India is a country with a long civilisational history dating back to a few millennia before the common Era. Several recent research on the antiquity of the Indian civilisation have brought out newer evidence to indigenous knowledge in multiple domains. This includes, linguistics, arts, religion, spirituality, culture, mathematics and astronomy, science and technology, health and wellness, town planning, and public administration, to name a few. Despite having such a rich repository of knowledge, these ideas have not found place in modern day educational system in India.
The public policy under the British rule chose to deemphasise the indigenous knowledge system and instead crafted an alternative one based on Western knowledge. This became the basis for imparting education in India during the last 200 years. Consequently, the educational system currently in vogue in India has relied purely on the Western sources, which are relatively of recent origin. This has created a discontinuity in the Indian Knowledge System.
There has however been a renewed interest among the Indian society to reconnect with the past. While plenty of material is available in Sanskrit and other regional languages on Indian Knowledge System (IKS), they are not suitable for use in a formal University education. The existing knowledge repository needs to be distilled and rewritten lucidly and arranged in a structured fashion in the form of a textbook so that a curriculum could be designed to offer a semester long course in the Universities.
The book Introduction to Indian Knowledge System: Concepts & Applications is a culmination of multiple efforts of the authors in fulfilling this need. This book seeks to fill in the gap for offering a required course on IKS, recently mandated by AICTE. Moreover, the National Education Policy (NEP) has also provided a clear trajectory for imparting IKS in the higher education curriculum, necessitating a book of this kind in several higher education institutions in the country in the days to come.
The proposed textbook seeks to introduce the epistemology and ontology of IKS to the Engineering and Science students in a way they can relate, appreciate and explore further should there be a keen interest in the matter. After a brief section on the key concepts of IKS (about 20%), the remaining part of the book traces IKS and brings out the applications. After a formal and a concise introduction to IKS the book provides certain foundational concepts that are applicable across all domains of Science & Engineering (such as number systems, knowledge frameworks etc.). These form the second part. The Science applications are laid out in part 3, Engineering applications in part 4 and other important topics in the final part of the book.
The authors have rich expertise and background in both “mainstream issues” and “traditional knowledge” to present IKS in a contextually relevant fashion. They have delicately balanced the “why” or “how” of IKS and the “what” of IKS. Although the book has been primarily developed for use by the Engineering institutions, the structure and the contents lend itself easily to address the requirement in other University systems (Liberal Arts, Medicine, Science and Management) for such a book. Chapter 1 of the book provides these suggestions. This textbook follows International best practices by incorporating several pedagogical features that will help learning both effective and enjoyable for the students.
India is a country with a long civilisational history dating back to a few millennia before the common Era. Several recent research on the antiquity of the Indian civilisation have brought out newer evidence to indigenous knowledge in multiple domains. This includes, linguistics, arts, religion, spirituality, culture, mathematics and astronomy, science and technology, health and wellness, town planning, and public administration, to name a few. Despite having such a rich repository of knowledge, these ideas have not found place in modern day educational system in India.
The public policy under the British rule chose to deemphasise the indigenous knowledge system and instead crafted an alternative one based on Western knowledge. This became the basis for imparting education in India during the last 200 years. Consequently, the educational system currently in vogue in India has relied purely on the Western sources, which are relatively of recent origin. This has created a discontinuity in the Indian Knowledge System.
There has however been a renewed interest among the Indian society to reconnect with the past. While plenty of material is available in Sanskrit and other regional languages on Indian Knowledge System (IKS), they are not suitable for use in a formal University education. The existing knowledge repository needs to be distilled and rewritten lucidly and arranged in a structured fashion in the form of a textbook so that a curriculum could be designed to offer a semester long course in the Universities.
The book Introduction to Indian Knowledge System: Concepts & Applications is a culmination of multiple efforts of the authors in fulfilling this need. This book seeks to fill in the gap for offering a required course on IKS, recently mandated by AICTE. Moreover, the National Education Policy (NEP) has also provided a clear trajectory for imparting IKS in the higher education curriculum, necessitating a book of this kind in several higher education institutions in the country in the days to come.
The proposed textbook seeks to introduce the epistemology and ontology of IKS to the Engineering and Science students in a way they can relate, appreciate and explore further should there be a keen interest in the matter. After a brief section on the key concepts of IKS (about 20%), the remaining part of the book traces IKS and brings out the applications. After a formal and a concise introduction to IKS the book provides certain foundational concepts that are applicable across all domains of Science & Engineering (such as number systems, knowledge frameworks etc.). These form the second part. The Science applications are laid out in part 3, Engineering applications in part 4 and other important topics in the final part of the book.
The authors have rich expertise and background in both “mainstream issues” and “traditional knowledge” to present IKS in a contextually relevant fashion. They have delicately balanced the “why” or “how” of IKS and the “what” of IKS. Although the book has been primarily developed for use by the Engineering institutions, the structure and the contents lend itself easily to address the requirement in other University systems (Liberal Arts, Medicine, Science and Management) for such a book. Chapter 1 of the book provides these suggestions. This textbook follows International best practices by incorporating several pedagogical features that will help learning both effective and enjoyable for the students.
