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‘The World Rests on the Back of a Tortoise’: Science and mythology in Indian history*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2015

PRATIK CHAKRABARTI  and
JOYDEEP SEN
PRATIK CHAKRABARTI
Affiliation:
Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]
JOYDEEP SEN
Affiliation:
Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article traces the consilience of science and mythology in the history of fossil research in India: this is a narrative in which Indian fossil research met the Orientalist discovery of the Indian past. It demonstrates that in exploring the geological evolution of Indian fossils, British researchers such as Hugh Falconer invoked animals from the Puranas, picking up on a tradition of mythological hermeneutics first developed in India by the likes of William Jones. In exploring the nuances of this intellectual approach, the article thus identifies a hitherto obscured historical trajectory regarding the making of geology in colonial India.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 808 - 840
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The research is funded by the Leverhulme Trust project, ‘An Antique Land: Geology, Philology and the Making of the Indian Subcontinent, 1830–1920’, held by Pratik Chakrabarti at the University of Kent/University of Manchester.

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