When Rama Prasad says, "The Tejas Tattva of the ancients is then exactly the luminiferous ether of the moderns, so far as the nature of the vibration is concerned," it is clear that he is attempting to frame his discussion of the Tattvas within a scientific discourse that would have been familiar to his readers at the time. This is evident from the outset of the discussion. Even though the term "luminiferous ether" is familiar from the 19th-century...