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yajvan
14 October 2009, 08:33 AM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

Namasté


Sāyaṇācārya is a recognized interpreter and commentor of the ṛg ved and other works. Many see Sāyaṇācārya's interpretations for ritual use only and suggest the spiritual (adyātama) is lacking. This is for others to debate.

What is of interest to me is a note he adds to a mantra of the ṛg ved 1.50.4 There are 13 mantra-s in this section that are dedicated to sūrya. The ṛg ved 1.50.4 mantra says the following:

O' surya you are the ferrier, object of all sight and the creator of light. You shine illumining all.

Sāyaṇācārya offers the following comment on this mantra:
tatha cha smaryate yojanānām sahasre dve dve shate
dve cha yojane ekema nimiṣārdhena kramamāna

This says, thus it is to be remembered , you (O' Sun)
who traverses 2202 yojana-s in one half nimeṣa


To make sense of this we need to understand a few numbers. A yojana योजन is considered ~ 9 miles. A nimeṣa निमिष is considered a moment, a twinkling of the eye ; the root 'miṣ' is a wink, blink.
This nimeṣa time as I have looked about is suggested to be 16/75th's of 1 second or 0.21333 seconds. Hence 1/2 half nimeṣa ( as it is stated in Sāyaṇācārya's comment¹) is 0.10667 seconds.

So in 1/2 a nimeṣa (0.10667 seconds) the sun, says Sāyaṇācārya, travels 2202 yojana-s or roughly 19,818 miles ( 9 miles X 2202 yojana-s). How far is this in 1 second?

1 second / 0.10667 seconds = 9.3741. Take 19,818 miles x 9.3741 and this gives us 185,787.94 miles per second.

The question is what is the sun traversing? Is this the speed of the sun? The distance from here to the sun? Or is this the speed of light figure?

Ole Christensen Romer was a Danish astronomer who first took a stab at the speed of light calculations around 1676. Yet Sāyaṇācārya is talking of this speed during his age in the 1300's.

Today we know this speed as 186,282.397 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters / sec . Sāyaṇācārya's number is 185,787.94 / 186,282.397 = 99.735% of todays calculations.


praṇām

1. in Sāyaṇācārya's comment , there is no reference of where he had attained this information - and I am still looking.

saidevo
14 October 2009, 10:21 AM
For more discussions:

How did Indians know about the speed of light even before it was discovered in 1675?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060821214129AAYhwu5

devotee
14 October 2009, 10:25 AM
That is a wonderful piece of information, Yajvan ji. It is amazing ! :)

Eastern Mind
14 October 2009, 12:10 PM
That is a wonderful piece of information, Yajvan ji. It is amazing ! :)

Totally agreed. How does this Yajvan guy do it .. comes up with this stuff?

For your last bit, Yajvan, I see 3 possibilities.

1) It was passed down orally or otherwise from ancient ancient times such as Lemuria.
2) The Indian science at the time had calculated it in a similar way to we do now.
3) Sayanacarya went inside himself to the 'all knowledge exists' place or to the akashic library and got the info there.

Which choice are you leaning to?

Aum Namasivaya

yajvan
14 October 2009, 06:29 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

Namasté EM



1) It was passed down orally or otherwise from ancient ancient times such as Lemuria.
2) The Indian science at the time had calculated it in a similar way to we do now.
3) Sayanacarya went inside himself to the 'all knowledge exists' place or to the akashic library and got the info there.

Which choice are you leaning to?

Some say ṛta ऋत (or write ṛtam ऋतम्) becomes established within the individual as one evolves. This ṛta is defined as right, or proper yet means enlightened , luminous, insightful, sincere, unblemished. Some call it unalloyed or pure.
But it is much more - it is called out in the Yogadarśana of Patañjali ( the yoga-sūtra-s) Chapt 1, 48th sūtra, as ṛtam-bharā prajñā. This means essential cognition i.e. how one perceives the world, is filled with truth.
Perhaps Sāyaṇācārya was established in this ṛta ऋत - then all that is wished to be known is known. When asked of my teacher, 'what if we wished to know how many elephants there are on this planet?' Then it is known, said he.

Some think this knowledge on the speed of light appears in other śastra-s and Sāyaṇācārya read it there. This could be. Yet somewhere down the 'food chain' someone had the cognition of this speed of light within their own consciousness me thinks.


praṇām


a bit deeper:
ṛtam ऋतम्+ bharā भर + prajñā प्रज्णा = ṛtam (luminous, insightful unalloyed, pure) + bharā ( bearing, bestowing, carrying) + pra (great) + jñā ( to know). One perceives only the Truth. Some call this unalloyed, unvarnished great truth and becomes a part of one's daily vision. This is the practical value of knowledge + experience.

yajvan
14 October 2009, 07:22 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

Namasté



Some say ṛta ऋत (or write ṛtam ऋतम्) becomes established within the individual as one evolves.

Perhaps an example of this ( since we're talking of light) would be Einstein. He did very little experimenting and more thinking of how the laws of the universe work. "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details" said Einstein.


His E=Mc² , how more simpler and elegant can one get? This first must come from insight, image, cognition.
Einstein said, "The only real valuable thing is intuition." It is this ṛtam that grooms and nurtures intuition.

But you said you were talking of light? Where is this light in this post? Most know the c in the E=Mc² equation is light. If I were doing it I would have called it L for light :) . Why is 'c' used?

As I understand it 'c' stands for constant. A recent NOVA program said the 'c' also stood for celeritas, a Latin word meaning 'swiftness'; so this 'c' offers a nice double meaning for one to appreciate.

I leave you with the brilliance of Einstein as he said the following (circa 1954)
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty… The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self …

praṇām

TatTvamAsi
15 October 2009, 12:48 AM
A wonderful piece of information.

Thank you Yajvan.

Namaskar.

Gotam
29 October 2009, 05:59 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~



This nimeṣa time as I have looked about is suggested to be 16/75th's of 1 second or 0.21333 seconds. Hence 1/2 half nimeṣa ( as it is stated in Sāyaṇācārya's commentą) is 0.10667 seconds.

So in 1/2 a nimeṣa (0.10667 seconds) the sun, says Sāyaṇācārya, travels 2202 yojana-s or roughly 19,818 miles ( 9 miles X 2202 yojana-s). How far is this in 1 second?

1 second / 0.10667 seconds = 9.3741. Take 19,818 miles x 9.3741 and this gives us 185,787.94 miles per second.

The question is what is the sun traversing? Is this the speed of the sun? The distance from here to the sun? Or is this the speed of light figure?

Ole Christensen Romer was a Danish astronomer who first took a stab at the speed of light calculations around 1676. Yet Sāyaṇācārya is talking of this speed during his age in the 1300's.

Today we know this speed as 186,282.397 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters / sec . Sāyaṇācārya's number is 185,787.94 / 186,282.397 = 99.735% of todays calculations.


praṇām

1. in Sāyaṇācārya's comment , there is no reference of where he had attained this information - and I am still looking.

Namaste yajvan,

your figure for half a nimesa is rounded, of course. Otherwise you would need infinite posting space. Now I wondered if the outcome would be more accurate if we rounded "a few digits farther right", and actually, I got the figure 185.793867, which is more precise. If on top of that, 16/75th is also an approximation, or if the unit of distance is a rounded figure, Sāyaṇācārya might very well have been 100% correct.

I do not know how often enlightened people are still interested in practical and scientific matters, but could not the introspective depth offered by yoga practice have contributed in some cases to scientific insight? On a much more modest level, my personal experience points in that direction.

And look at how this man started his career. Homeopathy had been so discredited that it seemed doomed to disappear from the face of the earth, and then:
He tells how he was living in South Africa more than 40 years ago when he met a guru who had been in India. 'I remember he said: "Come, I will give you enlightenment. But I will also give you medicine." ' The medicine turned out to be homeopathy.
http://www.vithoulkas.com/content/view/203/9/lang,en/

I think it was a Hindu sage who gave Vithoulkas the task of reviving homeopathy all over the world, in India, but I may be confusing with the event related on this webpage. I have his biography on the shelf in front of me, but no time to look it up, sorry.

Gotam
29 October 2009, 06:02 PM
This quotation from Einstein is in fact an answer to the question in my previous post.