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written chiefly by Brahmins for Brahmins. Moreover, the enormous respect for tradition and the urge to preserve it in all its purity resulted in a faithful following of the traditional frame-work in all intellectual endeavours, so much so that the chapter titles of almost all texts in a particular branch of science sound alike. If any innovations were made it was always within this framework. The lack of discrimination in the selection of ideas and the reluctance to discard outmoded concepts, coupled with
Thakkura Pheru and the and the a language of limited accessibility, resulted
in the stagnation of Indian science in the
middle ages. There is one more factor which contributed to this decline. This is the ab
sence of communication, and therefore absence of any interaction, between science and technology. While the writers on scientific subjects were upper caste Brahmins, the practitioners of technology were artisans of low social standing. The techniques employed by the latter in their professions were rarely recorded in writing these were transmitted orally from father to son or from master craftsman to apprentice and remained in many cases guild or trade secrets.
Popularisation of Science in India in the 14th Century
--Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma Aligarh Muslim University
[Sri Bhanwar Lal Nahata's services to the cause of learning are indeed manifold. Historians of Science will be ever indebted to him for the discovery and the publication of Thakkura Pheru's scientific works in Prakrit.]
1.0 Until the introduction of English in India, scientific texts as well as other scholarly works were written mainly in Sanskrit and that too in metrical form. Though Sanskrit had the advantage of being the pan-Indian medium of communication, its accessibility within any region of India was limited, and the writings in Sanskrit were naturally elitist in character, being
Jain Education International
0.2 The literature of the Jainas offers some sort of an exception to this general state of affairs. Though the Jainas respected Sanskrit as a vehicle of scholarly exposition, Prakrit also enjoyed religious sanction among them. Even while writing in Sanskrit, there was often a conscious attempt to simplify the language for the sake of wider under
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