232 dhruv raina
Notwithstanding the prejudices of the Europeans of the last century in favour of
their own abilities, some of the fi rst members of the royal society were suffi ciently
enlightened to consider the East Indies and China & c, as new worlds of science that
remained undiscovered... had they not too hastily concluded that to be lost, which
nothing but the prejudice of ignorance and obstinacy, had prevented being found,
we might at this time [be] in possession of the most fi nished productions of Asia
as well as Europe; the sciences might, in consequence, have been carried to a much
higher degree of perfection with us than they are at present; and the elegance and
superiority of the Asiatic models might have prevented the neglect and depravity
of geometry, and that inundation of Algebraic barbarism which has ever since the
time of Descartes, both vitiated taste, and overrun the publications, of most of the
philosophical societies in Europe. 20
Th e encounter with other non-European scientifi c traditions was encour-
aged by the ideological impulse to advance the frontiers of knowledge.
In that sense Burrow’s philosophy of science resonated with that of the
Enlightenment thinkers. Th e most striking feature of the above passage is
that the Indian tradition for Burrow is still not characterized as algebraic
or geometric. In fact, at this point the characterization is the very reverse
of the late nineteenth century where Indian mathematics is constituted as
one that is algebraic in spirit at the expense of geometry. Th is nineteenth-
century portraiture of Indian mathematics depicted the traditions as alge-
braic or algorithmic, and as one where the geometric side of mathematics
was underdeveloped. Modern European mathematics since Descartes, in
Burrow’s words, had been overwhelmed by ‘algebraic barbarism’. An expo-
sure to Asiatic models would then have prevented the neglect of geometry
that marked contemporary sciences. I do not know if one could interpose
the suggestion that there may have been some Anglo-French rivalry at
stake. But then that is not immediately germane to the construction. Th e
relevant concern here is that until the end of the eighteenth century some
British Indologists still entertained the hope that they would discover Indian
geometrical texts that would unveil to them the foundations of an Indian
geometrical tradition. Th us Playfair would in 1792 pose six questions to
the researchers of the Asiatic Society, the fi rst of which was: ‘Are any books
to be found among the Hindus, which treat professedly of Geometry?’ 21
Playfair was thus asking if it were possible to identify elements of a corpus
of knowledge albeit in a diff erent disguise that could be considered geom-
etry in the sense in which it was conceived in Europe. For one it could be20 Burrow 1783 (1971): 94–5.
21 Playfair 1792 : 151.