The Mathematics of India
Chapter 8 Increasingly Harder‐to‐Read Timeline
Archaic Old Kingdom Int Middle Kingdom Int New Kingdom EGYPT
3000 BCE 2500 BCE 2000 BCE 1500 BCE 1000 BCE
Sumaria Akkadia Int Old Babylon Assyria MESOPOTAM IA
3000 BCE 2500 BCE 2000 BCE 1500 BCE 1000 BCE 500 BCE 0 CE 500 CE
Classical Minoan Mycenaean Dark Archaic Hellenistic Roman Christian GREECE
3000 BCE 2500 BCE 2000 BCE 1500 BCE 1000 BCE 500 BCE 0 CE 500 CE 1000 CE 1500 CE
Warring CHINA Shang Zhou Han Warring States Tang Yuan / Ming States Song Qin Gnomon, Nine Chapters Liu Hui Sui Qin Jiushao 3000 BCE 2500 BCE 2000 BCE 1500 BCE 1000 BCE 500 BCE 0 CE 500 CE 1000 CE 1500 CE
Indus Valley Civilization Indo-European / Hindu Jainism / Buddhism Imperial Guptas / Classical Muslim / Kerala School
Aryabhata I, Varahamihira, Bhaskara I & II, INDIA Brah magu p ta, Mahariva Indus Valley Civilization Indus Valley Civilization
• Very advanced brick‐ making technology. • Over 15 kinds of Harappan bricks have been found, but they all have their dimensions in the ratio of 4:2:1. • They contain no straw or other binding material, and are still usable today. Indus Valley Civilization
• Accurate decimal rulers • Two of the lines are found at Lothal, Harrapa, marked with a circular and Moheno‐Daro. hole and a circular dot. • The Moheno‐Daro scale is The distance between a fragment of shell 66.2 them is 1.32 inches, or an mm long, with nine “Indus inch.” carefully sawed, equally • A Sumerian shushi is spaced parallel lines on exactly half an Indus inch; average 6.7056 mm the Indian gaz is 25 Indus apart, and with a mean inches. error of .075 mm (a tad more than 1% error). Indus Valley Civilization
• Plumb bobs, or weights, • In other words, powers found at Lothal were of 10, their halves, and found to be in decimal their doubles. relationships. • This is pretty much how • If you let a weight of our money system 27.584 grams be “1”, works (except for the then there were others absence of 20‐cent with values 0.05, 0.1, pieces and $200 bills). 0.2, 0.5, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500. Indus Valley Civilization
• The language has never been deciphered. • Much of what we know come from some inscriptions on steatite (soapstone) seals. • Recent more extensive written records may help. Indus Valley Civilization
• Summing up: Circumstantial evidence of a wide‐spread numerate society. • “...In fact the level of mathematical knowledge implied in various geometrical designs, accurate layout of streets and drains and various building constructions etc. was quite high (from a practical point of view). [R. Gupta] Aryans and Birth of Hinduism
• The Aryans came from the north and became the dominant people. • Since the Nazis co‐opted the term Aryan, it is common to refer to them as Indo‐Europeans. • They spoke what became Sanskrit. • Tribal, nomadic, war‐like. • Cleared a lot of forests, apparently. Aryans and the Birth of Hinduism
• They seem to have had a well‐developed musical culture, and song and dance dominated their society. Their interest in lyric poetry was unmatched. They loved gambling. They did not, however, have much interest in writing . There are no Aryan writings until the Mauryan period (300 BCE). Aryans and the Birth of Hinduism
• Their religious poetry, the Vedas, are the basis for Hinduism. • Hymns, songs, incantations, etc. to be used by different priests on different occasions. • Primarily religious. However, “the need to determine the correct times for Vedic ceremonies and the accurate construction of altars led to the development of astronomy and geometry.” [R. Gupta] Mathematics in the Service of Religion
• Various lyric poems from this era, later written down, contain some practical mathematics, now known as vedic mathematics. • Sources include: – Vedas – Vedangas (Jyotis and Kalpa) – Brahmanas (Satapatha) – Sulbasutras Mathematics in the Service of Religion
• Vedangas, or supplements (“limbs”) to the Vedas, contained rules for rituals and ceremonies, including the construction of alters. The relevant mathematics included: – Use of geometric shapes, including triangles, rectangles, squares, trapezia and circles. – Equivalence in terms of numbers and area. – Squaring the circle and visa‐versa. – Early forms of the Pythagorean theorem. – Estimations for . – The Rule of Three Mathematics in the Service of Religion
• The implied estimations for π include: – 25/8 (3.125) – 900/289 (3.11418685…) – 1156/361 (3.202216…) – 339/108 (3.1389) Mathematics in the Service of Religion
• Sulba Sutras: A Sutra • Contained information was a form aiming at on the size and shape of brevity. It uses poetic altars, both for style, avoids verbs, and communal and for uses compound nouns. private worship. All this renders • Used stakes and marked information easier to cords as tools in memorize in an oral constructing altars. tradition. Mathematics from the Sulbasutras
• Pythagorean Theorem and Pythagorean triples. • Finding squares with the same areas as rectangles, the sum or difference of other squares, circles, etc. • “Circling” a square. • Doubling or tripling areas of squares, etc. Mathematics from the Sulbasutras
• Finding irrational square roots: Given a square of side “1”, “Increase the measure by its third, and this third by its own fourth less the thirty‐fourth part of that fourth.” Mathematics from the Sulbasutras
• A later commentator, Rama, in the mid‐ fifteenth century, added two further terms and got seven decimal places of accuracy. Mathematics from the Sulbasutras
• A method for calculating square roots by repeated applications of the formula: for small r.