Medical practices in ancient India were also far in advance of those in other countries and in many respects rival our current procedures. 2,600 years ago Vedic medical texts "recorded complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, hernia, intestinal surgery, bladder stone removal, rhinoplasty or plastic surgery of the nose, and brain surgery, plus suturing, the knowledge of the instruments needed for particular operations, types of forceps, surgical probes, needles, and cutting instruments. Over 125 surgical instruments were described and used, including lancets, forceps, catheters, etc., many of which are the same or similar as those we have today. Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics, and immunity is also found in these texts." [7] They describe, 1,700 years before William Harvey, blood circulation and its role in delivering nutrition. They discuss "385 plant-generated, 57 animal-generated, and 64 mineral-generated medicines and how to use them." [8]
5,000 years ago Indians were smelting iron to make tools, more than a thousand years before Europeans. They exported tempered steel to China and Arabia. [9] 3,000 years ago they were producing glass and coloring it with metal salts and exporting optical lenses to China. They excelled in ceramics, fabric dyeing, and cement making. [10]
Will Durant wrote, "The growing of cotton appears earlier in India than elsewhere, apparently it was used for cloth in Mohenjodaro." [11] According to Dr. Stanley Wolpert, professor of history at UCLA, "Ancient Indians were the first humans to spin and weave cotton into cloth." [12] The word cotton comes from the Sanskrit kantan , meaning thread spun from the cotton boll. Both the spinning wheel and loom are Indian inventions. [13]
The earliest civilization
Much of the evidence for these achievements was discovered during excavations of the sites of Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Professor Sir John Marshall, the archeologist who excavated Mohenjodaro, wrote, "These discoveries establish the existence " during the 4 th and 3 rd millennia BC of a highly developed city life: and the presence in many of these homes of wells and bathrooms as well as elaborate drainage systems, betokens a social condition of the citizens at least equal to that found in Sumer and superior to that prevailing in contemporary Babylonia and Egypt." [14] "It took another 2,000 years for the Roman Empire to reach the level of town planning and sanitation that had already been existing in the Harrapan culture." [15] "This Indus civilization was the most populous and largest of any culture of the 3 rd millennium, a huge center of many ideas and forms of knowledge that spread in all directions." [16] New discoveries have pushed this timeline much farther back. B.R. Mani, joint director general of the Archeological Survey of India, reported, "The preliminary results of the data " suggest that the Indian civilization emerged in the 8 th millennium BCE." [17] "These early peoples had systems of writing, counting, weighing, and measuring, and they dug canals for irrigation." [18]
"5,000 years ago, when the peoples of Europe were hauling stones across the face of the continent and grubbing out a meager existence, Indians " were living in elaborately designed cities with sturdy houses, broad, straight roads, public baths, and drainage systems that were hardly equaled until the Roman era three thousand years later. " But 5,000 years ago ... the Indus Valley civilization was already age-old " with many millennia of human endeavor behind it. Usually we think of Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilization, but evidence suggests that the society of northwestern India, which has preserved its essential spirit over countless generations, deserves equal billing." [19] "This, therefore, was the real cradle of civilization as we know it." [20]
According to Will Durant, "India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages " she was the mother of our philosophy, mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics, mother, through Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity, mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all." [21]
Mark Twain called India, "Cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition. " She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects. India is the prime source of human development." [22]
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