Distance from Sun to Earth in RgVeda

[Usha Sanka]

​Namaste

Just wanted to share this interesting piece of information.

-itthaM vinItA

उषा

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Idea about Distance from Sun to Earth in RgVeda-

Perhaps, the great Indian talents in the Vedic age
had the knowledge of the speed of light.
G.V.Raghavrao in his book quotes a verse from
Rigveda (I, 50-4) Yojananam Sahasta Dwe Dwe Shate
Dwe Cha Yojane Aken Nimishardhena Krammana
Namostute. In this verse, the author pays respects to
the one (the reference is to the sun light) who moves
2202 yojans in half nimish. Yojan is a quite common
unit in India, it means 4 kose, each kose measuring
8000 British yards and each yard measuring 0.9144 m.
The definition of the time unit nimish can be found in
Shrimadbhagwat 11-3 to 10) where it is mentioned
that 15 nimishas make 1 kashta, 15 kashtas make one
laghu, 30 laghus make 1 muhurta and 30 muhurtas
make 1 diva-ratri. A diva-ratri is, of course, a
day-night which is 24 hours in modern language. When
you convert 2202 yojans per half nimish into SI units,
it turns out to be 3.0 x 10 8 m/s up to two significant
digits, a value quite accurate as we know it today.

​from--Pg 444
CONCEPTS OF PHYSICS
[PART 1]
H C VERMA, PhD
Department of Physics
IIT, Kanpur
Published by
BHARATI BHAWAN (Publishers & Distributors)
4271/3 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, NEW DELHI 110 002
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Mantra reference-
तथा च स्मर्यते योजनानां सहस्रं द्वे द्वे शते द्वे च योजने एकेन निमिषार्धेन क्रममाण नमोऽस्तुते॥ सायण ऋृग्वेद भाष्य 1.50.4

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayana

Given that a yojana was equivalent to about 8 km and a nimesha to about 106.7 ms[citation needed], Sayana's approximation to the speed of light comes to about 330000 km/s, which is only 10% higher than the actual value of c as determined by modern scientific experiments.

Computer scientist and Indologist historian Subhash Kak describes that the Vayu Purana (ch. 50) has a similar passage, where the "speed of the Sun" is exactly 1/18th of Sayana's value. He claims that although a "rationalist" may dismiss the proximity of Sayana's value to the physical constant as simply coincidence, there is evidence of "scientific foreknowledge" in the ancient Indian vedas.[3]

​----------------------

This page has some more details-

​

http://hindi.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/seekers/science-of-spirituality/content-357632

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"-यद्गत्वा न निवर्तन्ते तद्धाम परमं मम"

[narayan prasad]

What has been quoted is the statement by Sayana (14th c. AD) in his commentary. It has nothing to do with the Rigveda as such.

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

+१! तथा सूर्यस्य वेग उक्तो न प्रकाशस्य - 

"tatha cha smaryate yojananam sahastrm dve dve shate dve cha yojane ekena nimishardhena kramaman namöstute."

"तथा च स्मर्यते योजनानां सहस्त्रं द्वे द्वे शते द्वे च योजने एकेन निमिषार्धेन क्रममाण नमोऽस्तुते॥"

"[O Sun,] bow to you, who traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha."

अपि च "sanskrit-programmers" इत्येतेषां रुचये नास्तीदम्।

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--
Vishvas /विश्वासः

[Usha Sanka]

Thank you for this information.

I shall try to inform the same to the publishers of that popular Physics text book - to add the detail in their next edition.

And- 

shared here, because I just had thought that it would interest and inspire anyone working with Samskrt. 

[Shreevatsa R]

There is a reasonably good overview of this coincidence, giving more context and accompanied by a plausible hypothesis of how this number came to be, in Subhash Kak's "The Speed of Light and Puranic Cosmology" http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9804020 (Note: although it's filed under "physics", it's very much an article about puranic cosmology).

The summary is that this number comes from a model of the universe that is entirely different from the standard physics model, and it's only coincidence that a speed of the sun postulated in a particular Puranic model happens to match the speed of light from the standard physics model.