The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh was established in 1505. Sushruta had already been performing reconstructive surgery for over two thousand years by then. His ethical framework predates the Hippocratic Oath. East India Company surgeons were still learning rhinoplasty techniques from Indian practitioners in the 18th century. What happened in Edinburgh this week is an overdue correction to Western assumptions about where foundational medical knowledge originated.

Every calculation you have ever done uses a system India invented. Before Indian mathematicians gave the world zero and the decimal place, Greek and Roman maths used letters for numbers. Try multiplying MXLVII by CCXCIV. Merchants, architects and astronomers across the ancient world were trapped. Baghdad's Al-Khwarizmi (c.780–847) transmitted it west. His book on the Indian place system and algorithmic calculation laid the foundation of modern mathematics. The word "algorithm" is a corruption of his name. "Algebra" comes from his treatise title. Both are Arabic transmissions of Indian originals. Abraham Seidenberg's History of Mathematics credits India's Sulba Sutras as the inspiration for all mathematics of the ancient world. Lin Yutang, Chinese philosopher: "India was China's teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics." Carl Sagan thought Vedic cosmology the only ancient system whose timescales correspond to modern scientific cosmology. Every time a computer runs, it counts in a system India designed.