VEDIC IDEAS ON CYTO-GENETICS

Dr.K.S.Balasubramanian
Dy.Director,The K.S.R.I.
Mylapore,Chennai
The Vedas are revered as apauruseya or the scriptures which were not written by any human
being. It is also believed that the Vedas came directly from God. Since God is omniscient and all
pervading, the Vedas are also the repository of knowledge and are endless .
The Vedas are the source of all the knowledge pertaining to this world and other worlds. The
uniqueness of the Vedas is that the knowledge imparted by them cannot be derived through any
other means.
All the branches of Sanskrit literature claim Vedas to be their source. It is therefore no wonder
that lot of precious information is hidden in Vedas on many branches of science like
Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, Botany and so on. This paper gives a glimpse of the
contribution of Vedas in the field of Cyto-genetics.
The term Cyto-genetics includes in itself Cytology and Genetics, two branches of special
study of Biology. Cytology deals with the structure and functions of cells whereas Genetics
specifically deals with the science of genes, the hereditary units which lie within the cells. This
fascinating subject has attracted the attention of many scientists now and various branches of
study based on them like bio-diversity, bio-technology, bio-chemistry and bio-engineering are
quite popular.
It is interesting to know that the Vedic seers were aware of the concepts of Cyto-genetics and
they have dealt with this science in many places, in the Samhita, Brahmana and Upanisads. They
have described the origin of cells, plant cells, animal cells, water, the unicellular organism, prana
and jiva in living organisms, changes in cells, shapes of cells, gene, chromosome and so on.
This paper would give an account of all these concepts culled from Vedic texts.