Greek Myths- No 1

'Claudius Ptolemy' supposedly lived in ~150 CE Egypt. And whatever Egyptian/Babylonian epistemic knowledge he had is treated as 'Greek Knowledge' without question. And western historians have been telling us,

"Aryabhata got his astronomy from Greeks"

Lets see

How do we know the Almagest was written in the 2nd century? We DONT. Noone talks of him or uses his work until it magically appears in the 12th century when the Arab library of Toledo & its manuscripts is stolen by the church & Gérard of Cremona creates a 'Latin' version(1175 CE)

But the Church historians still had a problem. In order to show that the pagan knowledge was Greek they needed a Greek original. That magically surfaced in the 15th century. So now,

'Unknown text' -->Accreted Arab Al Majisti-->Latin-->'Original Greek text'

Almost funny!

The text shows continuous knowledge accretion from many sources- Persian, Indian, Egyptian, Arab. It is now proven that its observations have all been back calculated in Medieval times. It's tables have resemblance and anachronistic accuracy only attainable by Indian numerals.

The current text opens with a reference to 'Cyrus' - obviously an Iranian name. The Zoroastrian library at Gundeshapur fell to Islamic invasion(638 CE) and supplied Indic mathematical, medical and astronomical knowledge to the Baghdad house of wisdom & Toledo.

And yet, using this flimsy, laughable textual tradition and no historical proof whatsoever, racist historians like Neugebauer, Pingree and their successors have been trying to prove that the Almagest is the origin of the astonomy in the Indian Siddhanta texts.

What does all this mean?
If Ptolemy existed and he wrote a text called Almagest, the manuscript that survives today is completely different in content & scope. It does not represent the knowledge of 2nd century Greece. It represents the accumulated knowledge in 12th CE Europe.

As you can see, there is far more evidence for showing that 'Indian Astronomy influenced the Greek' compared to what Pingree has offered to show the reverse 'Greek influence on Aryabhatta'

Indians have never tried to undermine other cultures. But maybe it is time we did.