Abraham Seidenberg

Quotes

• “‘Greece and India have a common heritage that cannot have derived from Old-Babylonia, i.e., the Old-Babylonia of about 1700 B.C.’ (Seidenberg 1978)”
• “‘A comparison of Pythagorean and Vedic mathematics together with some chronological consideration showed that the current view [of Greek influence on Vedic thought] is not tenable. A common source for the Pythagorean and Vedic mathematics is to be sought either in the Vedic mathematics [i.e. the Sulbasutras] or in an older mathematics very much like it.’ (Seidenberg 1978)”
• “I think its mathematics [of the common source] was very much like what we see in the Sulbasutras. (Seidenberg 1978)”
• “[…] nor did he [Thibaut] formulate the obvious conclusion, namely, that the Greeks were not the inventors of plane geometry, rather it was the Indians. At least this was the message that the Greek scholars saw in Thibaut’s paper. And they didn’t like it.”
• “If the Indians invented plane geometry, what was to become of Greek ‘genius’ or of the Greek ‘miracle’?”

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