itty achuthan kollatt and the hortus malabaricus: history of medicine and botany via maddy and rakesh

feb 11th, 2012 CE

yet another example of how indian IPR has been appropriated by whites (another good one is the capture of the infinite series for trigonometric functions -- they should be credited to madhava and paramesvara of the kerala school of mathematics and astronomy circa 1400 CE, not to taylor and maclauren). one more is the story of vaccination.

i haven't personally seen the 12-volume hortus malabaricus but it was clearly a stupendous achievement.

there are some controversies about authorship. i recently read a konkani man's contention that it was written not in malayalam and sanskrit, but in malayalam and devanagari (the latter being used by the konkani bhats because their language did not and still does not have a script).

thanks to rakesh krishnan simha whose link got me to maddy's interesting and thorough writeup on itty achuthan kollatt and the hortus malabaricus. http://historicalleys.blogspot.in/2010/01/itty-achutan-and-hortus-malabaricus.htmlthere are many good blogs on malabar. for instance, sri c k ramachandran's blog http://calicutheritage.blogspot.in/