No instrument

SUSHRUTA — THE ANCIENT INDIAN SCHOOL OF ANATOMY THAT USED WATER AND A BRUSH

Imagine an anatomy lesson 2,000 or more years ago.

There is no modern laboratory.

No stainless-steel dissection table.

No scalpel.

No preservation chemicals.

And yet a surgeon wants to know something every surgeon must know:

What is actually inside the human body?

The answer given in the Sushruta Saṃhitā is extraordinary.

Sushruta is remembered primarily as one of the great figures of ancient Indian surgery. The Sushruta Saṃhitā describes hundreds of surgical procedures and around 120 surgical instruments. Among its procedures are cataract surgery, treatment of bladder stones and reconstructive surgery of the nose using a flap of tissue. Modern historical studies recognise the work as one of the foundational texts of surgical literature.

But surgery has a fundamental requirement:

You cannot become a good surgeon merely by reading about the human body.

You must know the body itself.

And that raises a difficult question.

How did Sushruta teach anatomy?

Śārīra Sthāna, Chapter 5, gives an astonishingly practical answer.

The text describes how a suitable body should be selected—intact, not badly damaged by disease or poison, and with the intestines emptied.

It is then wrapped in materials such as munja grass, kuśa grass, bark or fibre, placed inside a cage, and immersed in water in a secluded place where it will not be carried away or eaten by animals.

Then comes the remarkable part.

Seven nights.

After seven days, the body is removed.

The softened tissues are not simply attacked with a knife.

Instead, Sushruta instructs the student to gently rub and scrape away the tissues layer by layer using a brush-like implement made from grass, hair, bamboo or similar material.

And then:

Look.

Observe what is revealed.

First the skin.

Then what lies beneath it.

Then deeper structures.

Then the internal organs.

The instruction is explicitly about direct observation with one's own eyes.

It is difficult not to see the scientific instinct behind the instruction:

Do not merely believe what the textbook says. Look at the body and compare what you see with what the text says.

Sushruta even states that knowledge becomes stronger when what is described in the śāstra is combined with what is directly observed.

Water became the laboratory

The method is essentially a form of maceration—using water to soften tissues so that structures can be exposed gradually.

The cage had a practical purpose. The text's commentary explains that it helped prevent the body from drifting away and protected it from being eaten by fish and other creatures. The covering also helped preserve the body for observation.

The method sounds primitive to us.

But the principle is remarkably sophisticated:

Prepare the specimen.

Protect it.

Allow the tissues to soften.

Expose the structures gradually.

Observe directly.

Compare observation with received knowledge.

That is the beginning of anatomical investigation.

What did Sushruta think he was seeing?

The text gives detailed enumerations of bodily structures.

It speaks of seven layers of skin, seven kalās, seven āśayas, hundreds of vessels, muscles and snāyus, 300 bones and 210 joints, among many other structures.

Some of these classifications do not correspond to modern anatomical categories, and many of the numerical counts differ substantially from modern anatomy.

That is not a reason to dismiss the achievement.

Ancient anatomy should not be judged as though it were a modern medical textbook.

What matters historically is that Sushruta insisted upon direct examination of the human body and designed a practical procedure for doing so.

And then there is Europe

The comparison with the later history of European anatomy is fascinating—but it needs some care.

Human dissection did not disappear completely from Europe, and it is too simple to say that “church law prohibited it” everywhere. There were important earlier traditions, particularly in ancient Alexandria, and medieval European practices included autopsies and some animal dissection.

But systematic educational human dissection became established again in European universities much later.

A clear documented example comes from Bologna in 1315, when Mondino de' Liuzzi performed human dissections. His Anatomia, written soon afterward, became an important practical guide to anatomical dissection.

And even after dissection returned, Galen remained enormously influential.

Galen's anatomical knowledge was largely derived from animals, including apes, rather than systematic dissection of human cadavers. Consequently, some of his anatomical conclusions were wrong when applied to humans.

Then came Andreas Vesalius.

In 1543, Vesalius published De Humani Corporis Fabrica.

He performed his own human dissections and challenged anatomical teachings that had been accepted for centuries. His great work made direct observation of the human body central to anatomical science.

The contrast is remarkable.

Sushruta:

Read the texts—but verify them by looking at the body.

Vesalius:

Read Galen—but verify him by dissecting the body.

Separated by well over a millennium, the two represent a similar intellectual principle:

Authority is not enough. Observation matters.

Of course, Sushruta's anatomy was not modern anatomy. His counts, classifications and physiological concepts cannot simply be presented as equivalent to contemporary medical science.

But that makes the anatomical passage no less remarkable.

Because somewhere in ancient India, a surgeon was asking a question that every modern medical student still asks:

“How do I know what is really inside?”

And his answer was wonderfully practical.

Take the body.

Prepare it carefully.

Let nature soften it.

Take a brush.

Expose it layer by layer.

And look for yourself.

No grand laboratory.

No sophisticated equipment.

Just water, a brush, a human body—and the insistence on seeing.

Caturanga

THE CHESSBOARD WAS ONCE AN ARMY

Look at a chessboard.

Sixty-four squares.

Two armies facing each other.

Kings, pawns, knights, rooks, bishops…

It looks like a game.

But more than 1,500 years ago, the idea behind those pieces was something much more serious:

an army preparing for battle.

The Sanskrit word Chaturaṅga means “four-limbed” or “four-part.”

It referred to the four traditional divisions of an ancient Indian army:

Elephants

Cavalry

Chariots

Infantry

These four divisions became the central idea of an ancient Indian war game.

The game was played on an 8 × 8 board, known as the Aṣṭāpada.

The army also had a king, the rāja, and a royal adviser or minister.

Over centuries and across civilizations, these pieces changed their names, movements and powers.

The elephant eventually became the bishop.

The chariot became the rook.

The horse became the knight.

The infantryman became the pawn.

The king remained the king.

And the humble minister eventually became the extraordinarily powerful queen of modern chess.

FROM INDIA TO PERSIA

The game did not remain in India.

By the Sasanian period, a related form of the game was being played in Persia as chatrang.

The Middle Persian work Wizārišn ī Čatrang (“Explanation of Chess”), generally dated to around the 6th–7th century, describes the game in the Sasanian world and preserves the tradition that it came from India. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that Sasanian chess was based on an Indian model. 

From Persian chatrang, the name developed into Arabic shatranj.

The word had travelled with the game.

Chaturaṅga → Chatrang → Shatranj

And the game continued travelling.

Through the Islamic world it eventually reached Europe, where centuries of changes transformed the older game into the chess we know today. 

A LITERARY CLUE FROM INDIA

There is also a beautiful early Indian literary reference.

The Sanskrit poet Bāṇabhaṭṭa, in his 7th-century Harṣacarita, uses the word chaturaṅga in a passage associated with the game and the Aṣṭāpada board. It is among the earliest clear literary references connecting the term with the game. 

So the next time you see a chessboard, look at it differently.

The rook is not merely a rook.

The knight is not merely a knight.

The bishop is not merely a bishop.

They carry echoes of an army described in ancient India:

elephant, horse, chariot and foot soldier.

A battlefield became a board.

War became strategy.

And eventually, an ancient Indian game became one of the world's most enduring intellectual games.

CHESS — THE ANCIENT INDIAN ARMY THAT TRAVELLED THE WORLD.

Rain measure.

THE RAIN GAUGE THAT CAME BEFORE KOREA

Seventeen centuries before Korea's famous Cheugugi, India was already measuring rain.

Look at the humble bowl in the picture.

It does not look like a great scientific instrument.

But according to the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya, written in the Mauryan period, a bowl specifically meant for measuring rainfall was to be placed in front of the state storehouse.

It was called a Varṣamāna — literally, a measure of rain.

And Kauṭilya did not merely say, "Keep a bowl outside."

He specified its size.

The Arthaśāstra says that a kuṇḍa, or bowl, with a mouth one aratni wide — 24 aṅgulas, approximately 18 inches — should be installed as a rain gauge.

This is striking because the Arthaśāstra was not a book on meteorology.

It was a manual of government, administration, agriculture, taxation, trade, defence and public finance.

Rain mattered because agriculture mattered.

And agriculture was the foundation of the state.

Kautilya even knew that different parts of India received different amounts of rain

In Book 2, Chapter 24, while discussing agriculture, Kauṭilya gives regional rainfall figures.

For dry regions, he gives 16 droṇas.

Moist regions received one and a half times that amount.

Aśmaka is given 13½ droṇas.

Avanti is given 23 droṇas.

Some western and Himalayan regions are described as receiving very abundant rainfall.

He goes further.

Rainfall was not simply about how much rain fell.

When it fell mattered too.

Kauṭilya says that a good rainy season was one in which approximately one-third of the rain came in the first and last months, with two-thirds coming in the middle months.

In other words, ancient Indian administrators were thinking about rainfall distribution, not merely rainfall totals.

And the amount of rain was linked to agricultural decisions.

Depending on whether rainfall was plentiful or scarce, the superintendent of agriculture was instructed to choose crops requiring more or less water.

Then came Korea's Cheugugi

Nearly 1,700 years later, in 1441 CE, Korea developed the celebrated Cheugugi during the reign of King Sejong.

By 1442, Korea had established a nationwide system of standardized rainfall measurement.

The instrument had fixed dimensions. Rainwater was collected in it, its depth was measured with a standardized ruler, and rainfall observations were recorded and reported from government offices across the country.

This is why the Korean Cheugugi is rightly regarded as a landmark in the history of systematic quantitative rainfall observation.

But the Indian story is older.

The remarkable point is not simply:

"India had a rain gauge before Korea."

The more interesting point is why the rain gauge existed.

Rain was data.

Data was administration.

For Kauṭilya, rainfall was not an abstract scientific curiosity.

It affected:

what could be planted,

how much could be harvested,

how irrigation should be managed,

and ultimately how the state could plan its agricultural economy.

The Arthaśāstra also records agricultural taxation in terms of produce, while irrigation itself was subject to different charges depending on how water was obtained.

So the ancient Indian state was already thinking in a remarkably practical chain:

Rain → Water → Crops → Produce → Revenue.

That is the real story of the Varṣamāna.

It was not a bowl sitting in a courtyard merely because someone was curious about the weather.

It was a small instrument embedded inside a much larger system of agricultural and administrative knowledge.

And perhaps that is what makes the little bowl so fascinating.

Sometimes the history of science is not found in a grand observatory.

Sometimes it is found in a simple bowl placed outside a granary —

waiting for the monsoon.

Permission to pause.

 There is a special kind of happiness in simply watching rain.

Not travelling.

Not doing.

Not achieving.

Just sitting quietly and watching the sky pour itself onto the earth.

The sound on the roof, the silver curtains of water, the smell of wet earth, the leaves suddenly looking greener, the little rivers forming along the road—all of it seems to slow the world down.

Rain gives us permission to pause.

Perhaps that is its greatest pleasure: nothing is expected of us while it rains.

We can sit by a window with a cup of coffee or tea, watch the drops race down the glass, listen to the rhythm outside—and for a few precious minutes, simply be.

Rain is nature's way of saying:

“Come. Sit quietly. Watch. You don't have to do anything.”

THE ART OF PAUSING — AND WATCHING NATURE

We are always rushing.

We wake up thinking about what has to be done. We move from one task to another, one message to another, one responsibility to another. Even when we are sitting quietly, our minds are often somewhere else.

And in the middle of all this activity, something extraordinary is happening outside our window.

It is raining.

And we may not even notice.

There is a quiet pleasure in stopping whatever we are doing and simply watching.

Watch the rain fall.

Watch the first light of dawn slowly spread across the sky.

Watch the sun rise, changing the colour of the world minute by minute.

Watch the sun set, when the sky seems to pause between day and night.

Watch the clouds gather and travel.

Watch lightning suddenly illuminate the entire sky.

Then listen to the thunder that follows.

Watch a bird sitting quietly on a branch.

Watch leaves moving in the wind.

Watch a flower open in the morning.

None of these things are asking for our attention.

And perhaps that is why they are so precious.

We have forgotten how to watch

We are accustomed to screens that constantly demand our attention.

Something is always happening.

A notification arrives. A message appears. A video begins. Someone wants a response.

Nature is different.

Nature does not send us a notification saying:

“Look! The sun is rising.”

If we are not looking, we miss it.

The sunrise happens whether we see it or not.

The rain falls whether we stop to listen or not.

The evening sky changes colour whether we notice it or not.

Nature is constantly offering us small spectacles—and asking nothing in return.

Pausing is not wasting time

We sometimes feel guilty about sitting and doing nothing.

But perhaps watching nature is not doing nothing.

It is allowing ourselves to be present.

For a few minutes, we are not planning tomorrow or remembering yesterday.

We are simply watching what is happening now.

Rain drops falling on leaves.

Light moving across a wall.

Clouds changing shape.

A bird taking flight.

The first star appearing in the evening.

These tiny moments bring us back to ourselves.

Even thunder and lightning have something to teach us

A storm can be dramatic.

Lightning tears across the darkness. Thunder rolls through the sky. Rain comes down with astonishing force.

And then, gradually, everything becomes quiet again.

There is something humbling about watching such power.

We realise that the world is much larger than our little schedules and worries.

The sky does not hurry.

The clouds do not worry about reaching their destination.

The sun rises without an alarm clock.

The moon appears without being invited.

The seasons change without asking our permission.

Nature has its own rhythm.

Perhaps we need to rediscover ours.

A small daily practice

We don't need a holiday in the mountains to experience this.

Just pause.

For five minutes, put the phone away.

Stand near a window.

Look at the sky.

Watch the rain.

Feel the morning breeze.

Listen to the birds.

Look at the changing light.

At sunset, don't immediately turn away.

Watch the last rays disappear.

And if there is thunder and lightning, instead of merely closing the windows and moving on, stand safely indoors and watch the drama of the sky.

These are free gifts.

And they are available every day.

Perhaps this is one meaning of being alive

Life is not only the big events we remember.

It is also these tiny moments we almost overlook.

A rainy afternoon.

A golden sunrise.

A violet evening.

The sudden flash of lightning.

The sound of distant thunder.

A cool breeze after a hot day.

A bird calling from a tree.

Sometimes happiness does not arrive as an event.

Sometimes it is simply noticed.

Perhaps we don't need to add more things to our lives.

Perhaps, sometimes, we only need to pause long enough to see what is already there.

And nature, patiently and generously, keeps putting on its show.

Every single day.

Exposed.

THEY LAUGHED AT HIS BODY—THEN ASHTAVAKRA EXPOSED THEIR WISDOM

They called themselves learned men.

They knew the scriptures. They could quote sacred texts, debate philosophy and argue subtle points of knowledge.

Then Ashtavakra entered King Janaka’s court.

The scholars looked at his body—bent and twisted in eight places—and burst into laughter.

They saw his body.

Ashtavakra saw their blindness.

And he laughed too.

The court was puzzled.

Why was this young sage laughing when everyone else was laughing at him?

Then came his unforgettable reply.

“I thought I had entered a gathering of wise men. But I find only cobblers here.”

The insult was deliberate—but it was not about their profession.

A cobbler looks at leather.

These scholars, despite all their learning, were looking only at the skin.

They had examined the outer covering and missed the one who lived within it.

They could see whether a body was straight or crooked, beautiful or unattractive, young or old. But they had failed to see the Ātman, the Self, which has no crookedness, no beauty, no ugliness, no age and no physical form.

That was Ashtavakra's lesson.

Knowledge is not the same as wisdom

A person may know hundreds of scriptures and still remain trapped in appearances.

We may know philosophy and yet judge people by their clothes.

We may speak of equality and yet notice someone's status first.

We may discuss the eternal Self and still reduce a human being to age, beauty, wealth, education or physical form.

Words can fill the mind without transforming the way we see.

That is why the story is so uncomfortable.

The crookedness everyone noticed was visible on Ashtavakra's body.

But the deeper crookedness was invisible.

It was in the eyes of those who laughed.

Ashtavakra had not come to prove that his body was beautiful.

He came to show that the body is not the measure of the person.

The body belongs to the world of changing forms.

The Self is the witness of those forms.

And the moment we mistake the outer form for the whole person, we have already stopped seeing.

Perhaps that is why this ancient story still speaks so sharply today.

We have more information than ever before.

We can read thousands of books, listen to lectures, quote philosophers and argue endlessly about what is true.

But the real test of knowledge is much simpler:

Has it changed the way we see another human being?

If we can see only the surface, we may be learned.

If we can see beyond the surface, we are beginning to become wise.

Ashtavakra entered the court with a crooked body.

He left behind a perfectly straight question:

When we look at another person, what are we actually seeing?

The body?

The personality?

The reputation?

Or the same consciousness that looks through our own eyes?

That is the question Ashtavakra placed before King Janaka's court—and, centuries later, before us.

Inspired by the traditional story of Ashtavakra in King Janaka's court. The “cobbler” episode appears in traditional retellings; the wording here is a modern rendering of its teaching, not a direct quotation from the Ashtavakra Gita.

The One Who Cannot Be Seen

If the Ātman can never be seen, how do we know that it exists?

It sounds like a simple question.

But it hides a remarkable assumption:

Must everything that exists be something that can be seen?

We see a tree.

We see a river.

We see another person.

We can hear music, smell a flower, touch a stone.

And then we look for the Ātman.

“Show me the Self.”

But Vedānta asks us to stop and examine the question itself.

Who is asking to see?

The eye sees the world.

But the eye itself is known.

The mind watches thoughts arise and disappear.

But what knows the movement of the mind?

A thought comes:

“I am happy.”

Another comes:

“I am worried.”

Another:

“I don't understand this.”

Each thought changes.

Yet something knows that the thoughts have changed.

Even doubt is known.

So who is the Knower?

This is where the Upaniṣadic teaching becomes extraordinary.

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad says that the Imperishable is “never seen, but is the Witness; never heard, but is the Hearer; never thought, but is the Thinker; never known, but is the Knower.” 

Why can it not be seen?

Because it is not an object before the eyes.

It is the very principle by which seeing is possible.

We cannot turn the Seer into another object and place it in front of the Seer.

That would be like asking:

“Show me the eyes with which I am seeing.”

A mirror can show the appearance of the eyes, but the seeing itself is something different.

The same reasoning is extended to the mind.

We can observe our thoughts.

Therefore, in this philosophical inquiry, the observer cannot simply be identified with any particular thought.

And this is where the word Ātman becomes so profound.

The Self is not being described as another thing hidden somewhere inside the body.

It is being approached as the Witness of experience.

The lamp does not need another lamp

A lamp illuminates other objects.

We don't normally ask:

“What lamp will illuminate the lamp?”

The sun does not require another sun standing beside it to make it visible.

In the same spirit, Vedānta says that Consciousness does not need another consciousness standing outside it to reveal it.

The question has turned completely around.

Instead of asking:

“Where is the Ātman? Show it to me.”

the teaching asks:

“Who is the one asking to see?”

And suddenly the search becomes an inward inquiry.

Not a search for an object.

A recognition of the Seer.

A small historical note

The beautiful image circulating with the Aṣṭāvakra–Bandi conversation should therefore be understood as a modern philosophical reconstruction, rather than a verbatim exchange from the Mahābhārata.

The actual Aṣṭāvakra–Bandi debate in the Vana Parva is itself fascinating: the two engage in an extraordinary contest of numbers, Vedic references and riddles, progressing from one to thirteen. 

The philosophical idea expressed in the image, however, has a very strong Upaniṣadic foundation, particularly in the teachings of Yājñavalkya in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad. 

And perhaps that makes the thought even more beautiful.

A question attributed to Aṣṭāvakra may have been reconstructed in modern language—but the question it raises is genuinely ancient.

Who is the one who sees?

And if you follow that question far enough,

you may discover that the seeker and the Seer were never two.

Rainbow without rain.

Mars Has Rainbow-Colored Clouds 

Look up at the sky on Earth and a rainbow usually means one thing — sunlight passing through raindrops.

But on Mars, something wonderfully different can happen.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has photographed extraordinarily high clouds shimmering with delicate shades of red, green, blue and purple. They look almost like tiny rainbows floating in the Martian sky.

These are called iridescent clouds, sometimes described as “mother-of-pearl” clouds.

Not a rainbow — but something even stranger

The colours are not produced by falling raindrops.

Instead, sunlight interacts with cloud particles that are remarkably similar in size. As light passes through and around these particles, it is scattered and diffracted, producing soft pastel colours.

It is rather like nature painting the clouds with a very delicate brush.

Clouds made of dry ice

And here comes the really surprising part.

These clouds are found extraordinarily high in the Martian atmosphere — NASA’s observations indicate heights of roughly 60–80 kilometres above the surface.

At such extreme altitudes and in the extremely cold Martian atmosphere, the clouds are believed to contain frozen carbon dioxide — dry ice.

So the beautiful coloured clouds are not made of ordinary water droplets like many clouds on Earth.

Clouds that shine after sunset

There is another beautiful trick.

These high clouds can remain illuminated by the Sun even after the Martian surface below has fallen into darkness.

While Curiosity's surroundings may already be in twilight, the clouds high overhead can still catch sunlight.

They become almost like ghostly, glowing clouds in the evening sky.

Why are scientists excited?

The colours are not merely beautiful.

They give scientists information about the size and behaviour of the cloud particles.

By studying the changing colours and patterns, researchers can learn more about how Martian clouds form, grow and evolve — and therefore about the atmosphere of Mars itself.

It is a wonderful reminder that science often begins with simply noticing something beautiful.

Mars may look like a barren red world from millions of kilometres away.

Yet its sky can still surprise us with clouds that shimmer like mother-of-pearl.

The Red Planet has its own rainbow — but without rain.