[doctorzlo]

Aravindhan wrote
And that, I think, is the biggest danger in the current trend of constantly exalting ancient works. Science (and any other field of inquiry) progresses best when it is most open and least dogmatic. Which is why (in my opinion) Indian science didn't progress beyond a point - and why even mathematicians as obviously gifted as Aryabhatta and Bhaskara made such glaring errors.
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I tried raising this question in two other forums and I have not received any response as cogent as Sri Aravindhan's. I think that Bronkhorst does identify one of the reasons that Sri Aravindhan mentioned namely the respect for received truths (see bottom of page 54 in Bronkhorst's artcle). Perhaps Bronkhorst is trying to see the influence of Panini in these attitudes instead of that of the whole culture of those times.
What is surprising is that some eminent scientists even now are trying to glorify the ancient achievement of Indians without trying to see reasons for stagnation. Recently, there is an artcle in EPW (September, 2003) entitled "Axiomitization and Computational Positivism" by Roddam Narasimha, FRS. Narasimha's theory is that the Indian astromers were not partcularly interested in theories but predictions. They seem to have been remarkably successful in this ; the accuracies of some of the predictions of Aryabhatta and others have not been surpassed until the 18th century. He calls this computational positivism. When I wrote to him saying that Aryabhatta and Bhaskara could have easily verified their farmulae by a few crude experiments, there has been no response.
I hope that Sri Aravindhan will write on a longer article and publish it.
Swarup