Hinglish

Al-Bīrūnī and Bhāskarāchārya

Class 7 Social Science · Chapter 16: Turning Tides: 11th and 12th Centuries · NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond section 16.2

Learn

Al-Bīrūnī, a Persian scholar from Khwārizm (in today's Uzbekistan), came to India with Mahmūd around 1017. He learned Sanskrit, talked with Indian scholars and wrote a huge survey of Indian religion, philosophy, geography and science, comparing it with Greek and Islamic learning. He translated Patanjali's Yogasūtras into Arabic. He also wrote that Mahmūd "utterly ruined the prosperity of the country", so Indian sciences fled to safer places such as Kashmir and Varanasi.

Learning kept flourishing elsewhere. Bhāskarāchārya (Bhāskara II), born in 1114, probably in Maharashtra, wrote Līlāvatī, which teaches arithmetic through lively riddles in verse; Bījagaṇita on algebra; and Siddhāntaśhiromaṇi on astronomy. Europe took centuries to rediscover some of his methods. One riddle: of a herd of elephants, half and a third of the half went into a cave, a sixth and a seventh of a sixth went to drink, an eighth and a ninth of an eighth played in a lotus pond, and the king elephant led three females. The fractions add up to 251/252 of the herd, so the 4 elephants left are 1/252 of it: the herd had 1,008 elephants!

Explore: who wrote what?

  1. Sort each work.

Remember

  • Al-Bīrūnī studied Sanskrit and wrote a great survey of Indian knowledge.
  • Bhāskarāchārya's Līlāvatī made mathematics fun through riddles.

Quick check

Where did Indian sciences "flee" to, according to al-Bīrūnī?

  1. Kashmir and Varanasi
  2. Ghazni
  3. China
  4. Baghdad
Answer

Kashmir and Varanasi. Places Mahmūd's armies could not reach.

Think about it

What does it tell us that a scholar in Mahmūd's own camp admired Indian learning?

One answer

That India's knowledge was highly respected even by outsiders, and that a curious scholar can look past war to learn from another culture.

Practice

Practise with fresh questions at three levels (easy, medium, hard), some answered hands-on, with hints and worked answers. Get 4 of your last 5 right to finish the topic.