Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism

Daniel M. Kolos is president of Benben Books, a company publishing
scholarly works.

The Vedas are the oldest known body of Indian literature and form the
roots of Hinduism. Roy, however, claims that the Vedas have spawned many
other religions as well. These ancient texts originally came from the
Indus Valley Civilization and could be over 5000 years old.

Roy’s contention that the Vedas contain “science” is clearly
possible: science depends entirely on observation and measurement, both
practised by most ancient civilizations. “Ancient science” was
expressed as a metaphoric record, even a body of myth. Roy’s
challenge, to translate the metaphor into modern technical language,
produces a tedious text. Each page abounds with Sanskrit words that
receive, at best, an initial but curt explanation. The unfamiliar words
continue to get in the way of an already difficult project. Upon closer
examination, the reader finds himself totally dependent upon Roy’s
choice of meanings. “Sudasa,” for example, must refer to a thing
rather to a person because it is preceded by “which” as opposed to
“who.”

Exegesis and literary criticism have a long Western tradition, but Roy
claims to be the first to apply these interpretive methodologies to the
Vedas. Vedic Physics, then, is a seminal work upon which future scholars
cannot help but improve. Although the book was inspired by Roy’s
personal quest for meaning and tends to overwhelm the reader chapter
after chapter, it still provides a significant contribution to solving
the puzzle of the Vedas to the satisfaction of Western minds. In the
process, however, Roy falls victim to one of the Western conceptual
limitations: that either there is only one deity, or that all deities
are, in the end, but manifestations of the one deity. Notwithstanding
his superimposition of this scientific monism, Roy succeeds in
transforming the metaphoric verses of the various Vedas into scientific
language. Although the process seems tortuous, he presents the Vedas as
a credible body of early knowledge.