Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

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The Universities of Cairo, of Baghdad, of Cordova in far western Spain, grow up under the shadow of the Prophet. Christian Europe crowds to Andalusia, to learn from the Musulman teacher the elements of forgotten science; they bring astronomy, they translate the Siddhanta of India and other books; they write treatises on astronomy, on chemistry, on mathematics. Pope Sylvester II., who sat on the Papal throne of Christendom, as a youth was a student in the University of Cordova, and learned there the mathematics that brought him later under the charge of heresy and of being the child of the devil. They invent; what do they not invent? They take up mathematics from the Hinḍū and the Greek; they discover equations of the second degree; then the quadratic; then the Binomial theorem; they discover the sine and cosine in Trigonometry; they discover or invent spherical Trigonometry; they make the first telescope; they study the stars; they measure the size of the earth within a degree or two by measurements taken on the shores of the Red Sea. What are these men who grow up under Islam? They make a new architecture, they discover a new music, they teach scientific agriculture, they bring manufactures to the highest pitch of excellence; but is that all? No. In philosophy they are still greater; in philosophy they dive into the very Being of the Supreme; they declare the One Absolute, and the relation of the many to the One; they proclaim the unity of the human Spirit with the Divine; they deal with time and space, and the acute metaphysical brain of Arabia writes the most marvellous phi
THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA