HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN INDIA 65 service for the Oiture historian by discovering manuscripts and making translations available. But-the history of science they wrote could not throw light on the processes by which science in India came to be stifled The nationalist historians treated the achievements of the past as cultural embellishments to glorify the past civilisation and in extolling these achievements completely ignored the devastating effects on Indian science of "the absence of logic, contempt for mundane reality, the inability to work at manual and menial tasks, emphasis upon learning basic formulas by rote with the secret meaning to be expounded by a high guru and respect for tradition backed by fictitious ancient authority'5.3 Relegating such factors to the status of alien "super-impositions" results in the failure to explain why "science had ceased to be, or had failed to become a real force in the life of society1>?.4 Editorially the volumes would have been more effective had cross-references and notes on the articles been provided. This would have prevented confusions which now arise because one finds a lot of obvious but unexplained contradictions in the conclusions arrived at by various authors. For example, while Stcherbatsky's article maintains that "the physiological concepts of the Indians are not based on observation, for the Indians were afraid of touching a dead body because of their religious convictions'' (p 13), B N Seal's piece asserts that "in Anatomy the Plindus went one step further; they practised dissection on dead bodies for purposes of demonstration" (p 37). However, the volumes edited by D P Chattopadhyaya deserve unequivocal commendation for providing sufficient material and stimulation for serious students of the history of science in India not to allow scientific spirit and enquiry to be drowned in the current caca-phoney of obscurantism. RAJENDRA PRASAD* 1 F Engels, Dialectics of Mature, p 13. 2 Ibid, 3 D D Kosambi, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India, pp 174-175. 4 Farrington, Greek Science^ p 302. t Editorial Stdfl, Peopled Democracy, Nc\v Delhi