Fw: H-ASIA: Probability in Ancient India (comment)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank F Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2011 8:58 PM
Subject: H-ASIA: Probability in Ancient India (comment)

> H-ASIA
> June 18, 2011
>
> A comment re: posting Probability in Ancient India
> **************************************************
> From: Michael Witzel <witzel@fas.harvard.edu>
>
> With reference to yesterday's posting on
> "Probability in Ancient India":
>
> The scientific claims made in this message
> apart, the note certainly is not historical
> but another case of "Antiquity Frenzy":
> commonly found nationalistic claims to be/
> to have "the oldest" (whatever). <http://
> www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/delusions/antiquity.html>
>
> > This note is just to bring to the notice
> of Asian historians that probability too
> originated in India, where the game of
> dice is described in detail in the RgVeda
> (ca.-4000 CE), though bad translations like
> those of H. H. Wilson could not capture
> the spirit of that poetic description.
>
> Dating the Rgveda (RV), the oldest Indian text,
> at 4000 BCE is common with traditionalists,
> but runs afoul of the scientic facts:
>
> The RV is full of horses and chariots, but
> horse-drawn, spoke wheel chariots were
> invented only around 2000 BCE (either in the
> Ural steppes or in Mesopotamia, scholars disagree);
> and: the steppe animal, the horse (equus
> caballus), was absent in South Asia until it
> was introduced from the steppes around 1800/
> 1700 BCE (just as in Mesopotamia and Egypt).
>
> Other (inscriptional, linguistic, and
> archeological) data point to composition of
> the RV around 1400-1000 BCE.
>
> As for Wilson, this early Sayana-inspired
> translation (1888) is certainly outdated in
> several respects. Even the contemporary
> translations by Oldenberg and M.Müller
> (Sacred Books of the East) and others are
> better and closer to the original meaning
> of the text. Since then, there have been
> many other translations.
>
> > The game of dice also played a key
> role in precipitating the Mahabharata
> war (traditional date-3100 CE). The
> epic clearly has a notion of a fair
> game, hence some notion of unbiased
> dice and consequently probability.
>
> The "dice" game (from RV 10.34 onward) is not
> one played with cube dice (found already in
> the Indus Civilisation), but one of grasping a
> handful of the 150 Vibhitaka nuts thrown.
> They must devisable by 4.
>
> See H. Falk, Bruderschaft und Würfelspiel, 1986,
> for the most recent update. The Nala story about
> leaves (below) actually hints at this.
>
> > The game of dice is related to sampling
> theory in the romantic story of Nala
> and Damayanti, where a king knowledgeable
> in dice (and a prospective suitor for
> Damayanti) explains to her husband Nala
> how to count the number of leaves in a
> tree. (Sad that romance, like poetry,
> never mixes with serious science in
> the West!)
>
> Thus, there are no "permutations and combinations"
> as in playing with cube dice but there is just
> the question of the remainder being divisible by
> 4 and whether the rest is 3, 2, or -- worst- 1 nut
> left (kali). As in the Yuga theory.
>
> > Early Indian mathematical texts had
> worked out the theory of permutations and
> combinations. More details are in my paper,
> "Probability in Ancient India" published
> in the Handbook of Philosophy of Science,
> vol 7. Philosophy of Statistics, Elsevier,
> 2011, a draft version of which is available
> at http://
> ckraju.net/papers/Probability-in-Ancient-India.pdf.
>
> This paper has the erroneous idea about cubes (due
> to old translations), when the translation of
> the Gambler Hymn in the RV 10.34.8 says:
> "The 53 dice dance like the sun playing with its
> rays" -- while the text clearly says " the 3 times
> 50 (tripancaasah) [vibhidaka nuts 10.4.1] play..."
> -- As expected...
>
> [See: Miyakawa, Hisashi: Die altindischen
> Grundzahlwörter im Rigveda [Indologica], Diss.
> 2001, or Miyakawa, Hisashi: Die Grundzahlwörter
> im ältesten indischen Literaturwerk, dem
> Rigveda. Dettelbach : Röll, 2003]
>
> Cheers!
> Michael Witzel
>
>
> Michael Witzel
> witzel@fas.harvard.edu
> <www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm>
>
> Dept. of Sanskrit & Indian Studies,
> Harvard University
> 1 Bow Street,
> Cambridge MA 02138, USA
> phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295, 496 8570,
> fax 617 - 496 8571;
> my direct line: 617- 496 2990
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