Don’t want to nitpick or start another war, but some of the “facts” mentioned at veda.wikidot.com are somewhat misleading. I can’t point to all the WRONGs there, but some, which I know for sure, are as below:
World’s Oldest Civilization: It is very difficult to say which is the OLDEST civilization. For example, the Sumer Civilization pre-dates Harappan civilization. But then there are other city states which also predate Sumerian cities.
Rig Veda being the oldest book: It is somewhat controversial and can’t be said with absolute certainty. The Zoroastrian sacred text Avestha, although said to be younger than Rig Veda by some 500 to 1000 years, may be a contemporary work or little older than Rig Veda. The linguistic similarity is the key to it. Rig Veda and Avestha, both have same gods, narrate some similar incidences, speak of similar rituals etc. It is extremely hard to say which preceded which. It is therefore better to speak of Rig Veda and Avestha, in the same breath, to be SOME of the oldest texts.
Sanskrit, the mother of all languages: Sanskrit may well be ONE of the oldest (Dravidian languages are another) languages, but she is herself a branch (Indo-Iranian) of Proto-Indio-European (PIE) language. The European languages (pardon my generalization) are derived from a Proto-Celtic language family, which itself is another branch of PIE. Sanskrit is far from being the Mother of ALL languages.
Nalanda University: It was a Buddhist University and not a Hindu one, the site fails to mention this important fact. Heun Tsang’s details are somewhat fabricated. The figure of 10,000 students living and studying at a time, does not confirm to the archeological studies undertaken there. It could support, only a fraction of that number.
Baudhayana’s PI: Baudhayana’s Sulbhasastra does not provide the PI value as 3.1416. There are different PI values like, 2.99, 3.00, 3.004, 3.029, 3.047, 3.088, 3.1141, 3.16049 and 3.2022, but not 3.1416.
Baudhayana’s (Pythagorus ?) Theorem: It is TRUE, that the theorem that we call Pythagorus Theorem is clearly mentioned in Baudhayana’s Sulbhasastra, but is only mentioned as a rule. He does not provide any derivation (proof) of the theorem. Neither does he mention if he has copied it from somewhere else. This “somewhere” could well be of Indian origin, or Greek origin (because the same theorem is found to exist in Greece at about a time, slightly preceding Baudhayana) or a common origin, from where both the Indian and Greek could have copied.
Measurement of Time: The equation given, makes use of data, which are spread across the Vedas, Upanishads and even Mahabharata. That is insanely crazy. The period-bias has not been considered.
Extremely Old Universe: The most conservative estimate puts the age at 13.7 billion years. 8.4 billion is certainly far away from the that date. (Ok, I am just nitpicking here)
Sorry did not read any further. There are some truths as well, the numeric system, Zero, etc.
