Proof of theft of calculus from India

Created: 2025-08-25 Mon 11:57

1. Opportunity

was there contact between India and Europe then?
"Was there contact?"
This is the first question that one asks when two students turn in identical answer sheets.

1.1. Of course there was extensive contact

between Europe and India
starting from 1498 after Vasco da Gama arrived in India.

2. The story of Vasco and the "discovery" of India

2.1. Europeans had long had contact with Africa,

especially Algeria and Morocco which were very rich countries then,
while Europe was poor.

2.2. Florence etc. became the (culturally, financially) richest part of Europe

by 12th c.
because of their trade with rich Africa.

2.3. Portuguese Creepy navigation

However it was only in the mid-15th century that
Portugal became rich enough and adventurous enough to start exploring
how to creep along the coastline of Africa
and reach what is called sub-Saharan Africa.

2.4. In 1441 Europeans finally learnt

how to sail past Cape Bojadour and the Sahara desert
by staying far enough away from the coastline
to avoid the strong winds and currents.

2.5. This contact with sub-Saharan Africa brought in the first African captives to Europe

The papal bulls (fatwas) Dum Diversas (1452)
and the bull Romanus pontifex (1455) were formulated in this context
As we will see, this "Doctrine of Christian discovery" has an
important bearing also on the claim that some Christians discovered calculus
like "Vasco discovered India".

2.6. More creepy navigation

By 1488 Bartolomeu Diaz had used this "creep-along-the-coast navigation"
to sail to the Cape of Good Hope
In 1498 Vasco sailed round the Cape and up the
Eastern African coast to Malindi near Mombasa.

2.7. The navigator and the pilot

Malindi was part of the Africa which had traditional sea trade with India
across thousands of years.
He was told that more creepy navigation would take him right back to the Arabs he sought to avoid 😆
and that to reach the land of spices he had to cross the ocean.

2.8. Navigator and pilot (contd,)

Alas Vasco didn't know how to cross the "uncharted" ocean!
But an Indian fleet reached Malindi
and Vasco hired a person (Mualim Kanak=Malemo Cana)
to guide him across the ocean to India.

2.9. Navigator and pilot (contd.)

I was taught in school that Vasco "discovered" India (like Columbus discovered America).
I naively asked "where were Indians living before India was discovered?"
I added, "what about the Mahabharata battle and the Kurukshetra near Delhi mentioned in the 1st sloka of the Bhagvad Gita?" धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे…

The teacher responded that Indians lived right here even before India was discovered.😄
So, what exactly did Vasco "discover"?

2.10. Navigator and pilot (contd)

Some colonised people try to save the story
They now say Vasco "discovered" the sea route to India.
Certainly that is false since Vasco hired a person to take him across the Indian ocean from AFrica.

on a sea route known for thousands of years, even to the Romans.
The term "discovery" has a special technical meaning in Christian god-gyan(=theology=theos+logos) in this context
and that special meaning of "discovery" applies also to "discovery" of calculus by Europeans.

2.11. Navigator and pilot (contd.)

The term "discovery" is not the only word which has a strange new meaning
Vasco records he hired a "pilot" at Malindi to help him cross the ocean.
Now a pilot is one who guides a ship near the land, where their may be unknown hidden obstacles, known only to a local person.
A navigator is one who guides a ship across the open sea.

Mualim (=wayfinder") Kanak was the one who navigated the ship across the open Indian ocean from Malindi to Calicut (Khozikhode)
Vasco was the one who was doing creepy navigation sticking close to the shoreline from Lisbon to Malindi.
So, who was the navigator and who was the pilot?&#x;
Moral: don't trust even a single word of history told by Europeans. They were backward, not "superior".

2.12. How the pilot told the distance by his teeth

The Kanak navigated using an instrument called the Kamāl or rāpalagai (night instrument) to navigate.
This instrument consists of 2 wooden boards each of which is attached to strings which are graduated in knots.

The instrument is used to measure angles, by blocking off the angle by varying the distance of the board from the eye.
This was used to measure the angular elevation of the pole star (kau) = the approximate latitude.

While measuring, the string is held between the teeth
teeth are called kau in the Arabic-Malayalam language used by the Mapila sailing community of Kerala (so the Kanak was from Kerala).

The pole star is also called kau!
- Navigator said he was telling the latitude by kau (=pole star)
But Vasco recorded "the pilot was telling the distance by his teeth".🤣
As we will see, terms such as zero and "sine" have a similar history.

2.13. Graduating a harmonic scale in inches

The knots on the string tied to the kamal are NOT equidistant
but are in harmonic progression, like the holes in a flute
i.e. the inverses of the distances between two knots are in arithmetic progression.
Alas, Vasco understood only linear scales, not harmonic one's.

So he took back a copy of the kamāl saying he would get it "graduated in inches"🤣
impossible sine it is a harmonic scale.
This is just a very simple example of the stupidity that Westerners displayed in grasping Indian concepts

2.14. 2-scale principle for harmonic scales

Further, the kamal has two pieces which work together for greater accuracy as in the Vernier caliper.
Did any European understand that the 2-scale principle "Vernier principle" can be applied to harmonic scales?
No, but by 19th c. British were ruling India. and James Prinsep (a mint assistant) made gross racist remarks about the kamal

But Prinsep lacked the brains to understand the 2-scsle principle (Vernier principle) applied to harmonic scales
which gives the kamal a very high accuracy
as I first explained in my book (but ignored).
(Is the case of calculus similar? Did Europeans likewise fail to understand Indian calculus?)

Drunk in their racist sense of supremacy Prinsep et al did not have the commonsense to ask in over 150 years
how Lakshadweep islanders navigated for centuries to small islands
without an accurate navigational instrument.

Instead they introduced colonial education to teach their "superior" method of navigation.
(Like they teach a "superior" understanding of calculus today?)

Hope you are getting the analogy,
Q. is the story of the "discovery" of the calculus similar to the story of the discovery of India by Vasco?

2.15. Colonial education for islanders

To move on with Vasco's story, since Christian/colonial education was not popular in Sunni Muslim Lakshadweep islands
British govt. commissioned a text in Malayalam, Nāvik Shāstram, to make it attractive.
Text introduced in schools of the largest island called Amini in 1939.

to teach Brit techniques of navigation to islanders
based on the sextant (kamān) and declination tables of the sun.
(we will see why declination tables are needed).

2.16. Effect on accuracy

The kaman had an accuracy of about 1°, less than the accuracy of the kamal (10')
Also, kamān (made of steel) could not be locally manufactured and had to be got from Mumbai
Students indoctrinated into the "superior" navigation quickly forgot all about the kamāl.

I toured ALL the Lakshadweep islands in 1998 and not a single person could explain its functioning
which I reconstructed.
(Like the Indian understanding of calculus, which we all forgot.)

2.17. Noorie tables

The students were now indoctrinated to use the kamān with "Noorie tables".
What are these "Noorie tables"?
These "Noorie tables" were found in the "rahmani" ("log book") of Kunhi Kunhi Koya
as part of a 5 million dollar project of the INSA to study indigenous navigation.

In 1998, the findings of this project were to be presented
at an Indo-Portuguese meeting on the 500th anniversary of Vasco's arrival in India.
No one in the big project team could figure out what these "Noorie tables" were
(remember the haunting song Noorie…?)
Hence, I was roped in for this purpose, to go to the Lakshadweep islands and solve the mystery.

I solved the mystery within a couple of days of arriving at Kavaratti
through a serendipitous visit to the library at Kavaratti.
There, in the navigation section, I found a book by Capt. James Norrie
giving the same tables as tables of declination of the sun.

The value of the solar declination is needed to determine latitude at sea in daytime
from observation of the solar altitude at noon.
I checked that the book had been issued to Kunhi Kunhi
and carried away the accession card as proof.
So a colonised method of navigation was being passed off as indigenous knowledge.

2.18. Vasco's imaginary Armada

To complete Vasco's story we also need to understand the European trick of using systematic lies as a source of soft power.
As Vasco approached Calicut he was fearful he would be attacked and killed.
So he sent Malemo Kana ahead to meet the Samudri (Zamorin)
with instructions to lie to him that a huge armada was following him.

2.19. Columbus's broken instrument

Telling lies was a cultural habit with Portuguese "discoverers".
Columbus was aimed at two vast continents he could not miss, but he had no idea where he was.
Thus, when Columbus reached Cuba (latitude 21°) he recorded a latitude of 41°, and thought he had reached China!
Later realized he was grossly mistaken and said the instrument (quadrant with a plumb line) was broken!

2.20. How Vasco fled to Kochi

To complete the story, we need to tell how Vasco arrived in Kochi
where there were numerous manuscripts in astronomy and mathematics containing the Indian infinite series.

The official Portuguese excuse for traveling to India was to trade
So, when Vasco arrived in Kochi this Samudri gave him a "factory" a place where he could store his goods
as he gave to every Arab trader.
Vasco left a few men at the factory and went back to Europe to return a year later.

But the Portuguese goods were mere worthless baubles
at which the Arab traders familiar with Portugal and Spain laughed
The Portuguese left in Calicut were so poor they had no money to trade.
So they tried their usual tricks: telling lies and claiming the goods of others.

Arab traders accustomed to a higher level of honsety were enraged and burnt the Portugueses factory to the ground.
Vasco on his return realized that his bluff of being traders had been called.
So, to reveal his "military might" he fired a cannon at the unarmed trading vessels in the harbour.

But a cannon is more of a symbolic weapon
which had greatly impressed Europeans after the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and the thick walls of Constantinople in 1452.
Vasco realized he had no defenses against the Calicut navy and fled.
European historians talk of cannon firing but never explain that (or why) Vasco fled from Calicut to Kochi.

His Gujarati advisor (also assigned by the Zamorin)to save his own life advised Vasco to flee to Kochi
since the raja of Kochi was hostile to Calicut
and so he would get protection there.
Accordingly Vasco fled to Kochi.

Two important things happened in Kochi.
First, the Raja of Kochi did offer protection (the enemy of my enemy is my friend)
and even allowed Vasco to build a small (one room) fort (Fort Emmanuel)
with a small symbolic cannon on top pointing in a fixed direction, hence easily evaded.

Second, and more importantly, Vasco found the Syrian Christians in and near Kochi.
It was part of his mission to try to team up with other Cristian's (Prester John) to win the Crusades.
To convert them he set up the first Roman Catholic mission in Kochi in 1501.

As we will see, it was through the Syrian Christians that
the Portuguese got detailed knowledge of a variety of Indian texts available in and near Kochi.
Some written by people who had the same patron, as the Portuguese, in the Raja of Kochi.
So, quite clearly, Europeans had ample opportunity to obtain those Indian texts.

2.21. Moral to remember

(1) Europeans were poor
(2) They were habitual liars
(3) They didn't know navigation but it was a matter of life and death for them.
(4) The padres systematically lied about the knowledge they stole, which is the basis of Wester/colonial education.