Science in the modern world is an international enterprise that benefits people from all over the world; it is studied by people from all over the world, and people from all over the world contribute to it in various measures. But these global and transcultural aspects of science are recent in humanity's long history. In more ancient times, scientific minds generally explored and labored independently, with little or no knowledge of the details of what others were doing elsewhere. Nevertheless, through trade and conquest there used to be periodic interactions and sporadic intermingling of ideas and insights.

With the emergence of modern science in Western Europe in the seventeenth century and its drastic new methodology that began to bear abundant fruits, one began to think that there was neither science nor mathematics in the ancient world. This ignorance morphed into an arrogance that looked upon all ancients as barren in scientific output.

But the discovery of the writings of ancient Greek thinkers led to a further serious quest for information about the past. In the nineteenth century, a wealth of Babylonian and Egyptian science was uncovered, and soon many scientific treasures of China and India were also uncovered. Of equal interest was how those treasures were interchanged and why some of them lost their luster even where they originated.

We owe a good deal to the countless scholars and historians who pieced together much of the sciences of ancient civilizations. So was created a vast body of knowledge about the sciences that blossomed in various parts of the world. The search continues to throw new light on little known facts and distorted visions of ancient creativity.

But much of this fascinating information about ancient science lies in scholarly journals and treatises. We need other scholars to make all this accessible to the average educated reader. This slim volume accomplishes precisely that with clarity and elegance. Its author Alok Kumar is a Distinguished Professor who has a long list of scholarly publications to his credit. Besides technical science that he has practiced and taught he has also delved into the history of science and probed as a scholar into Hindu and Arab science. His vision of science is broad and universal.

The book begins with the Hindu approach to knowledge, clearly showing that the quest for truth has always been regarded in that culture with reverence, and the teacher invariably treated with respect. Every search for knowledge was done in the broader framework of understanding the nature of ultimate reality and the relevance of human consciousness that is engaged in the quest.

The book offers systematic discussions on the contributions of ancient Hindu thinkers to the number system and to geometry and trigonometry, as well as Hindu evaluations of pi. Here, as elsewhere, the book explains how Hindu mathematics spread and impacted frameworks in other civilizations. In this context, what the author does not point out is that although various Hindu (Sanskrit) texts were translated into Chinese, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and European languages, there does not seem to be a single classic of another culture rendered into Sanskrit. This may explain why there are not many references to or acknowledgment of alien authors in ancient Hindu writings.

Ancient Hindu Science considers in detail Hindu astronomy with references to calendar and cosmology, as well as to the famed observatory of Ujjain (which it aptly describes as the “Greenwich of the Ancient World”). It also narrates how Hindu astronomy spread to the Middle East, China, and Europe. Other topics discussed in detail are the notions of space, time, and matter (physics), mining and metallurgy (chemistry), as well as ecology, medicine, and surgery in ancient India.

This book presents in a systematic, well‐organized, and amply referenced way the entire range of contributions of ancient Hindus to science. It also traces how thoughts and insights that emerged in India were received, appreciated, and extended by thinkers in many other parts of the world, especially in Europe and America. The style and level of presentation is within reach of any educated person. The book is thus a very valuable addition to the growing literature on the subject. In his Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (190) Morris Kline noted, “It is fairly certain that Hindus did not appreciate the significance of their own contribution.” True or not what is fairly certain is that, aside from specialists in the field, the world does not appreciate fully the contributions to science that ancient Hindus had made. This book does much to remedy this misunderstanding.

One may wonder why the author chose to describe it Hindu science rather than Indic science: a title that this reviewer would have preferred since Jaina and Buddhist thinkers also contributed to some of these profound ideas in ancient India. But the author has explained clearly in the preface his reason for choosing his title. Although the term Hindu itself is of alien vintage, it has become an ethnically sensitive epithet in modern India. For many decades, now there have been movements to emphasize the Hindu roots of modern India. The modern West is not Christian, but its cultural roots are largely Christian. So it is with modern India: a modern secular democracy with roots that are decidedly Hindu. From that point of view, this book is appropriately titled.

The book is bound to enlarge the reader's understanding and vision of science as a major factor in modern global civilization.