4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST maintain and reproduce a society divided into a leisured minority and a toiling majority, that is, in Indian terminology, into the dvijas and sudras. The loudest and crudest spokesmen in favour of this social ^norm9 were of course the Indian law-givers., who, as we shall see, decreed against everything that makes natural science possible. But it will be a partial view of the situation in ancient India to take note only of what was enforced by law. Another factor, which acted as a powerful destructive force for science was the manner in which the same political requirement corrupted the general philosophical climate in the country. Some of the ablest luminaries in ancient Indian thought used their intellectual resources only to inhibit the growth of natural science. From the viewpoint of science at any rate, this constitutes the most negative feature of ancient Indian culture. Philosophers with superb skill were used as helpless pawns in the grim political game of the vested interests sensing danger in science. In the Indian context, however, this story is not easily told. There is a great deal of veneration in the popular mind not only for the political requirements that lead to the condemnation of science but also for the spokesmen thereof. For centuries people have been made to believe that these requirements are divinely ordained, just as their spokesmen are but inspired sages recording only direct revelation. The belief is baseless no doubt. But the technical difficulty it creates for discussing the ancient Indian situation is not to be minimised. The alarm which could possibly be caused in the popular mind by too sudden a departure from the age-old veneration for certain institutions and ideas may as well be avoided. One way of avoiding it is to begin with a similar experience in another country—in the distant Mediterranean coast—in which our own ancestors were not directly involved. ANCIENT GREECE King What do you call the play? Hamlet The Mouse-trap. Many, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna : Gonzago is the duke's name, his wife Baptista : you shall see anon : 'tis a knavish piece of work : but what o' that? Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. In the history of Europe, science and philosophy do not have separate beginnings. The e 'first philosophers" of ancient Greece were also the acknowledged pioneers of natural science. They arc usually called the early lonians, for they belong to lonia—a district in the western coast of Asia Minor, colonised by the Greeks before any definite historical record. The first step to natural science, which is also the first step to philosophy, was taken by them roughly in the 7th-6th century B C.