Chennai: Science tells us that water evaporates and turns clouds into rain bearing ones. But the same scientific fact is mentioned in ancient Tamil religious literature too, said K. Sambandan. There is a verse in the Thiruvembavai, which talks of how sea water evaporates and makes clouds heavy with moisture. Again scientists for a long time said the atom could not be split, until it was proved otherwise. But centuries ago, the Tamil poet Kambar wrote of the splitting of the atom in his Kamba Ramayanam.
He writes about Lord Narayana’s Narasimha avatara and recounts how Prahlada is taunted by his father Hiranyakasipu. The asura, Hiranyakasipu, asks his son Prahlada where Lord Narayana resides. Prahlada replies that He resides not only in an atom, but if an atom were to be split into a hundred parts, He would still be in every one of those parts. Thus an ancient Tamil treatise talks of the splitting of the atom, thereby showing that the ancient Tamils were aware of the possibility that an atom could be split. But while we respect the findings of scientists, we are not even aware of what has been said in our religious literature about scientific facts.
In science there is a paradox called the Twin Paradox. Suppose there is a pair of twins. One of them lives on the earth, but the more adventurous one takes off in a spacecraft and travels to some other planet. He returns some years later. The twin who chose to live in Earth is found to be older than the twin who traveled to another planet. They are twins, and yet, one, by virtue of his being on a planet other than earth, is younger. Our Hindu religious literature makes a similar point. We are told that one year on the earth is the equivalent of just a day in the life of a celestial. So we have in Hindu mythology, an idea similar to the Twin Paradox of Physics. Unfortunately, we only value what comes from the West. We do not know of the valuable information and knowledge that is there in ancient Sanskrit and Tamil religious works.
Our ancestors did not lack in wisdom or knowledge. It is for us to realise the treasure of knowledge that is there in our Sanskrit and Tamil religious literature.
