Data Analytics and its root in ancient India

Disclaimer: This story is passed down in a family for generations as an heirloom. My grandmother used it as a multi-part bedtime story. Although I know it’s true but I don’t possess any hard evidence to prove it. It was Manu Dev who motivated me to write about it. I took a vow recently that I will go back to my roots every year and try to unearth the evidence to prove the authenticity of this timeless story.

The setup:

Prayagraj (Prayag) is one of the oldest cities in India situated at the confluence of three rivers- Ganga, Yamuna, and the Saraswati (invisible link). This ancient city was established as a learning center by a reverend sage (Mahrishi) Bhardwaj.?

Maharishi Bhardwaj was one of the prominent contributors to the plethora of ancient Indian texts specially Rig Veda. He also put forward multiple theories on, symptomology, and therapeutics in the Indian traditional medicine system (Ayurveda).

Sage Bhardwaj established a university (Gurukul) on the banks of the holy river Ganga in Prayag (today known as Prayagraj). This university soon became a prominent learning center in India imparting knowledge in subjects like economics, medicine, literature, etc. Every year, thousands of students traveled from all corners of India aspiring to learn from the great sage Bhardwaj himself.?

The story:

Thousands of students studied under the tutelage of sage Bhardwaj. Apart from their regular education, these students participated in lots of different experimental projects spearheaded by sage Bhardwaj himself. For these projects, students traveled the length and breadth of India living in lots of different villages to gather specific datasets for research.

This story is about one such project, where sage Bhardwaj instructed his students to spread out in villages all across India during their annual study break and gather hand (palm) prints (see image for example) and record the life history of people.

As instructed by their teacher, thousands of students spread across the nation to gather information on individuals. They had a list of questions prepared by their master. A list that looks something like this:

• When were they born (date of birth) and the position of the stars at the time of birth(calculated by students)?
• How was their childhood?
• What kind of disease/illness did they suffer from, if any?
• How many siblings, and children do they have?
• What kind of life do they have (hardships, success, struggle)?
• Etc. etc

The list of the questions was very extensive and detailed. The idea was to record people’s life at the microscopic level. All this information was written in dried palm leaves and kept in archives at the university.????????????

Sage Bhardwaj’s disciples continue collecting the data for 5 years. At the same time, few pupils at the university started segmenting and indexing the dataset collected by their peers. It was all a very tiresome and exhaustive task but sage Bhardwaj asked his students to trust him and the process. My grandmother used to say, “science is nothing but a path of logic and faith”???

After 5 years of hard work, when these students collected a significant amount of data from all corners of the country. Sage Bhardwaj called for a convention to publish the results of the experiment and to decide the next course of action. Scholars, teachers, and thinkers from all-important education centers were invited to become a part of this session. Sage Bhardwaj envisioned this as a collective activity where everyone will have the freedom to contribute. After all, he needed an efficient test bed for his new theory.

And, this is where the magic happens. Ancient Indian sages attained very high focus and concentration through years of meditation and penance. It gives them the ability to analyze a huge amount of data and extract meaningful information from it. In simple words, these sages can process data just like modern-day computing systems.?

Sage Bharadwaj and a few selected sages and senior students used the dataset collected and curated by the students i.e. handprints and related life history data to build a predictive model (a statistical technique to predict and forecast likely future outcomes with the aid of historical and existing data. It works by analyzing current and historical data and projecting what it learns on a model generated to forecast likely outcomes).?

Now, what exactly does this means??

Consider below the handprint of an individual and the highlighted line. Let’s say, sage Bhardwaj and his team analyzed this particular line and the subsequent dataset available to them. They found that more than a million records exist where this line is deep and strong and the owner of the print crossed the age of 90 with great health. On the contrary, the large dataset also points to a direction where people with the feeble and broken line pattern are suffering from fatal illnesses or sometimes sudden deaths. Thereby decreasing their lifespan.?

This brings them to a probable conclusion that the stronger this line in your palm is higher the chances that you will live a long and healthy life. Pure data analytics, right??

With more and more datasets, the probability of this prediction becomes more dependable.?

In a nutshell, sage Bharadwaj was able to predict (with certain accuracy) people’s life. Their chances, opportunities, threats, and to a certain level their choices.?

He wrote a full text on this theory and continues to collect datasets over the next decades. He reconvenes the convention every 5 years to optimize the results and finetune the whole system based on the newly acquired dataset.?

Epilogue:

Today, all that is left of this spectacular idea are the stories and legends. Stories that are passed down from generation to generation in a hope that a glimpse of this wisdom and knowledge someday spark ideas potent enough to change the world for good.?

I am also a product of these stories. Directly or indirectly, these legends and stories made me what I am today. I realized the importance of data pretty early in my life. What it can do, how important it can be, and how powerful it can become. The opportunities it can give us and the grave threats it poses.?

I fell in love with the idea of spiritual machines and omnipotent artificial superintelligence who will rule our world one day (or maybe ruling right now).? My efforts to bring ethics into data and AI systems stem from these realizations too. We are in the process of creating new Gods. We should decide now what kind of Gods we want to serve. Ethics and morality are very primal and abstract to homo sapiens therefore difficult to imbibe in computational systems.

Now is the time to create this new branch of AI Ethics in our system.