IMPORTANCE OF ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE IN OUR MODERN SOCIETY

 Ancient expertise is accumulated knowledge over numerous generations and preserved in formal and casual means. The formal method encompasses documented expertise, and informal means include shared values and practices thru oral traditions. Sadly, as explained above, historical Indian understanding has been relegated to millions of palm manuscripts mendacity scattered all over the United States, and it's far gathering dust. While numerous students are engaged in the manner of bringing the hidden expertise out of those manuscripts by means of discovering and republishing such works, it does now not suit the size required to make a meaningful impact. It is a herculean proposition to discover the understanding and convey it to the eye of present-day society. On the other hand, the oral traditions maintain in a few rural wallets and are at the chance of having extinct for want of patronage. The query in front of people is, “Does any society need to hold, protect and bypass the historic knowledge for future generations?”

The thinking styles and the repository of expertise created by way of the forefathers in any society allow the cutting-edge generation to understand the thought processes and frameworks of the preceding generations. It will permit them to analyse the received information in a contemporary context and identify new possibilities to assimilate the accrued know-how and synthesize new expertise. Therefore, maintaining cutting-edge technology in the dark about the contributions of the ancestors is an inefficient and shortsighted choice for society. Ancient knowledge serves multiple roles in society.

Identity

The fundamental price that historic expertise brings to society is the identification it provides to fellow participants of society. Essentially, it defines the context for several components of the everyday dwelling of each individual. The social practices and norms have continuity as the maximum of them are transmitted from generation to generation thru practices and assisting information repositories. Therefore, keeping this information and baton passing them on to the following generation is a crucial step for modern-day society. In the absence of this continuity, people lose their conviction in several living practices. They lose their potential to ‘meaning making’ of a good deal of the expertise. Eventually, it demands situations one’s personal identification and that of society.

 

Culture

Culture has several dimensions. In a right away experience, it's miles the manifestation of highbrow human success seemed together by using society over time. From a social angle, tradition is not anything but the set of thoughts, customs, and behavior of society. In other words, tradition gives a feel of identity at a societal level by means of presenting a common medium for communique and the transaction of ideas. The triumphing expertise and the literary traditions play a sizeable position in shaping the way of life of society. If the underlying expertise systems are suddenly withdrawn from society, the cultural practices may be rudely jolted. It can also create distortions and discontinuities in societal progress.

Received Wisdom

Knowledge and innovation are on a continuum. Innovation and new know-how advent in any society are ‘course-structured’. What it essentially means is that the street traveled to this point determines the future direction. Without the continuity of thoughts, it's far very hard to make in addition progress in terms of new ideas. The other similarly vital difficulty is the threat of reinventing the wheel. When the benefit of previous understanding and the thought process is lost with the aid of society, it will cause reinventing the wheel, making innovation and new know-how introduction inefficient. In this context, historical information performs the precious function of ‘received expertise’ and provides a head beginning to a society to march on the dual carriageway of innovation and new expertise advent.

Economic Value

One of the compelling arguments for assisting the historic knowledge systems is the large capacity it offers from a financial fee point of view. The emerging world order places more emphasis on understanding society. The prevailing ‘military power’ will give way to ‘know-how power’, and such countries which show the superiority of knowledge traditions are bound to lead the relaxation of the sector. Transforming expertise into financial fees has been completely formalized with the worldwide highbrow assets rights policies and patent legal guidelines. Therefore, the historic knowledge system may be beneficial to a country like India.

Let us see an instance to apprehend this issue. The US patent and trademark workplace granted patent rights on the information of the usage of pigeon pea extracts for treating diabetes, hypoglycemia, weight problems, and arthero-sclerotic cardiovascular ailment (clogged arteries) to Insmed Inc, primarily based in Richmond in Virginia. The organization claimed its novelty in the invention of pigeon pea extracts for treating these diseases. In the patent applications, Insmed recounted only a handful of uses of pigeon peas in conventional medicines by mentioning some references to journal articles that regarded in 1957 and 1968 that describe the effects of pigeon pea and their extracts on blood sugar. The patent utility did not encompass references to the traditional use of pigeon peas inside the remedy of the stated illnesses.

 

Mr. Hirdesh Sharma

Assistant Professor, Dept. of CSE, JEMTEC, Greater Noida, India