A Study ot Ideas about Organic Evolution and Animal behaviour from Ancient and Medieval Literature.  Dr. P.P. Jogalekar  Dept. of Archaeology, Pune

In Ancient and medieval Indian literature, animals are frequently mentioned. Several scholars have interpreted such information and concluded that knowledge of biology was fairly or well advanced in ancient and medieval India. Aim of this paper is to critically examine literary data on reproductive behaviour of animals (specifically mammals) and the concept of organic evolution. Comparison of factual data with those described in texts shows that accounts of reproductive behaviour were not based on systematic observations and the descriptions are more or less based on "Non-biological" principles. Authors of ancient Indian texts like their prerenaissance European counterparts did not propose an idea of organic evolution (which is distinctly a modern one), Attempts to " forcefully extract" similarities between the ancient texts mentioning plants and animals, and undoubtedly modern conceptual developments in biology would be anachronistic and spurious.