A Little Vedic Knowledge The mathematical tradition in India goes back at least to the Vedas.

For compositions with a broad scope covering all aspects of life, spiritual as well as secular, the Vedas show a great fascination for large numbers. As the transmission of the knowledge was oral, the numbers were not written, but expressed as combinations of powers of 1 . It would be reasonable to believe that when the decimal place value s!stem for written numbers came into being it owed a great deal to the wa! numbers were discussed in the older compositions. The decimal place value s!stem of writing numbers, together with the use of " ,# is known to have blossomed in India in the earl! centuries A$, and spread to the %est through the intermediac! of the &ersians and the Arabs. There were actuall! precursors to the s!stem, and various components of it are found in other ancient cultures such as the 'ab!lonian, (hinese, and )a!an. From the decimal representation of the natural numbers, the s!stem was to evolve further into the form that is now commonplace and crucial in various walks of life, with decimal fractions becoming part of the number s!stem in 1*th centur! +urope, though this again has some intermediate histor! involving the Arabs. The evolution of the number s!stem represents a ma,or phase in the development of mathematical ideas, and arguabl! contributed greatl! to the overall advance of science and technolog!. The cumulative histor! of the number s!stem holds a lesson that progress of ideas is an inclusive phenomenon, and while contributing to the process should be a matter of ,o! and pride to those with allegiance to the respective contributors, the role of others also ought to be appreciated. It is well-known that .eometr! was pursued in India in the context of construction of vedis for the !a,nas of the Vedic period. The /ulvasutras contain elaborate descriptions of construction of vedis and enunciate various geometric principles. These were composed in the rst millennium '(, the earliest 'audha!ana /ulvasutra dating back to about 0 '(. /ulvasutra geometr! did not go ver! far in comparison to the +uclidean geometr! developed b! the .reeks, who appeared on the scene a little later, in the seventh centur! '(. It was, however, an important stage of development in India too. The /ulvasutra geometers were aware, among other things, of what is now called the &!thagoras theorem, over 1 !ears before &!thagoras 2all the four ma,or /ulvasutras contain an explicit statement of the theorem3, addressed 2within the framework of their geometr!3 issues such as nding a circle with the same area as a s4uare and vice versa, and worked out a ver! good approximation to the s4uare root of two, in the course of their studies. 5earn Vedic )aths 6nline. .et (ertification b! Vedic )aths Forum India, visit http788goo.gl89x9Tmf Though it is generall! not recognised, the /ulvasutra geometr! was itself evolving. This is seen, in particular, from the differences in the contents of the four ma,or extant /ulvasutras. (ertain revisions are especiall! striking. For instance, in the earl! /ulvasutra

period the ratio of the circumference to the diameter was, as in other ancient cultures, thought to be three, as seen in a sutra of 'audha!ana, but in the )anava /ulvasutra, a new value was proposed, as three-and-one-fth. Interestingl!, the sutra describing it ends with an exultation :not a hair-breadth remains,; and though we see that it is still substantiall! off the mark, it is a gratif!ing instance of an advance made. In the )anava /ulvasutra one also nds an improvement over the method described b! 'audha!ana for nding the circle with the same area as that of a given s4uare. The <ain tradition has also been ver! important in the development of mathematics in the countr!. =nlike for the Vedic people, for <ain scholars the motivation for mathematics came not from ritual practices, which indeed were anathema to them, but from the contemplation of the cosmos. <ains had an elaborate cosmograph! in which mathematics pla!ed an integral role, and even largel! philosophical <ain works are seen to incorporate mathematical discussions. >otable among the topics in the earl! <ain works, from about the fifth centur! '( to the second centur! A$, one ma! mention geometr! of the circle, arithmetic of numbers with large powers of 1 , permutations and combinations, and categorisations of innities 2whose pluralit! had been recognised3. As in the /ulvasutra tradition, the <ains also recognised, around the middle of the rst millennium '(, that the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter is not three. In :/ur!apra,napti,; a <ain text believed to be from the fourth centur! '(, after recalling the :traditional; value three for it, the author discards that in favour the s4uare root of 1 . This value for the ratio, which is reasonabl! close to the actual value, was prevalent in India over a long period and is often referred as the <ain value. It continued to be used long after Ar!abhata introduced the well-known value ?.191* for the ratio. The <ain texts also contain rather uni4ue formulae for lengths of circular arcs in terms of the length of the corresponding chord and the bow 2height3 over the chord, and also for the area of regions subtended b! circular arcs together with their chords. The means for the accurate determination of these 4uantities became available onl! after the advent of (alculus. @ow the ancient <ain scholars arrived at these formulae, which are close approximations, remains to be understood. 5earn Vedic )aths 6nline. .et (ertification b! Vedic )aths Forum India, visit http788goo.gl89x9Tmf Article /ource7 vedic-maths.com