Scholars using advanced digital paleography have deciphered a series of 6th-century inscriptions in the Proto-Kannada-Brahmi script found on submerged stone pillars near the Karnataka coast. The text outlines a set of hydraulic principles and mathematical laws for buoyancy, applied specifically to the design of large-scale maritime trade vessels.
The inscriptions detail the displacement of fluids and the calculation of vessel stability, demonstrating that early Indian naval architects possessed a formalized theory of hydrostatics. This find suggests that the expansion of Indian maritime influence in the first millennium CE was supported by a robust scientific framework of nautical engineering.