What Bharat gave the world

1. Mineralised cotton fibres preserved inside a copper bead from a Mehrgarh grave of the 6th millennium BCE are the earliest cotton known in the Old World (Moulherat et al., 2002).
2. At Mohenjo-daro, cotton cloth was found preserved against a silver vessel, from around 2500 BCE.
3. Herodotus (c. 440 BCE) wrote that in India wild trees bear a wool finer than a sheep’s, and the Indians make clothes of it.

C. Moulherat et al., “First Evidence of Cotton at Neolithic Mehrgarh, Pakistan”, Journal of Archaeological Science 29 (2002) · J. H. Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (1931) · Herodotus, Histories 3.106

1. The common unit of 16 weighs about 13.7 g, found again and again in excavated sets.
2. An ivory scale from Lothal carries fine divisions about 1.7 mm apart.

J. H. Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (1931) · S. R. Rao, Lothal and the Indus Civilization (1973) · J. M. Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (1998)

1. Peppercorns from India were placed in the nostrils of the mummy of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who died in 1213 BCE.
2. The Muziris papyrus (2nd century CE, Vienna) records a loan on a ship’s cargo from Muziris, and Pliny complains of Rome’s gold draining to India.

A. J. Plu, “Bois et graines”, in La momie de Ramsès II (Paris, 1985) · Muziris papyrus, Papyrus Vindobonensis G 40822 · Pliny the Elder, Natural History 6.101 and 12.14

1. The Ashtadhyayi has some 3,959 sutras in eight chapters, explained by Katyayana’s Varttikas and Patanjali’s Mahabhashya.
2. Leonard Bloomfield called it “one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence” (Language, 1933).

Panini, Ashtadhyayi · Leonard Bloomfield, Language (1933) · P. Z. Ingerman, “Panini–Backus Form Suggested”, Communications of the ACM 10 (1967)

1. Crucible fragments with steel residues have been excavated at Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu.
2. George Pearson reported on wootz to the Royal Society in 1795; the name comes from the Kannada ukku.
3. In 2006 carbon nanotubes were found in a 17th-century sabre of this steel (Nature 444).

George Pearson, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1795) · Reibold et al., “Carbon nanotubes in an ancient Damascus sabre”, Nature 444 (2006) · Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan, India’s Legendary Wootz Steel (2004)

1. Ashoka’s rock and pillar edicts, from Girnar to Sarnath, are the earliest long texts in Brahmi; James Prinsep deciphered them in 1837.
2. The Vo Canh inscription in Vietnam and the Kedukan Bukit inscription in Sumatra (682 CE) are written in scripts descended from Brahmi.

Edicts of Ashoka (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, Vol. I) · James Prinsep, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1837) · Richard Salomon, Indian Epigraphy (1998)

1. Yoga Sutra 1.2 defines yoga; 2.29 lists the eight limbs.
2. Bhagavad Gita, chapter 6, teaches the seat, the posture and the steadying of the mind.
3. UN General Assembly resolution 69/131 of 11 December 2014, co-sponsored by 177 countries, declared 21 June the International Day of Yoga.

Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 1.2, 2.29 · Bhagavad Gita, chapter 6 · UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/69/131 (2014) · UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, decision 11.COM (2016)

1. Chhandahshastra, chapter 8, sets out prastara (listing), nashta and uddishta (pattern to number and number to pattern) and sankhya (counting).
2. Halayudha’s Mritasanjivani commentary describes the meru-prastara, the triangle Europe later named after Blaise Pascal (1654).

Pingala, Chhandahshastra, chapter 8 · Halayudha, Mritasanjivani commentary (10th century) · Kim Plofker, Mathematics in India (Princeton, 2009)

1. Baudhayana Shulbasutra 1.48 states the rule for any rectangle.
2. The same text gives the diagonal of a square as 1 + 1/3 + 1/(3·4) − 1/(3·4·34) of its side, which is 1.4142156, close to the square root of two.

Baudhayana Shulbasutra 1.48 · S. N. Sen and A. K. Bag, The Sulbasutras (INSA, 1983) · Plimpton 322 tablet, Columbia University

1. The Bower manuscript (c. 6th century), found in Kucha on the Silk Road, holds the Navanitaka, drawing on the Charaka and Sushruta schools.
2. A palm-leaf Sushruta Samhita copied in Nepal in 878 CE survives in the Kaiser Library, Kathmandu.
3. Ibn al-Nadim’s Fihrist (987) lists Arabic translations of Charaka and Sushruta made in Abbasid Baghdad.

Charaka Samhita · Sushruta Samhita · A. F. R. Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript (ASI, 1893–1912) · Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-Fihrist (987)

1. Sushruta Samhita, Uttaratantra 17, gives the position of the patient, the point of entry and the after-care.
2. Couching was also practised in the Greek and Roman world (Celsus, 1st century CE), so Bharat shares this one.

Sushruta Samhita, Uttaratantra 17 · Celsus, De Medicina, Book VII

1. Yoga Sutra 3.2: the unbroken flow of awareness toward one object is dhyana.
2. Chinese chan is a short form of channa, the Chinese rendering of dhyana; Japanese zen is its Japanese reading.

Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 3.2 · Bhagavad Gita, chapter 6 · Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. 1 (1988)

1. The Natya Shastra’s fourth chapter defines 108 karanas, units of dance movement.
2. The gopurams of the Nataraja temple at Chidambaram carry the 108 karanas in stone, with the verses labelled.
3. UNESCO entered the Natya Shastra in its Memory of the World Register in April 2025.

Bharata Muni, Natya Shastra, chapter 4 · Kapila Vatsyayan, Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts (1968) · UNESCO Memory of the World Register (2025)

1. The Greek name indikon and Latin indicum mean simply “the Indian (dye)”; Pliny’s Natural History (1st century CE) describes indicum brought from India.
2. The Sanskrit nili gave the dye its name across Asia, through Arabic an-nil to the Portuguese anil.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 35 · Jenny Balfour-Paul, Indigo (British Museum Press, 1998) · Dinabandhu Mitra, Nil Darpan (1860)

1. Aryabhatiya, Ganitapada 2: from place to place, each is ten times the one before (sthanat sthanam dashagunam).
2. In 662 CE the Syrian bishop Severus Sebokht praised the Hindus’ way of reckoning “by means of nine signs”.
3. The Chaturbhuj temple inscription at Gwalior (876 CE) writes 270 and 50 in place value with a round zero.

Aryabhatiya, Ganitapada 2 · Severus Sebokht, letter of 662 CE (quoted in F. Nau, Journal Asiatique, 1910) · Fibonacci, Liber Abaci (1202)

1. The Aryabhatiya gives 24 sine differences for a quarter circle, at steps of 3¾ degrees.
2. Varahamihira’s Panchasiddhantika (6th century) and the Surya Siddhanta use the same jya tables for planetary positions.

Aryabhatiya, Gitikapada 12 · Varahamihira, Panchasiddhantika · K. S. Shukla and K. V. Sarma, Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata (INSA, 1976)

1. The Middle Persian Chatrang-namag tells how a king of Hind sent the game to Khosrow I (r. 531–579) as a challenge.
2. Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (1010) repeats that chess came from Hind.
3. Banabhatta’s Harshacharita (7th century) puns on chaturanga, the game, in describing Harsha’s peaceful reign.

Chatrang-namag (Middle Persian) · Ferdowsi, Shahnameh (1010) · Banabhatta, Harshacharita · H. J. R. Murray, A History of Chess (1913)

1. The physician Burzoy translated it into Middle Persian for Khosrow I around 570 CE.
2. Ibn al-Muqaffa’s Arabic Kalila wa Dimna (c. 750) is named for the two jackals Karataka and Damanaka.
3. La Fontaine, in the preface to his second collection of fables (1678), names “Pilpay, the Indian sage” as a source.

Panchatantra (ed. Franklin Edgerton, The Panchatantra Reconstructed, 1924) · Ibn al-Muqaffa, Kalila wa Dimna (c. 750) · Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, second collection (1678), preface

1. Brahmasphutasiddhanta, chapter 18: a number minus itself is zero; zero minus zero is zero; any number times zero is zero.
2. The Bakhshali manuscript writes zero as a dot in empty places.
3. The Gwalior inscription of 876 CE carves it as a small circle in stone.

Brahmasphutasiddhanta of Brahmagupta, chapter 18 (628 CE) · Gwalior inscription of the time of Bhojadeva (Epigraphia Indica Vol. I) · Bodleian Library, MS. Sansk. d. 14 (Bakhshali manuscript)

1. Brahmasphutasiddhanta 18: the product of two debts is wealth; the product of wealth and debt is debt.
2. The same chapter gives a rule for solving the quadratic equation.
3. Bhaskara II’s Bijaganita (1150) carries the method on, with unknowns called yavat-tavat, kalaka and nilaka.

Brahmasphutasiddhanta, chapter 18 (Kuttakadhyaya) · Bhaskara II, Bijaganita (1150) · H. T. Colebrooke, Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sanscrit of Brahmegupta and Bháscara (1817)

1. Kautilya’s Arthashastra lists the grades of cane sugar kept in the royal storehouse, among them guda, khanda and sharkara.
2. Chinese records report that in 647 Emperor Taizong of Tang sent envoys to India to learn how sugar was boiled.

Kautilya, Arthashastra 2.15 · Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), account of the Western Regions · Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (1985)

1. Virahanka’s Vrittajatisamuccaya gives the rule for counting matra-vritta patterns.
2. The Jain acharya Hemachandra’s Chhandonushasana (c. 1150) states it again, half a century before Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci (1202).

Virahanka, Vrittajatisamuccaya · Hemachandra, Chhandonushasana (c. 1150) · Parmanand Singh, “The so-called Fibonacci numbers in ancient and medieval India”, Historia Mathematica 12 (1985)

1. Aryabhatiya, Golapada 9: as a man in a moving boat sees the bank go backwards, so the fixed stars seem to move west.
2. Al-Biruni’s Kitab al-Hind (c. 1030) discusses Aryabhata and Brahmagupta by name.

Aryabhatiya, Golapada 9 · Al-Biruni, Kitab al-Hind (c. 1030) · David Pingree, “The Fragments of the Works of al-Fazari”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29 (1970)

1. Matanga’s Brihaddeshi is the first text to define raga; Sharngadeva’s Sangita Ratnakara (13th century) became the standard work.
2. The 7th-century music inscription at Kudumiyanmalai in Tamil Nadu sets out musical notation in stone.

Matanga, Brihaddeshi · Sharngadeva, Sangita Ratnakara (13th century) · NASA, Voyager Golden Record contents (1977)

1. The balustrades of the Shiva temple at Prambanan (9th century) carry the Ramayana in relief panels.
2. The Old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana, the Khmer Reamker, the Thai Ramakien, the Lao Phra Lak Phra Lam and the Malay Hikayat Seri Rama all retell it.
3. The Thai capital Ayutthaya, founded in 1351, was named after Ayodhya.

Valmiki Ramayana · Kakawin Ramayana (Old Javanese) · Ramakien of King Rama I (1797) · Prambanan temple compound, UNESCO World Heritage nomination (1991)

1. Bhaskara II’s Bijaganita solves 61x² + 1 = y², whose smallest answer is x = 22,61,53,980 and y = 1,76,63,19,049.
2. An earlier form of the cyclic method is credited to Jayadeva and quoted by Udayadivakara in 1073.

Bhaskara II, Bijaganita (1150) · Brahmasphutasiddhanta, chapter 18 · K. S. Shukla, “Acarya Jayadeva, the mathematician”, Ganita 5 (1954)

1. Excavations at Zawar by Paul Craddock and Indian colleagues found banks of furnaces, each holding 36 retorts, and heaps of spent retorts.
2. Radiocarbon dates from timbers in the old Zawar mine galleries go back about two thousand years.

P. T. Craddock (ed.), 2000 Years of Zinc and Brass (British Museum Occasional Paper 50, 1990) · P. T. Craddock, L. K. Gurjar and K. T. M. Hegde, “Zinc production in medieval India”, World Archaeology 15 (1983)

1. Pi/4 = 1 − 1/3 + 1/5 − 1/7 + …, with correction terms for the tail, set out in Nilakantha’s Tantrasangraha (1500).
2. Jyeshthadeva’s Yuktibhasha (c. 1530), in Malayalam, gives the reasoning step by step.

Nilakantha Somayaji, Tantrasangraha (1500) · Jyeshthadeva, Yuktibhasha (c. 1530); K. V. Sarma (ed., tr.), Ganita-Yukti-Bhasa (2008) · C. M. Whish, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 3 (1834)

1. The Ain-i-Akbari (1590s) records Akbar’s interest in Kashmir shawls and the varieties made for his court.
2. Kashmiri tradition credits Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin (15th century) with bringing in master weavers, so the craft grew from Kashmiri skill joined with Central Asian technique.

Abul Fazl, Ain-i-Akbari, Book I · Frank Ames, The Kashmir Shawl and its Indo-French Influence (1986) · Paisley Museum shawl collection

1. Kautilya’s Arthashastra lists vajra (diamond) among the gems of the royal treasury and describes how to judge it.
2. The French jeweller Tavernier visited the Kollur mines in the 1640s–60s and sold Louis XIV the blue stone later cut into the Hope diamond.
3. Apart from small finds in Borneo, Bharat was the world’s only known source until diamonds were found in Brazil around 1725.

Kautilya, Arthashastra 2.11 · Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages (1676) · Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Hope Diamond records

1. Dara Shikoh, with the help of pandits of Varanasi, had fifty Upanishads translated into Persian in 1657 as the Sirr-i-Akbar, “the greatest secret”.
2. Anquetil-Duperron turned the Persian into Latin as the Oupnek’hat (1801–02); Schopenhauer wrote of it in 1851: “It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.”

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2; Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 · Dara Shikoh, Sirr-i-Akbar (1657) · A. H. Anquetil-Duperron, Oupnek’hat (1801–02) · Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

1. Block-printed Gujarati cottons have been excavated at Fustat (old Cairo) in Egypt; many are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
2. Britain’s Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721 banned the import and then the wearing of printed Indian cottons, to protect English wool and silk.

Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum (1997) · Calico Act 1700 (11 & 12 Will. III c. 10); Calico Act 1721 (7 Geo. I c. 7) · John Irwin and Katharine Brett, Origins of Chintz (V&A, 1970)

1. J. Z. Holwell, An Account of the Manner of Inoculating for the Small Pox in the East Indies, read to the College of Physicians in London and printed in 1767.
2. Holwell describes the tikadars’ round of the villages before the smallpox season and their strict rules for after-care.

J. Z. Holwell, An Account of the Manner of Inoculating for the Small Pox in the East Indies (London, 1767) · Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971)

1. Charles Wilkins published the first English translation in London in 1785, with a preface by Warren Hastings.
2. Thoreau wrote in Walden (1854): “In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta.”
3. J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled, in a 1965 television interview, that Gita 11.32 came to his mind at the first atomic test on 16 July 1945; Krishna there declares himself Kala, Time, the destroyer of worlds.

Bhagavad Gita 2.47, 11.32 (Gita Press) · Charles Wilkins, The Bhagvat-Geeta (London, 1785) · H. D. Thoreau, Walden (1854) · UNESCO Memory of the World Register (2025)

1. Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana 16, gives the method step by step.
2. The Gentleman’s Magazine of October 1794 printed an account, with an engraving, of the forehead-flap operation done near Pune on Cowasjee, a bullock-driver.

Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana 16 · The Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1794 · J. C. Carpue, An Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose (1816)

1. Painted Gyan Chaupar boards survive in the National Museum, New Delhi, and other collections, with squares named for virtues, vices and lokas.
2. The popular claim that Sant Jnaneshwar made the game in the 13th century has no early source behind it.

Gyan Chaupar boards, National Museum, New Delhi · Andrew Topsfield, “The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders”, Artibus Asiae 46 (1985)

1. Sake Dean Mahomed, born at Patna in 1759, came to Brighton in 1814 and soon opened a bath there; around 1820 his larger Mahomed’s Baths rose on the seafront, where the Queen’s Hotel now stands.
2. He was appointed “shampooing surgeon” to George IV and William IV, and published Shampooing, or Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath (1822).

Sake Dean Mahomed, Shampooing, or Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath (1822) · Michael H. Fisher, The First Indian Author in English: Dean Mahomed (1996) · Brighton & Hove Museums, Sake Dean Mahomed collection

1. Lieutenant Joseph Sherer and Robert Stewart founded the first European polo club at Silchar, Cachar, in 1859, after watching Manipuri players.
2. The Calcutta Polo Club, founded in 1862, is the oldest polo club still active.
3. The Mapal Kangjeibung in Imphal is counted among the oldest polo grounds in the world.

Horace A. Laffaye, The Evolution of Polo (2009) · Silchar polo club memorial inscription · Hurlingham Polo Association rules (1874)

1. Loot is Hindi lut; thug is thag, a cheat; bungalow is bangla, a house in the Bengal style; shampoo is champo; dungarees is from dungri cloth.
2. Juggernaut comes from Jagannath of Puri, from European travellers’ exaggerated tales of the great chariots of the Rath Yatra.
3. Yule and Burnell’s Hobson-Jobson (1886) collected these borrowings in one dictionary.

Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (1886) · Oxford English Dictionary, etymologies of loot, thug, jungle, bungalow, shampoo, juggernaut

1. At Fatehpur Sikri a pachisi board is laid out in the paving of a courtyard, linked by tradition to Akbar’s court.
2. In America the game was copyrighted as Parcheesi in 1867, and in England Ludo, with a die and cup, was patented in 1896.

H. J. R. Murray, A History of Board-Games Other than Chess (1952) · British patent for Ludo (1896)

1. Chandogya Upanishad 3.17.4 names ahimsa among the virtues that are the dakshina of the inner yajna.
2. Yoga Sutra 2.35: when one is established in ahimsa, enmity falls away in his presence.
3. Martin Luther King Jr. credited Gandhi in Stride Toward Freedom (1958) and travelled to India in 1959 to learn more.

Chandogya Upanishad 3.17.4 · Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 2.35 · M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa (1928) · Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (1958)

1. The Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal of Amravati demonstrated kabaddi in Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Games, as an exhibition outside the official programme.
2. Kabaddi entered the Asian Games at Beijing in 1990, and India won every men’s gold until 2018.

Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal, Amravati, records of the 1936 Berlin demonstration · Olympic Council of Asia, Asian Games results (1990–2018) · Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India

1. US patent 5,401,504 (1995) on turmeric for healing wounds was revoked in 1997 after India’s CSIR showed it was old knowledge, citing Sanskrit texts and a 1953 Indian medical paper.
2. The European Patent Office revoked a patent on a neem-oil fungicide in 2000, and upheld the revocation in 2005.

US Patent 5,401,504, re-examination certificate (USPTO, 1997) · European Patent Office, revocation of EP 0436257 (2000; Board of Appeal 2005) · Charaka Samhita

1. UNESCO inscribed Deepavali on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 10 December 2025, at its session held at the Red Fort, Delhi.
2. Diwali is a public holiday in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Malaysia and Singapore.

Valmiki Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda · UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 20th session of the Intergovernmental Committee (Delhi, December 2025) · Bhagavata Purana, Skandha 7 (Prahlada)