🛕WTF Dharma: How Sanskrit Nearly Invented NASA Before Forgetting What a Telescope Is...
By Our Ancient-Futuristic Correspondent, Panchajanya Pseudoscientifica
In a shocking development that absolutely nobody asked for but everybody has heard of, Delhi’s Chief Minister Rekha Gupta recently declared that Sanskrit is not only “scientific” and “computer-friendly” but has apparently been blessed by the heavenly approval of NASA. Again. Like an incorrigible relative who claims to have invented Facebook in 1993 but forgot the password, Sanskrit is back in the news with its usual entourage of flying chariots, nuclear sages, and Vedic wi-fi.
This, of course, is not the first time the language of Kalidasa has been dragged into the laboratory of pseudoscience, trussed up in a lab coat, and made to dance the quantum Bharatnatyam. From cloning to quantum entanglement, from Vimanas to the Big Bang, everything apparently exists already in the Vedas — we just need the right Upanishad and a lot of imagination. And maybe a little bhang.
But the truth, dear reader, is far more fascinating. And tragic. And honestly, a little bit hilarious.
Let us embark on a WTF tour through the ancient hallways of Sanskrit science, a tour that will make you laugh, cry, and maybe, just maybe, calculate pi to 10 decimal places using a coconut shell.
Act I: Vedic Geometry and Flying Pythagoras
Long before Newton got hit by an apple and even before the Greeks argued about who stole whose theorem, Indian priests were busy building fire altars in the shapes of hawks, tortoises, and possibly anxiety disorders. These weren’t your regular neighborhood havans. These were sacred, mud-brick altars constructed with deadly mathematical precision.
These Vedic priests, guided by the Sulbasutras, treated geometry like it was divine Sudoku. They were already playing with what would later be called the Pythagorean theorem, only they thought of it in terms of cows and bricks instead of triangles. Sanskrit was the medium, fire was the god, and math was the offering.
But this wasn't math for math's sake. It was math to please the gods. If trigonometry didn’t help your chances in the afterlife, what was even the point?
Act II: Infinity, Jains, and the Great Cosmological Workout
Meanwhile, the Jains were having a spiritual existential crisis and dealt with it by inventing metaphysical calculus. They took cosmic exaggeration to unprecedented levels. Consider the rajju, which measures how far a god travels in one blink. Or the palya — essentially the cosmological equivalent of watching paint dry on the wool of a newborn lamb. These numbers were so absurdly large that even Stephen Hawking would have needed a nap.
And yet, within these mythopoetic metrics lay real mathematical brilliance: early concepts of infinity that Western scholars wouldn’t grapple with until the 19th century. Sure, they didn’t build particle accelerators, but they certainly built conceptual ones — powered by karma.
Act III: Aryabhata, the Teen Genius Who Wanted to Move Earth
By the 5th century CE, a young Aryabhata burst onto the scene like a mathematical Mozart. While most kids his age were learning how not to get eaten by wild animals, Aryabhata was busy calculating Ï€ and theorizing a rotating Earth. He introduced the sine function, trigonometric tables, and even proposed elliptical planetary orbits — all while wearing a loincloth and possibly dodging demon Rahu during eclipses.
Aryabhata was what would happen if you gave a teenager a blackboard, a coconut, and too much time. And all of this… in Sanskrit.
But here’s where things start to turn from awe to awkward.
Act IV: Sanskrit, the Language That Refused to Grow Up
Unlike Aryabhata’s meteoric rise, the trajectory of Sanskrit science soon hit turbulence. You see, Sanskrit was never just a language — it was a sacred vessel, like a holy USB stick that only the Brahmin IT department was allowed to access.
The same reverence that had protected Sanskrit from corruption also insulated it from innovation. Scientific reasoning slowly gave way to scholastic recital. Observation took a back seat to obsession. Astrolabes? Meh. Who needs them when you’ve got metaphysics?
By the 12th century, Arab scientists — who had borrowed heavily from Indian works — were now racing ahead in astronomy, optics, and hydraulics, while Sanskrit pundits were still debating whether Rahu actually swallowed the moon or just chewed on it symbolically.
Worse still, the Sanskrit knowledge complex was elite, exclusionary, and often allergic to new ideas — especially if they came in Persian, Arabic, or, heaven forbid, Marathi.
Act V: Kerala's Nerd Rebellion and the Sanskritic Inquisition
Not all hope was lost. Down south in Kerala, a group of Brahmin mathematicians said, “Screw this cosmic turtle nonsense,” and got busy reinventing calculus. The Madhava school developed advanced trigonometric series, laying the groundwork for what Newton and Leibniz would later be praised for.
But these coastal nerds were the exception, not the norm. They were a footnote in a tradition that had largely turned inward, obsessed with its own reflection like a philosophical Narcissus.
Then came the Persians, then the Mughals, and finally the British. Each brought newer, sharper tools of scientific reasoning. But the Sanskrit machine — proud, rusting, and trapped in a loop of metaphysical recursion — mostly shrugged.
Act VI: Colonial Pandit Showdowns and Sanskrit vs. Science Smackdowns
Fast-forward to the 19th century, when a British officer named Lancelot Wilkinson decided to stir the pot. He got a Sanskrit scholar to write a treatise on Copernican astronomy — in Marathi.
This went about as well as you’d expect. Brahmins across Benares went into an epistemological meltdown. How dare someone suggest that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not around an elephant's mood swings? Commentaries poured in. Debates raged. One could practically smell the burning incense and cognitive dissonance.
Still, the ball had started rolling. Slowly, awkwardly, Sanskrit scholars began to accommodate the heretical idea that perhaps, just perhaps, observations mattered. Jai Singh II built giant observatories. Some Sanskrit schools started translating foreign treatises. But the damage — or rather, the delay — had been done.
Act VII: Sanskrit in the Age of Meme Science and NASA Nonsense
Which brings us to today. In modern India, Sanskrit is no longer just a classical language. It’s been repackaged into a cultural superweapon, a linguistic version of the Brahmastra. Politicians, NGOs, and WhatsApp forwards tell us that NASA loves Sanskrit, that Google was secretly built on Panini’s grammar, and that Vedic jets were environmentally friendly.
Samskrita Bharati insists that Sanskrit was the mother tongue of all Indians. The Vedas, we are told, already contain relativity, genetics, robotics, and possibly Bluetooth technology. All you need is the right interpretation — preferably while wearing saffron robes and a look of smug certainty.
But the reality, as ever, is less glorious. Sanskrit was brilliant. It did advance science. But it also stagnated, ossified, and shut its doors to the very change it once embraced. Most of its scientific successors came from people outside its circle — the sailors, the craftsmen, the Muslims, the women, the Jains, the multilingual tinkers who preferred a sextant to a shloka.
Epilogue: The Real Language of Science Is Not Sanskrit
In the end, Sanskrit was not divine. It was not uniquely scientific. It was — like Latin, Greek, and Classical Chinese — a great language that burned bright, dimmed, and aged into prestige and nostalgia.
To pretend otherwise is not pride. It’s cosplay.
The real language of science isn’t any tongue. It is mathematics. It is observation. It is falsifiability. It is evidence. It is the courage to be wrong.
And perhaps, most crucially, it is the humility to admit that the next Newton may be speaking Bhojpuri, Tamil, Swahili, or even TikTok English — not necessarily reciting the Rig Veda to a hovering Nandi drone in orbit.
So next time someone tells you Sanskrit is perfect for AI because NASA said so, ask them to code an app in it.
Spoiler: the only thing it might run on is divine intervention.
End of Transmission. Powered by sarcasm, logic, and half a rajju of caffeine.
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