Have things to remember, chant them!

'Soorya Siddhaant' (Theory from the Sun-God) is an ancient Indian treatise on astronomy and related subjects, written around 1000 CE and is considered as a masterpiece of ancient Indian expertise in Astronomy and Mathematics. The book has its own special method of fixing co-ordinates of any star in the sky. I have already described this method in one of earlier blogposts and do not intend to repeat it here. What is more interesting is that these coordinates along with the names of the stars have been compressed and composed in a chant or a poem containing 21 verses and the chant can be recited easily from memory as a well composed piece of singable music. In a nutshell, if one can recite this chant of 21 verses, he has already learned by heart the complete description of sky or a 'Sky-Atlas.'

See the beauty of this, no paper, no figures, nothing is required. All you need is to memorise and recite a poem and you have your full Sky-Atlas in front of you on your lips through your recitation. In ancient India, almost all important scriptures like Vedas, Bhagvad- Geeta and other texts like Mahabharata were similarly made recitable or singable using poetic devices so that they could be easily remembered. Even difficult subjects like grammer (Panini) or law (Manusmriti) were remembered and passed down the generations by this method. Ancients had realised the amazing power of human brain by which large sets of information could be remembered and passed down the generations, when composed as a chant. In traditional Indian homes of few decades ago, all the children in a house were compulsorily taught and made to remember and chant verses, whose meaning they could hardly understand, yet they remembered the verses for their life. 

 

Let us go to more primary levels of learning. Few years ago, when my grandchildren were just toddlers, they could remember the English alphabets easily, because they were taught the alphabets as a nursery rhyme, so easy to remember. Or take the case of simple multiplication tables, that we have all learned by rote method. Everyone remembers them, because they have a rhyme and rhythm or they are singable. When I was a primary student, my granddad had taught me similar multiplication tables for fractions like half, quarter, quarter and half or even one and a quarter. I used to remember these (Now I don't!) by heart, simply because these tables were made chantable or recitable. In India, few decades ago, levels of conventional illiteracy were quite high. Yet the same illiterate woman, selling veggies next door, could calculate how much is eight times a quarter or even quarter and a half. There is nothing new in this technique. If you want to remember say a long number (e.g. your mobile number or pin ) make it renderable by breaking it into segments. You can easily remember it. Everyone knows the technique but so far no one had really tried to find out, why is it so? And why our brains easily memorise something that can be rendered or sung.

Dr. Henry L. Roediger III, is a professor of psychology, who specializes in the study of memory retrieval, at the Memory Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He has tried to explain why information set to music is easiest to remember or in other words, why a hit Bollywood song from 1950's remains fresh in my memory, but I find it tough to remember my ATM pin number.

Neuroscientists have long known that the hippocampus and the frontal cortex regions of human brain are the two areas in the brain that are associated with memory and they process millions of bites of information every day. Dr. Roediger says and I quote:

“ Getting the information into those areas is relatively easy, what is difficult is pulling data out efficiently. Music, provides a rhythm, a rhyme and often, alliteration. All that structure is the key to unlocking information stored in the brain—with music acting as a cue. If someone asks me to produce all the words to a Beatles song, I couldn't do it unless I sing it in my mind. Music is a powerful mnemonic device, but the song's structure is what allows a person to recall the information it holds—not necessarily the catchy tune itself. The added melody encourages repetition and thus memorization, which is perhaps why patients with advanced Alzheimer's dementia have been known to sing along to a familiar song.”

Dr. Roediger believes that the brain function that responds to music, evolved long before those related to language. In fact many neuroscientists say that humans developed music and dance to aid in retrieval of information. In his forthcoming book, "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning," Dr. Roediger would be presenting, what he calls as tools of memorisation. In his book he says that he remembers large sequences of information by using a common number-rhyming mnemonic that goes, "one is a gun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, etc." He puts an image of whatever he needs to remember along with an image of the word associated with the number in the rhyme. "So if one is a ball, I'll picture a gun shooting a ball. If two is a chair, I'll imagine a shoe sitting on a chair, and so on.The rhyme serves a similar function as a tune."

No doubt Dr. Roediger's work has tried to explain the scientific basis of what our ancestors knew all along and have used it to pass whatever knowledge they possessed down the generations. However, I feel that his work is important because many a times we know that a thing works fine in a particular way, but it is also nice to know why does it work fine?

3^rd January 2013

Mapping the sky in twenty one verses: The genius of 'Surya Siddhanta'

On a day, sometime in fourth century AD; a learned Hindu mathematician and scholar, gave finishing touches to a treatise on Astronomy, that is still being read and referred, even after fifteen hundred years. The book compiled together, the knowledge and wisdom about Astronomy, measurement of time and the yearly calender which was of paramount importance to agriculture. The information had been collected over thousands of years by ancient sages and scholars. In the preceding centuries, new ideas had come from China in the east and Greece from the west. The new Treatise not only took cognizance of these ideas but incorporated some of them in the text. To make the book more respectable and acceptable, the learned author decided to claim in opening verses of the book that the knowledge has come from the Sun God himself and aptly called his book as ‘Surya Siddhaanta’ or the ‘Sun God’s commandments’.

Eighth chapter of this book, maps the night sky precisely in Twenty One verses. Each verse consists of just two lines. This chapter pin points not only the twenty seven or twenty eight Asterisms or ‘Nakshatraas’ that lie along the passage of The Sun in the sky, but also include all other major stars that could be seen with naked eye. The method adapted is unique and is independent of any ground reference points. This made the system universal and unrelated to time and place of measurement. The author has also described the rudimentary apparatus, that could be used for taking these measurements.

We all know that for defining two dimensional position of any point object, we need to specify two numbers, which are called co-ordinates of the point, with reference to some fixed reference line or axis. In a simple graph, these reference axis are called the X and Y axis and distances of any point from these two axis can pin point the position of that point. But in the sky, there are no fixed lines of reference. We however know that The Sun and all other planets including Moon, follow a fixed path in the sky as they move every day and night in an apparent motion around the earth. This path is seen as a curved line from earth and is called an ‘Ecliptic. Amazingly, ‘Surya Siddhaanta’ uses this curved line as the reference line for measurements of positions of ‘Asterisms’. A great celestial meridian or a circle which passes through the ecliptic poles and the star, whose position is to be specified, is imagined in the sky. The point of intersection of this meridian circle and the Ecliptic is considered as the projection of this star on the Ecliptic. ‘Surya Siddhaanta’ specifies for each star two angular measurements to pin point it precisely.

First of these two measurements, is called the ‘Vikshepa’ or Latitude of the star. It is just the angular measurement between the Star itself and it’s projection on the Ecliptic. The second co-ordinate is called ‘Dhruvaka’ or the Longitude and it is the angular measuerment between projection point of the star on the Ecliptic and a zero point specified on the Ecliptic itself. Thus with two simple measurements, which can be done with very rudimentary ground instruments, positions of all the stars can be pin pointed. The system of measurements is extremely simple and does not require any ground reference points. Devised in an era, when there were no telescopes, no sextants for angle measurements or even writing paper was not in common use, the method was of immense value. Further the observations could be narrated in simple Verses so that everyone could remember them with ease.

The Zero point on the Ecliptic was called the ‘First point of the Aries’ and was actually the point on the Ecliptic, which the Sun occupied at the time of ‘Summer Equinox,’ when the treatise was completed. Unfortunately, the authors of ‘Surya Siddhaanta’ did not consider the Precession of Equinoxes, either due to ignorance or on purpose and the position of this zero point drifted away from Summer Equinox point.

This peculiar way of fixing zero point remains embedded in a mire of controversies. Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, who translated this treatise in English for the first time in year 1860, defines this zero point as a point 10 minutes eastward of the star Zeta Piscium. Whereas, Calender committee appointed by Government of India, fixes this point exactly hundred and eighty degrees from position of star Chitra or Spica. Another study taken up later, fixes this zero point at two hundred and forty degrees west of star Mula or Lambda Scorpii and says that the Sanskrit word ‘Muladharma’ has originated from this.

This ignorance of Precession of Equinoxes, in fact gives us a powerful tool to fix up the date on which this treatise was completed. Rev. Burgess fixes it as year 560 AD. The calender committee concludes that the date must be in year 285 AD. An independent study fixes this date as 238 AD. We can therefore presume that the great treatise was completed sometime in third to sixth century AD.

There are also controversies regarding accuracy of star co-ordinates. Rev. Burgess and early English scholars have compared the co-ordinates with latest star charts to point out the differences. Rev. Burgess has written hundreds of pages not only to high light the errors but also to justify his view that all knowledge in this treatise has come from either China or Greece. Even the calender reforms committee of Government of India, does mention the difficulties faced by them because of the inaccuracies in the book. But to my mind, all these controversies are irrelevant and besides the point. We have all the latest methods of observation, measurement and calculations. What could be achieved by comparing our observations with those, taken with naked eyes and with most rudimentary apparatus for measurement of angles and time.

It is more important to appreciate the genius of ‘Surya siddhaanta’, which gave us a method of charting the stars and a method of time keeping, which even today forms the basis of Hindu Luni-solar calender and see how the methods and principles described in this treatise could be put to possible use and applications today.

12 March 2013