OU on the BBC: What The Ancients Did For Us - The Indians

Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, IN INDIA, on 1st Jan 1877, which is before the time zone agreement in Washington D.C. in 1884, before this time management was a local affair, therefore all astronomy programmes, whatever location will show Sirius culminating/zenith, at midnight on 1st January 1884!

Please scroll down link to "King of Pakistan and India" and "Emperors and Empresses of India" as Ref. on link below:-

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_India

On left you will find "The Star of the Order of the Star of India, in esoteric logo's this shape is only used for two heavenly bodies....either Sirius or Venus!

Please don't confuse independence date to when Pakistan become a Republic, which means the British sovereign isn't recognized as head of state!

India didn't align their date to the stars but Pakistan did!

Pakistan become a Republic on 23rd March 1956, aligned to Capital, Islamabad, (33*N42', 73*E10') at midnight, when Sirius was setting in the West along the horizon at location!

Please read link:-

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan

Look to right for dates.

Hi D. Vigneswaren, due to log in problems i can't always log in as monk, due the the British Empire, a great deal of the wealth of India was sucked out, therefore i wouldn't be critical of any "Provisional Indian Government in Exile who took advantage of the War in Europe in 1914 to try to declare independence, out of the country in Kabul, Afganistan, (34*N31', 69E11') on 1st Dec. 1915.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Government_of_India

My primary interest is politicians that take note of the position of the stars, and the Egyptian God Stars when declaring independence, that seems to crop up all over the world in one form or another, set to either sunset, midnight or sunrise, with the factor of the start of the day with ancient and modern cultures!

The Indian Provisional Government was established in Kabul, Afghanistan on 1st Dec. 1915, any astronomer will tell you that as the Sun rose at this location and date (06:15:08am), Alnilam, central star of Belt of Orion associated with Osiris was setting in the West along the horizon!

I wonder why so many governments follow ancient Egyptian God stars associated with Isis and Osiris?

On reflection of the resent programe What The Ancients Did For Us: Indians. What do you think India would be like today if the British haddent invaded.

Good re-construction of ancient toilets in relation to city drainage system provided, however its a pity Hart Davis did not do a reconstruction of "bathtime" in a Harappan house, as every house ( whether large or small) had a bathing room, which worked like a shower room, (also connected to the drainage system). He could have poured water over his colleague to demonstrate.

The footage at Dholavira and the virtual reality (from NTV?) could have had been used to comment on the extensive system of rock cut and other reservoirs which also supplied the city & environs with fresh water in an inhospitable environment. This raises fascinating questions about why the ancient Harappans chose to settle in the region.

As BBC schools has just made 2 new progs on this topic for Primary age group one wonders if film footage in this programme could be used to add a third programme for children, which could cover what couldnt possibly be done in two. As the BBC & commercial TV devotes a lot of money to programmes about ancient Egypt, this could continue to redress the balance.

When people usually say "Harappans", the stress is NOT on the last syllable!!

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Adam Hart Davis, in the TV programme of 16 March 2005 put forward the familiar argument that calculating with roman numerals is somehow harder than using our base 10 place value system involving the hindu-arabic symbols 0, 1, 2, ...9. The latter system is very elegant and powerful. It is also rather abstract and difficult to understand - viz the numerous people who are put off maths for life after their childhood encounters with long multiplication or division. In contrast to this, 'long multiplication' (for example) with roman numerals is much easier to learn and understand and quite easy to perform (in 'simple' cases, using smallish numbers and ignoring place value...) as it depends basically just on counting distinct elements whose value does not depend on position, and on knowing the rate of exchange between elements.
Thus for example XV times XIII can be thought of as
X lots of X which is C
X lots of III which is XXX
V lots of X which is L
V lots of III which is VVV which is XV
making CLXXXXV altogether.

I was fascinated by last night's What the Ancients did for us. I work quite frequently with bronze and I'd really like to find out more about their metal working. It wasn't clear to me if the Hindu deity figures were cast solid or "cored" or whether there was a"feed system" to direct the metal to the object. Where can I find out more? It seemed to be such a delightful mixture of skill, craft and a fearsome disregard for health and safety. Imagine pouring bronze with sandals on your feet! I was also intrigued by the steel manufacture.

I switched on the t.v. and caught the last part of the programme on India last night. What I saw was fasinating and would really have liked to have seen the whole show. I really would have liked my 10 year old to have seen it too as it would have been great to learn about his culture, but he was asleep.

Is there anyone who can let me know how to get a copy of last night's programme please.

Thanks for your help

vinee

In general I found the programme interesting and am sorry that I have missed the earlier programmes. However, as usual a TV history/archaeology programme has made a mess of its iron and steel metallurgy (in this case both on the programme and the web-site). The Indians were not particularly early in developing the full iron metallurgy. That happened in the region of Anatolia or the Caucasus (depending on which set of archaeologists you believe). More importantly it was stated several times that the Delhi Pillar was of cast iron - it is not; the main part of it is of bloomery iron - hence the presence of slag inclusions which are normal for bloomery iron.

From the web site there is the statement "India was one of the first civilizations to successfully extract Iron from ore and they quickly learnt how to cast huge structures with it - some of them surviving." There is not a particularly strong Indian tradition of using cast iron - that was a Chinese invention which then spread to Indian and central Asia. The in India the normal bloomery process was the main method of making iron and in Sri Lanka steel.
The Indian version of crucible steel is called Wootz, but Huntsman started producing crucible steel in Britain the 18th century not the 19th century as stated on the web-site. At the moment it a question of debate where this technology first developed - although the name wootz is an English corruption of an Indian word it is clear from the work of Al Kindi and others that there was a long history of the production of crucible steel in a number of different regions spread across South & Central Asia, and the Near East as well as Sri Lanka and possibly as far East as Malaysia. The western interest with the Indian crucible steel industry was because it was the one last regions in which the tradition survived not necessarily the first.

The Indians are often missed out in discussions of ancient civilisations, perhaps because they were always at the margins of what we tend to think of as classical civilisations. However, Hellenistic and Roman cultures maintained links with Indian cultures and the migration of artifacts may even have influenced the bronze and iron age cultures of the more Northerly regions of Europe as well. Certainly in more recent centuries india has influenced British society in many profoundly important ways. In fact it would be difficult to imagine a modern Britain without these influences. Last nights programme raised some very impressive contributions and I expect that there will be a lot of interest. I'm afraid I can't help John or andrew, but I am certain someone will pitch in with the answers. In the meantime, please use this thread for general observations about the programme or to ask question specific to Indian civilisation.

Could anyone remind me of the name of the language that was mentioned that has so far not been able to be translated?

Thanks