Old Ancient Scientists, who didn’t get the Nobel Prize!

 Our Sanskrit Day! We hardly celebrate the glory of our past...

We all rave about the noble prize winners and scientists' achievements, whose names continue to resonate. Most of their names become a part of our text books as titles of many theories, hypothesis or formula. Least we know is about the 7 scientists whose origin was in this country who were the cause in the matter. However, in the making of our history, they became less known, neither for their achievements nor as a part of our history. 

One of them is Agastya, who lived for centuries, and the reasons for lot of scientific practices (we called them rituals) followed even today. Agasthya muni was one of the 7 renowned Vedic sages (scientist in today's context), and an influential scholar of the Indian subcontinent. He is more popular with his works 'Agastya Samhita' and 'Naadi Shastra', both the works respectively based on medicines and astronomy as he was very strong in them. He is often known as the father of traditional Indian medicine among many other streams of knowledge. He is believed to have given the description and instructions for the creation of medicines for many types of ailments such as fevers, cancer, treatments for impotence, abdominal problems, brain and eye problems, bone problems, etc. I always thought it was only Shushruta and Charaka... curious to know more?

-      - Dr. Roopa Lakshmi, Founder and MD, WELLBEEING, an Integrated Health Services, Bangalore