CHENNAI: Itihasas recount a happening as is and Puranas constitute history, yet these terms have been incorrectly used to simply mean story, Indic scholar Bibek Debroy said while speaking at ThinkEdu Conclave in Chennai on Friday.
Sharing the stage with historian Chitra Madhavan to discuss ‘Bharat’s Itihasa: Wisdom Beyond Time’, Debroy said, “The Puranas have been reduced to a mere recounting of incidents. However, we do not realise that nearly a third of the Mahabharata is about Bhishma laying on a bed of arrows and imparting lessons on Dharma to Yudhishthira and his brothers.”
Talking about scientific data in the Puranas, he listed some examples from sections of texts called Shulba Sutras that contain scientific and mathematical information. The solar sutras, for instance, illustrate the statement of a specific theorem while deducing the value of pi in relation to the dimensions of the earth.
Significant information on other subjects such as geography, geology, grammar, the evolution of language, and governance can be found in the text named Pacham Veda, he said. Asked a question about the difficulties of translating from Sanskrit to English, he said the two languages are structurally different hence, it is very challenging.