A 12th-century Indian astronomer wrote that the Earth attracts objects toward itself — five centuries before Newton.
“Objects fall to the Earth due to a force of attraction by the Earth. Therefore the Earth, planets, stars, moon and sun are held in orbit due to this attraction.” (paraphrase of the Siddhānta Śiromaṇi)
— Bhāskara II (Bhāskarāchārya), Siddhānta Śiromaṇi (1150 CE)
Newton's law of universal gravitation (1687).
A popular claim that doesn't hold up — here's the honest story.
Bhāskara II — and earlier Brahmagupta — clearly wrote that the Earth attracts heavy things toward itself, which is why they fall and why the Earth doesn't need to rest on a support. That is a real, important insight, and it predates Newton by centuries.
But the popular claim that he 'discovered gravity before Newton' overreaches. What Bhāskara stated is a *qualitative* idea — things are drawn to the Earth — shared by several ancient cultures. Newton's achievement was different in kind: a *universal, quantitative, inverse-square law* that unified falling apples with orbiting moons and made precise, testable predictions via calculus. The widely circulated 'Bhāskara's exact verse on gravitation' is also usually a loose, embellished paraphrase. So: a genuine early intuition of attraction — yes; the law of gravitation foreseen — no. Honouring the real history serves him better than the inflated meme.