Roots to Rise: Indian Knowledge Traditions for a Changing World

Twenty-one scholars ask a simple question about India's knowledge traditions: what did we actually know, and how do we know it?Roots to Rise brings together twenty-one essays by faculty across the sciences, social sciences and humanities - on Sanskrit grammar and computing, Ayurvedic pharmacology, Indian mathematics and astronomy, temple acoustics, manuscript preservation, and the ethics of trade.

Inside:

- How Vedic reciters built error-checking into human memory

- Why a fifteen-day milk strike produced Amul

- What Panini's grammar has to do with programming languages

- Where zero and the sine function came from The pharmacology of the moringa pod sold in every Indian market

- Why a drum that should not hold a pitch nevertheless sings

These chapters take Indian knowledge traditions seriously enough to examine them closely. Every claim is checked against primary sources; several correct errors that circulate widely. The result is a book that leaves you knowing more, and knowing how you know it.With a Foreword by Prof. Suresh Kumar Agrawal, Vice-Chancellor, Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati University, Ajmer.For students, teachers, general readers and libraries.