And what do you mean by that exactly?
Yes, exactly.

(01:22:40):
There is a statement in the Rig Veda thata mountain called Arbuda, it went down.
because Indra pushed it down.
That was one of the important activities,heroic activity of Indra.

(01:23:03):
This is interpreted as a mythology.
Actually the Aravalli mountain range,which runs from the Indian Ocean into
Delhi.
And then after Delhi, it goes into theHimalayas.

(01:23:28):
It sunk!
Before Delhi, if you have seen the map,that is the place where the ancient
Saraswati river dried up.
And the vanishing of Saraswati ismentioned in the text.

(01:23:56):
And that's definitely a climate change.
And the climate change, maybe lack ofrainfall, all this connected, maybe there
is an atmospheric blast.
because it talks about a huge sound whichthen like this and all that.

(01:24:17):
Now, the people who are that.
Atmosphere, just to clarify, means likecoming from the sun or the planets or some
celestial force, or what does that mean toyou?
To me, it means an asteroid impact, acometary, a piece coming and impacting.

(01:24:38):
Either in the ocean,
which created a tsunami because there arereferences to tsunamis in the text that
ocean waves clearing out and all that.
But the timing is not clear.
When all of this they did they occurtogether.
They might not have.
Reason is the people who lived during thatera, there are no more.

(01:25:04):
They would all vanished along with that.
Only the people who heard this.
maybe two or three generations later fromtheir previous other people, not even the
grandparents, but by somebody telling thishappened, they have carried it forward.
But the telltale signs of that can beseen.

(01:25:26):
And this has been investigated by modernsalso.
Now, for example, you would have knownabout Hancock, Graham Hancock.
is propagating a particular theory of iceage and there is going to be a cometary
impact happening and all that.

(01:25:47):
And there is a book called The CosmicWinter by Klube and Napier.
In fact, I corresponded with Napierbecause I published a paper mentioning
about comets in the Rig Veda.
the comments which are mentioned, theDhumaketu in the Rig Veda, which is

(01:26:10):
interpreted in a ritualistic sacrificialsense in the later Sanskrit Hindu text.
I propose it is actually a comment becausethe description matches with the comment.
And in a commentary impact in the Gujarat,ran of Kutch region also erode in my

(01:26:32):
papers.
So some of those people.
Maybe they had similar concept.
So we corresponded also with that.
That seems to be happening.
When it happens, I don't know.
But there is definitely a long cycle, a5000 year cycle or something like that of

(01:26:54):
great atmospheric disturbance.
And that disturbance may be combined withcomets and meteoritic showers.
It is actually meteoritic showers.
Not just one meteor going like that,because there are descriptions of

(01:27:15):
different size stones falling.
What kinds of things are created by them?
There is a five way classification of thebolides, the burning things, the long
serpent line.
kind of stones coming and hitting andRudra.
Rudra is actually a terrible God in theRig Veda who kills cows and people.

(01:27:42):
So people pray to him.
Yeah, obviously I pray to a person so thatI am protected because I can't control
him.
He's all powerful.
That is true.
And that is the starting point of
understanding what is our situation, whatis the meaning of life?

(01:28:06):
What is meant by universe?
So these two go side by side.
That is the analytical approach ofunderstanding what is a star, what is its
life?
And the human beings are created likethat.
It is not neither Western nor Eastern,according to me.

(01:28:28):
Thinking is common to all human beings.
At some time, some groups think in aparticular way.
And like you said, they're going to be upsand downs.
There are spatial fields.
This is generally ignored by people.
People, when we talk of cycle, we alwaysthink of time cycle.

(01:28:54):
But the time is not separate from a wave.
There is always a frequency wave duality.
A high frequency is for shorter periods,especially is a short wavelength.
If I have long wavelength, the period willbe longer and longer.

(01:29:19):
So if an effect has to go for a longerdistance, it has to be a low period
frequency.
I mean, yeah, low frequency period whichcan happen.
So over only a long time, these thingschange.
I hope I have explained.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm curious to know a little more aboutso.

(01:29:43):
How much reading or understanding have youdone of Graham Hancock's theories and what
are your general thoughts on some of thosewith your background and understanding
this from the Indian perspective of yourstudies?
No, Hancock I have not critically studied.

(01:30:08):
He also talks of some history.
He produced some videos and other thingsabout Krishna and so many things.
Some of them, they may not bescientifically very accurate.
I want to be as accurate or as specific aspossible to the extent.

(01:30:29):
But I think it's reasonable what he says.
Particularly I know about the astronomicaltheory of Napier and Klube who are in the
UK, who are from UK.
They have produced a mathematical modelalso for the meteoritic showers occurring.

(01:30:50):
Why there should be a meteoritic showersix months apart?
Now, these six months apart wereinteresting to me from my Mahabharata
angle.
Now Mahabharata, I'm sure you know aboutit.
Now it is a Vedic connection withMahabharata.

(01:31:11):
And there is a deity, God, called Kumara.
Kumara is a very common name, you knowabout it.
Also called Karthikeya, also called Guha,so many.
Murugan in Tamil Nadu.

(01:31:31):
He is actually the son of Krittika.
Krittika are the Pleiades.
Pleiades is a constellation and he wasborn into Krittika.
He is called Kartikeya because of that.
He was born into Shiva.
Shiva is the Rudra.

(01:31:52):
Rudra is the star of Ardra nakshatra.
Ardhra is next to Gemini, Beta Gemini, isa red star.
So from there, there are meteoriticshowers which are possible.
Now this Krithika, Kartikeya has abrother.

(01:32:14):
He's called Vishaka.
Vishaka is Alpha Libra.
Alpha Libra is 180 degrees away fromPleiades, from Alpha Tauri.
I'll see you on.
The name is Alcyon star, 180 degreesseven.
So in India, there is a religious functioneven to this day.

(01:32:37):
They would observe one in June, one inDecember, six months apart as the birth of
Karthikeya.
Now, if you take it in a religious sense,it's okay.
I have nothing wrong in it.
I also do that because the whole earth isonly, the whole universe has to have only

(01:33:01):
a single principle.
It has to be called Brahman or you call itVishnu or you call it by any name, I don't
care.
So the trees, the human beings, everythingshould be pervaded by that.
That is the concept, the Vedic concept.
So if they consider,
Yes, star or a meteor and the worship.

(01:33:23):
I have no objection on that, but it isalso mathematically you can show that six
months apart.
If I release a particle.
Which was released by Napier has workedout this.
From the cloud.

(01:33:44):
Somewhere in 5000 BC, after about 1500years.
you can expect concentration of two groupsof particles six months apart to be
observed by human beings.
Because it has to cut the ecliptic at twopoints, 180 degrees of it.

(01:34:07):
That is there in the text that can beshown roughly by mathematics also.
I'm happy with it.
because it is the knowledge which humanbeings should be happy about.
Right.

(01:34:27):
Yeah.
That kind of Vedic work, Vedic scienceshould be seen carefully.
That may be telling something not just tothe Indian government, but to everyone.

(01:34:48):
And so.
Who do you talk to about these things?
Like, do you have friends that areresearchers as well or academics that are
interested in these similar topics as you?
Few of them, two or three of them.

(01:35:09):
Not many, not many.
And you know, as I said, the Indianresearch establishment.
They're more interested in getting honors,international honors, getting positions.

(01:35:30):
I don't blame them.
All over the world it is like that.
There are a few small groups here andthere.
Yeah, there are people.
I don't talk to them.
From Hancock's group, there is one...
Sharma, Vibhuti Sharma recently wrote abook called the Yuga Shift.

(01:35:55):
The Yuga Shift and Vibhuti Dev Mishra orsome such name.
He's from Calcutta in India one day.
And they're working towards whether anapocalypse is possible.
In next year, 2025.

(01:36:17):
The reason is because in all of the Indiantexts, this kind of oscillation cycle is
the truth.
If you ask for a commonality, that is thething.
Whether it's a thousand years, twothousand years, they won't answer that
exactly.
The exact answer, if you want, it is notgoing to be analytical.

(01:36:40):
It has to be intuitive.
There are people who may give intuitiveanswers.
That is where the dichotomy comes.
The analytical type of knowledge for humangoodness, intuitive type of knowledge for
human being, both are needed.
The interesting thing for me, the Vediccivilization recognized both, whereas the

(01:37:06):
modern civilization as it is today, themajority, they ignore the intuitive.
But the intuitive approach can be verydeceiving.
People can deceive you very easily.
I hope you understand because there arecharlatans.

(01:37:26):
Just for the sake of money, they will saysomething.
We should not do that.
But there are people.
This Bibhuti Mishra talks of a yogi byname Yukteshwar Giri.
You would have heard of ParamahamsaYogananda, who has written the

(01:37:48):
autobiography for Yogi, you know.
His teacher to teacher was a great yogi inHaridwarar somewhere.
He made some predictions.
So this Bibhuti Mishra refers to them andall that.
They had no yaks to grind those people.
They made some statement, but they werewritten by...

(01:38:12):
their students or the disciples.
They themselves did not write anything.
How does transmitted becomes important?
Whether that was transmitted correctlybecause it is oral or whether there have
been changes that has to be understood.

(01:38:33):
So the recent intuitive statements of thiskind had to be carefully analyzed.
Whereas for the most ancient period, why Iam doing that, it was warily transmitted,
no doubt.
But for oral transmission, they had amathematically accurate method developed.

(01:38:58):
How I had to keep a text same or 2000years or 4000 years.
Even to this day, Rig Veda is uttered allover India in the same way.
Oral.
And UN recognized this as an intangible
cultural heritage of humanity.

(01:39:21):
Preserving a text for 5 ,000 years,orally.
So if I have a doubt in my printed texttoday, I can go to my school somewhere
nearby.
There are not many such people, very few.
I can go and ask them, you please repeatthis.
I will see how he repeats that and say,okay, this letter may be this or it may be

(01:39:45):
something else.
That is possible.
So these people, they're not theintuitives.
They're only the transmitters, like a taperecorder.
They don't understand.
They don't know.
Some of them they know, unless they havespent time in understanding them, but they

(01:40:08):
know how to preserve it.
Which is just, which is interestingbecause that's the the language is
fulfilling itself in its own funny way,right?
Where, hey, actually all these peopledon't need to understand it, but it's
still being transmitted, which is atestament to the.

(01:40:29):
the nature of that language and how thatlanguage is operating.
It's very interesting.
So you mentioned a lot of, you know,charlatans and they're all over the world,
but it definitely seems that maybe one ofthe hottest places to find the charlatan
is in the Indian astrology charts.

(01:40:53):
I mean, that...
I'll finish with this question because wecould go on for many hours.
And so I want to let you go enjoy yourSunday morning and I want to go to sleep.

(01:41:14):
But is there any Pachang, is there anycalendar in India that you that you will
actually read yourself that you believe isaccurate to the best?
of your mathematical knowledge is hasanyone produced a yearly calendar based on

(01:41:35):
the mathematics that you know to becorrect?
There is one calendar that is produced.
It's not very popular.
See the calendars are called panchanga.
They're used for religious purposesmostly, not for other purposes.

(01:41:58):
There are a few.
They correct for the precision and thosethings.
Okay.
It's a different, difficult, differentsubject.
Okay.

(01:42:20):
No worries.
Okay.
So quickly tell us that way in the future,maybe we can have a, another call, but
tell us what are, what are you currentlyworking on right now in this, in these,
these months?
Yeah.
I'm, I wish I could have shown you.
I'm working on a manuscript, which was,manuscript is a wordly transmitted.

(01:42:47):
It is a manuscript on astronomy, whichtalks of some cosmography and also about
some ancient calendar.
How the year started.
See today we, even in India, the year isstarting from spring equinox.

(01:43:08):
somewhere near the spring equinox.
Don't worry about the other calendars, thepanchangas, roughly like that.
But in the more ancient time, it startedeither with the summer solstice or with
the winter solstice.
It's very interesting as an observationalastronomy because at the solstice, sun

(01:43:36):
rises at the same point.
It seems as though it's stationary.
for about 10 to 12 days.
That is why it is called a solstice.
Solstice means stand still.
So somewhere the summer solstice nowadays,maybe June 21st or something like that,

(01:44:04):
winter solstice, December 21st like that.
They found out the nakshatra with the sunwas rising.
So with reference to that nakshatra, thatis the early morning nakshatra, they said
sun is in this nakshatra.

(01:44:26):
For example, in the Vedic period, in thesecond millennium BC, or even before that,
Somersault's rise was in the Leo, nearstar Regulus.
There are actually five stars in thatconstellation.

(01:44:47):
It is not the modern Leo.
I'm working on it.
Now, after some 500 years,
This changed.
They shifted the year beginning to thewinter solstice.
So then the winter solstice, it was risingin a star, what you would call roughly

(01:45:11):
Aquarius.
Not exactly the constellation Aquarius,but very near.
This continued for nearly 1000 years.
Later around 500 BC or so, they shifted tothe Econoc TLCs.
that the celestial equator and theecliptic intersect and all that.

(01:45:36):
Is that because of Greek or Europeaninfluence in some way?
I doubt very much.
I don't think so.
There might have been some Greek.
Greek influence is there only after 200AD.
In the more ancient text, I cannot see anyGreek.

(01:45:59):
For example, in the text that I'm editing,there is no Greek in phrase, but they did
not know Econax specifically,approximately they knew.
Not as the section of the ecliptic andthis.
These are the interesting.
They say it is a day when the morning andthe night are of equal duration.

(01:46:24):
So it was tropical.
See the Greek concept, the Ptolemies, bythat time, even the Siddhantic astronomy
is there.
They knew the celestial equator and theecliptic intersecting and all that.
The more ancient thing, it is not likethat.
They talk in terms of seasons, mostlyseasons.

(01:46:48):
So season means light, whether the day islonger, day is equal to night, the mantras
are also like that.
The day and night are equal.
So you tell this mantra for the ritual.
So the Vedic rituals were essentially timetracking devices.

(01:47:12):
They did not specifically say that.
Let me say that.
But they actually did that.
They did only that, nothing else.
If you see the mantras, it is all sun isthere.
is going up this that all kinds of systemsand you know the alters which were there
they were either circle they would say sunis circular so have this a circle then you

(01:47:39):
have square see earth is square so youhave it as square or you know the sky is
circle you have it as a circle but the twoareas have to be equal.
The area has to be equal.
So the square has to be equal to thecircle.

(01:48:02):
While you do the sacrifice.
So they bring the mathematical,ascertaining the mathematical, circling
the square, irrational numbers, muchbefore Greek and Pythagoras.
Pythagorean triplet, most importanttriplet, 15, 8 and 17.

(01:48:26):
Usual thing is 3, 4, 5.
The Vedic most important triplet is 8square plus 15 square is going to be 289
square root of that is 17 becausePrajapati is 17.

(01:48:47):
You get the feeling.
15 is paksha.
15 is moon.
Yet is also half moon.
Yet is half moon.
You see the yight day, if you see theface, it is a semicircle moon.

(01:49:10):
So the semicircle is generally above you.
You see the argument and the distance fromhere to here is 15.
If you add the two east to west.
And if you want to know the distance fromthe semicircle, the moon on the eighth

(01:49:34):
day, the ashtami to the horizon, it is aright angle triangle, 15 square plus eight
square square root.
The hypotenuse is 17.
17 is the number for Prajapati.
So you pray to Prajapati as 17.

(01:49:58):
I have written about this.
Okay, very cool.
This kind of mathematics is very specialto India.
This is not good.
Later it has come.
I don't deny that.
Yeah, I was curious about that partbecause the most people, you know, don't

(01:50:20):
realize that Vedic astrology and Westernastrology or Greek Egyptian astrology is
they're different, right?
The Indian astrology is actually usingwhere the stars and planets are today.

(01:50:41):
Whereas because of
the way that the system works in Greek orBabylonian Egyptian astrology that the
timing is different.
And so I'm just curious about if there waswhen you see the switch in the Indian
text, if there was any influence or ifthat switch is similar at all.

(01:51:05):
It is there.
It is there after about 380.
It is there.
But in the Vedic period, in the moreancient period, in fact, that is what I am
right now editing, which contains someastronomy and then says that these were

(01:51:25):
all created to help human beings to carryout their action.
That action, they give a signal.
That signal is given by the combination ofmoon with the nakshatras.
First.

(01:51:46):
Really quickly, can you just reallyquickly describe the nakshatras to the
audience for people to understand whatthose are?
Just very, very quickly.
these nakshatras in the most ancientperiod, they were groups of stars.

(01:52:07):
Counted as 27.
Probably long before there were brightstars identified individually.
which those people they understood detailsare not available.

(01:52:28):
But by about thousand eight hundred B .C.
this concept of nakshatra formalized,formalized means son passes through twenty
seven nakshatras in a year.
And in each nakshatra, he spends thirteenand a half days.

(01:52:48):
So 365 divided by 27 roughly comes tothat.
So this 13 and a half days is sunrise.
How many days he rises?
So as you observe before sunrise, thenakshatra you see early morning is sun's
nakshatra.
That is how it started.

(01:53:09):
But as I said about the solstice, near thesolstice, sun doesn't change his azimuth.
He rises in the same nakshatra.
So that nakshatra is a group because hisstars will change.
Each day a new star will come to thatpoint.

(01:53:30):
That was actually Leo originally and alsoAquarius.
They are a group of stars, about four.
So the nakshatras, they converted into agroup of stars.
Totally 86 stars make
27 nakshatra.
There is a misunderstanding even amongHindus and Indians on this.

(01:53:55):
They think there are only 27 stars.
It's not.
They're made up of 86 stars, but 27 equalparts in the sky through which sun was
moving.
It is solar.
Through which, of course, moon also moves.
Even the later planets also move.
So it's an evolution of

(01:54:17):
observational astronomy.
It is not in one day they got everything.
No, that is not true.
Right.
And so just to give the audience a littlemore understanding.
So in in kind of, you know, Vedicastrology or even in some of the
astronomical meteorology stuff, thenakshatras are almost going to give kind

(01:54:40):
of color to what's going on in thecelestial.
bodies at that time, right?
So it's not only, hey, right now Marsenergy is present and that's going to be
felt, but you know, the sun is also inthis nakshatra, which means there's this

(01:55:00):
combination of energies and it's a littlebit more complex in how it manifests.
Exactly, exactly.
Nakshatras were the coordinates.
They are the coordinates, the mostimportant thing that goes into a very
deeper theory of creation.

(01:55:23):
That is the Agnishoma principle.
Agnishoma is roughly plus minus positivenegative male female.
The book that I'm editing clearly saysSoma is male.
All the next shots are female.

(01:55:48):
So it is the combination of these twowhich produces effects on earth.
And they can get a signal if theyunderstand that what should be done.
Now, the basic question again is veryserious.
It is the time when they have to dosomething or when something happens, it is

(01:56:12):
in time.
And Soma is continuous.
Time is continuous.
Whereas the 27 nakshatras are discreteblocks.
Say they wanted to measure time, thecontinuous time with this.
And the whole of the philosophy which isconnected with this is a kind of a wave.

(01:56:36):
What they say is...
Time moves like a river, continuous.
There is no break.
It is irreversible.
It is in the Vedas.
I'm quoting from the way down.
It cannot go back also.
But there are waves in water.

(01:56:57):
There are waves in time also.
That wave is caused is by the combination,the combination of Soma with the
Nakshatra.
and with a precursor of the devata.
That devata was an anomalous activitywhich happened in the most ancient time

(01:57:22):
which is mentioned in the Rig Veda.
They are the gods or the devata.
There is a lot of misunderstanding onthis.
For example, it gives an example.
In Krittika, that is in Pleiades, it isAgni Devata.
Agni is fire.

(01:57:43):
So when moon, Soma is moon, generallytaken as moon, when moon is in Krittika
nakshatra, that nakshatra on that day, youdo all work which is connected with fire.
That means it may be goldsmith work or itmay be firewood.

(01:58:03):
You want to bring firewood.
or you want to quarrel with somebody veryforcefully.
These are the kind of things which arementioned.
But that is later.
That is not in the Vedas.
What action should be done that the laterpeople have developed depending on the
quality, which is there.
And this wave is not just due tonakshatra.

(01:58:24):
The planets also come there.
The planets are anomalous planets havetheir own property.
That is again with time.
So once they understood.
the revolution of the planets, they wantedto know with the nakshatra, the natal
nakshatra, that is the birth nakshatra.

(01:58:46):
I am born under a particular nakshatra.
That is not the solar, that is the lunar,where moon was positioned.
So if the star comes there to thatnakshatra, and the planet also comes
there, something may happen to thisfellow.
That is the origin of horoscopicastrology.

(01:59:08):
But the horoscope today practice isdifferent.
But in India, they still talk of lunar.
They have taken a lot of things fromWestern concept, the Rashi, solar, the 12
and all that.
But in a more ancient period, individualprediction was not the important thing.

(01:59:30):
It was the community prediction.
For the community, what happened?
And for the weather and the big eventshappening, right, my understanding even
Babylonian astrology, originally it hasnothing to do with the individual human
being or personality, any of these things.

(01:59:52):
It's mostly on floods and catastrophic andother tracking of celestial events and in
combination with the earth is myunderstanding so far.
But you see, you have to put a timelinefor this.
Initially, I agree with you.
It is in the book that I am reading alsothat is roughly about 1800 BC, let me say.

(02:00:21):
It is there.
It is the community thing which isimportant of earthquakes, of rainfall, of
explosions and so many things.
But within about 100 years, there aresentences.
which happens to the particular personalso.
They are called the Nadi Nakshatra.
That means, you know, people keep onthinking if something can happen to a

(02:00:46):
group of people, can I say somethinghappens to an individual?
It is like dividing the time into discreteparts, dividing the community, the society
also into individuals.
So I would say that.
Over, say, the last 10 ,000 years, it isnot just the intellectual world, whole

(02:01:12):
humanity.
has gone from an intuitive approach isentering into a very clearly discretized
theoretical and, you know, lookingeverything from a small, it is a

(02:01:34):
nitpicking approach.
That is what is happening.
And this may also change because the textwould also say there are cycles in this
type.
So all these things would also change.
So it is a self -similar structure.
That is what I would like to bring up.

(02:01:55):
This is all.
stacked, it is a labyrinthine kind of,what shall I say, history that I am
understanding in the Vedic text.
It is self -similar, but that self-similarity when you explain, you want to

(02:02:16):
give a structure.
So if I see a forest, everything looksbeautiful to me.
But if you see a tree, something differentcomes out.
It tries to give both.
So we get bogged down and sometimes lostin this kind of a maze.

(02:02:41):
And some of the questions you are risingabout astrology, time and all this.
It is essentially that the most ancientthing looks very beautiful.
There are waves.
Can't I have a wave in time?
Whether the salt is differenttheoretically.
So how do I define maybe something elsecomes there some effect a meteoritic

(02:03:04):
shower in a season.
Yeah, it right.
Then you know, there is more rainfall.
That is a wave in time.
That is the concept which is there.
I am not putting it that way.
So even yearly there are small waves.

(02:03:25):
Long years there are waves.
Still longer there are going to be waves.
Like there is a six season in India.
Europe there are only four.
We are having six.
You can have more.
That is the concept.
Now how do you make a prediction to anindividual?

(02:03:45):
You have to structure that further becausethe time
period of a human being is only 100 years.
Whereas the time period of his society isgoing to be longer.
So they talk of sacrifices, satra, that isthe rituals which go for 100 years, which

(02:04:05):
are for 1000 years.
And the commentators write the same personcould not have done for 1000 years.
So his family people might have carried itout, they say.
What they meant, we don't know.
But such kind of concepts are there, whichmatch with some of the questions you

(02:04:29):
raised of Hancock and others, whether anew ice age may come, whether there can be
an apocalypse, or what may happen tohumanity.
whether human beings can go to Mars,whether can we put a colony in moon?
These questions come up.

(02:04:52):
Wow.
Okay.
Well, it's a self similar universe is whatthe Vedas are proposing.
That's what I would say.
Well, I also you, you definitely expandedsome, you gave me some very, I have
enough,

(02:05:13):
enough things to go for at least a coupleof months, you know, but it's interesting
because in I'm developing a theory thatwhen I'm looking at many indigenous
traditions and ancient traditions, you seethe deep underlying theme that comes out

(02:05:37):
is space and time and knowing where youare in space and time.
And part of this theory that I'm coming upwith is that actually a lot of the, I
mean, it's holistic, right?
I mean, obviously it's never one thing,you know, if we look at things from a

(02:06:00):
holistic perspective, but I have a verydeep intuitive feeling that a lot of the
cognitive diseases,
that are happening with Alzheimer's anddementia and these types of things are
because people are no longer involved withknowing really where they are in space and

(02:06:23):
time and because of the internet and howthe mind is projected into there and how
no one is, you know, people are not doingritual at solstices and equinoxes and
they're not
paying attention the way that this brainand body evolved originally and that these

(02:06:46):
cognitive diseases are something to dowith a very big issue with space and time.
So it's very interesting how you broughtup even mantra is keeping time, right?
It's keeping time.
Very interesting.
I have written a paper on how time wasmeasured in the

(02:07:07):
ancient time in the Vedic time.
Have you seen that paper?
I think I saw the title of that one, butsome of those things there, they're too,
they're too difficult for me tounderstand.
I'm not smart enough to understand.
You should come to Bangalore sometime.
We can sit and talk about it.

(02:07:27):
Yes, I would love that.
I can see that in the future.
I would.
I might come in the next couple of years,I will come to probably do some Ayurvedic
study in Kerala.
So I'll come to Bangalore as well.
okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
But yes.
Well, thank you so much, Professor Anger.

(02:07:49):
It honestly, it's been such a pleasure tospeak to you.
And hopefully we can speak again in, youknow, maybe six months or so when you've
gotten more work on this book and we cantalk more about that as well.
Sure, thank you so much.
Send me a copy of the recording.
Thank you.