History of Indian Mathematics

[SRS]

[tscii:635044475d]Shulba Sutra

In the valley of the Indus River of India, the world's oldest civilization had developed its own system of mathematics. The Vedic Shulba Sutras (fifth to eighth century B.C.E.), meaning "codes of the rope," show that the earliest geometrical and mathematical investigations among the Indians arose from certain requirements of their religious rituals. When the poetic vision of the Vedic seers was externalized in symbols, rituals requiring altars and precise measurement became manifest, providing a means to the attainment of the unmanifest world of consciousness. "Shulba Sutras" is the name given to those portions or supplements of the Kalpasutras, which deal with the measurement and construction of the different altars or arenas for religious rites. The word shulba refers to the ropes used to make these measurements.

Math cannot take the mystery out of life without doing away with life itself, for it is life's mystery, its unpredictability — the fact that it is dynamic, not static — that makes it alive and worth living.

Although Vedic mathematicians are known primarily for their computational genius in arithmetic and algebra, the basis and inspiration for the whole of Indian mathematics is geometry. Evidence of geometrical drawing instruments from as early as 2500 B.C.E. has been found in the Indus Valley. [1] The beginnings of algebra can be traced to the constructional geometry of the Vedic priests, which are preserved in the Shulba Sutras. Exact measurements, orientations, and different geometrical shapes for the altars and arenas used for the religious functions (yajnas), which occupy an important part of the Vedic religious culture, are described in the Shulba Sutras. Many of these calculations employ the geometrical formula known as the Pythagorean theorem.

This theorem (c. 540 B.C.E.), equating the square of the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle with the sum of the squares of the other two sides, was utilized in the earliest Shulba Sutra (the Baudhayana) prior to the eighth century B.C.E. Thus, widespread use of this famous mathematical theorem in India several centuries before its being popularized by Pythagoras has been documented. The exact wording of the theorem as presented in the Sulba Sutras is: "The diagonal chord of the rectangle makes both the squares that the horizontal and vertical sides make separately." [2] The proof of this fundamentally important theorem is well known from Euclid's time until the present for its excessively tedious and cumbersome nature; yet the Vedas present five different extremely simple proofs for this theorem. One historian, Needham, has stated, "Future research on the history of science and technology in Asia will in fact reveal that the achievements of these peoples contribute far more in all pre-Renaissance periods to the development of world science than has yet been realized." [3]

The Shulba Sutras have preserved only that part of Vedic mathematics which was used for constructing the altars and for computing the calendar to regulate the performance of religious rituals. After the Shulba Sutra period, the main developments in Vedic mathematics arose from needs in the field of astronomy. The Jyotisha, science of the luminaries, utilizes all branches of mathematics.

The need to determine the right time for their religious rituals gave the first impetus for astronomical observations. With this desire in mind, the priests would spend night after night watching the advance of the moon through the circle of the nakshatras (lunar mansions), and day after day the alternate progress of the sun towards the north and the south. However, the priests were interested in mathematical rules only as far as they were of practical use. These truths were therefore expressed in the simplest and most practical manner. Elaborate proofs were not presented, nor were they desired.

Evolution of Arabic (Roman) Numerals from India

A close investigation of the Vedic system of mathematics shows that it was much more advanced than the mathematical systems of the civilizations of the Nile or the Euphrates. The Vedic mathematicians had developed the decimal system of tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. where the remainder from one column of numbers is carried over to the next. The advantage of this system of nine number signs and a zero is that it allows for calculations to be easily made. Further, it has been said that the introduction of zero, or sunya as the Indians called it, in an operational sense as a definite part of a number system, marks one of the most important developments in the entire history of mathematics. The earliest preserved examples of the number system which is still in use today are found on several stone columns erected in India by King Ashoka in about 250 B.C.E. [4 ] Similar inscriptions are found in caves near Poona (100 B.C.E.) and Nasik (200 C.E.). [5] These earliest Indian numerals appear in a script called brahmi.

After 700 C.E. another notation, called by the name "Indian numerals," which is said to have evolved from the brahmi numerals, assumed common usage, spreading to Arabia and from there around the world. When Arabic numerals (the name they had then become known by) came into common use throughout the Arabian empire, which extended from India to Spain, Europeans called them "Arabic notations," because they received them from the Arabians. However, the Arabians themselves called them "Indian figures" (Al-Arqan-Al-Hindu) and mathematics itself was called "the Indian art" (hindisat).

Evolution of "Arabic numerals" from Brahmi
(250 B.C.E.) to the 16th century.


Mastery of this new mathematics allowed the Muslim mathematicians of Baghdad to fully utilize the geometrical treatises of Euclid and Archimedes. Trigonometry flourished there along with astronomy and geography. Later in history, Carl Friedrich Gauss, the "prince of mathematics," was said to have lamented that Archimedes in the third century B.C.E. had failed to foresee the Indian system of numeration; how much more advanced science would have been.
Prior to these revolutionary discoveries, other world civilizations-the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, and the Chinese-all used independent symbols for each row of counting beads on the abacus, each requiring its own set of multiplication or addition tables. So cumbersome were these systems that mathematics was virtually at a standstill. The new number system from the Indus Valley led a revolution in mathematics by setting it free. By 500 C.E. mathematicians of India had solved problems that baffled the world's greatest scholars of all time. Aryabhatta, an astronomer mathematician who flourished at the beginning of the 6th century, introduced sines and versed sines-a great improvement over the clumsy half-cords of Ptolemy. A.L. Basham, foremost authority on ancient India, writes in The Wonder That Was India,

Medieval Indian mathematicians, such as Brahmagupta (seventh century), Mahavira (ninth century), and Bhaskara (twelfth century), made several discoveries which in Europe were not known until the Renaissance or later. They understood the import of positive and negative quantities, evolved sound systems of extracting square and cube roots, and could solve quadratic and certain types of indeterminate equations." [6] Mahavira's most noteworthy contribution is his treatment of fractions for the first time and his rule for dividing one fraction by another, which did not appear in Europe until the 16th century.

Equations and Symbols

B.B. Dutta writes: "The use of symbols-letters of the alphabet to denote unknowns, and equations are the foundations of the science of algebra. The Hindus were the first to make systematic use of the letters of the alphabet to denote unknowns. They were also the first to classify and make a detailed study of equations. Thus they may be said to have given birth to the modern science of algebra." [7] The great Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya (1150 C.E.) produced extensive treatises on both plane and spherical trigonometry and algebra, and his works contain remarkable solutions of problems which were not discovered in Europe until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He preceded Newton by over 500 years in the discovery of the principles of differential calculus. A.L. Basham writes further, "The mathematical implications of zero (sunya) and infinity, never more than vaguely realized by classical authorities, were fully understood in medieval India. Earlier mathematicians had taught that X/0 = X, but Bhaskara proved the contrary. He also established mathematically what had been recognized in Indian theology at least a millennium earlier: that infinity, however divided, remains infinite, represented by the equation oo /X = oo." In the 14th century, Madhava, isolated in South India, developed a power series for the arc tangent function, apparently without the use of calculus, allowing the calculation of pi to any number of decimal places (since arctan 1 = pi/4). Whether he accomplished this by inventing a system as good as calculus or without the aid of calculus; either way it is astonishing.

Spiritually advanced cultures were not ignorant of the principles of mathematics, but they saw no necessity to explore those principles beyond that which was helpful in the advancement of God realization.

By the fifteenth century C.E. use of the new mathematical concepts from India had spread all over Europe to Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, among others. A.L. Basham states also that

The debt of the Western world to India in this respect [the field of mathematics] cannot be overestimated. Most of the great discoveries and inventions of which Europe is so proud would have been impossible without a developed system of mathematics, and this in turn would have been impossible if Europe had been shackled by the unwieldy system of Roman numerals. The unknown man who devised the new system was, from the world's point of view, after the Buddha, the most important son of India. His achievement, though easily taken for granted, was the work of an analytical mind of the first order, and he deserves much more honor than he has so far received.

Unfortunately, Eurocentrism has effectively concealed from the common man the fact that we owe much in the way of mathematics to ancient India. Reflection on this may cause modern man to consider more seriously the spiritual preoccupation of ancient India. The rishis (seers) were not men lacking in practical knowledge of the world, dwelling only in the realm of imagination. They were well developed in secular knowledge, yet only insofar as they felt it was necessary within a world view in which consciousness was held as primary.

In ancient India, mathematics served as a bridge between understanding material reality and the spiritual conception. Vedic mathematics differs profoundly from Greek mathematics in that knowledge for its own sake (for its aesthetic satisfaction) did not appeal to the Indian mind. The mathematics of the Vedas lacks the cold, clear, geometric precision of the West; rather, it is cloaked in the poetic language which so distinguishes the East. Vedic mathematicians strongly felt that every discipline must have a purpose, and believed that the ultimate goal of life was to achieve self-realization and love of God and thereby be released from the cycle of birth and death. Those practices which furthered this end either directly or indirectly were practiced most rigorously. Outside of the religio-astronomical sphere, only the problems of day to day life (such as purchasing and bartering) interested the Indian mathematicians.

Poetry in Math

One of the foremost exponents of Vedic math, the late Bharati Krishna Tirtha Maharaja, author of Vedic Mathematics, has offered a glimpse into the sophistication of Vedic math. Drawing from the Atharva-veda, Tirtha Maharaja points to many sutras (codes) or aphorisms which appear to apply to every branch of mathematics: arithmetic, algebra, geometry (plane and solid), trigonometry (plane and spherical), conics (geometrical and analytical), astronomy, calculus (differential and integral), etc.

Utilizing the techniques derived from these sutras, calculations can be done with incredible ease and simplicity in one's head in a fraction of the time required by modern means. Calculations normally requiring as many as a hundred steps can be done by the Vedic method in one single simple step. For instance the conversion of the fraction 1/29 to its equivalent recurring decimal notation normally involves 28 steps. Utilizing the Vedic method it can be calculated in one simple step. (see the next section for examples of how to utilize Vedic sutras)

In order to illustrate how secular and spiritual life were intertwined in Vedic India, Tirtha Maharaja has demonstrated that mathematical formulas and laws were often taught within the context of spiritual expression (mantra). Thus while learning spiritual lessons, one could also learn mathematical rules.

Tirtha Maharaja has pointed out that Vedic mathematicians prefer to use the devanagari letters of Sanskrit to represent the various numbers in their numerical notations rather than the numbers themselves, especially where large numbers are concerned. This made it much easier for the students of this math in their recording of the arguments and the appropriate conclusions.

Tirtha Maharaja states, "In order to help the pupil to memorize the material studied and assimilated, they made it a general rule of practice to write even the most technical and abstruse textbooks in sutras or in verse (which is so much easier-even for the children-to memorize). And this is why we find not only theological, philosophical, medical, astronomical, and other such treatises, but even huge dictionaries in Sanskrit verse! So from this standpoint, they used verse, sutras and codes for lightening the burden and facilitating the work (by versifying scientific and even mathematical material in a readily assimilable form)!" [8] The code used is as follows:

The Sanskrit consonants

ka, ta, pa, and ya all denote 1;
kha, tha, pha, and ra all represent 2;
ga, da, ba, and la all stand for 3;
Gha, dha, bha, and va all represent 4;
gna, na, ma, and sa all represent 5;
ca, ta, and sa all stand for 6;
cha, tha, and sa all denote 7;
ja, da, and ha all represent 8;
jha and dha stand for 9; and
ka means zero.

Vowels make no difference and it is left to the author to select a particular consonant or vowel at each step. This great latitude allows one to bring about additional meanings of his own choice. For example kapa, tapa, papa, and yapa all mean 11. By a particular choice of consonants and vowels one can compose a poetic hymn with double or triple meanings. Here is an actual sutra of spiritual content, as well as secular mathematical significance.

gopi bhagya madhuvrata
srngiso dadhi sandhiga
khala jivita khatava
gala hala rasandara

While this verse is a type of petition to Krishna, when learning it one can also learn the value of pi/10 (i.e. the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter divided by 10) to 32 decimal places. It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.

The translation is as follows:

O Lord anointed with the yogurt of the milkmaids' worship (Krishna), O savior of the fallen, O master of Shiva, please protect me.

At the same time, by application of the consonant code given above, this verse directly yields the decimal equivalent of pi divided by 10: pi/10 = 0.31415926535897932384626433832792. Thus, while offering mantric praise to Godhead in devotion, by this method one can also add to memory significant secular truths.

This is the real gist of the Vedic world view regarding the culture of knowledge: while culturing transcendental knowledge, one can also come to understand the intricacies of the phenomenal world. By the process of knowing the absolute truth, all relative truths also become known. In modern society today it is often contended that never the twain shall meet: science and religion are at odds. This erroneous conclusion is based on little understanding of either discipline. Science is the smaller circle within the larger circle of religion.

We should never lose sight of our spiritual goals. We should never succumb to the shortsightedness of attempting to exploit the inherent power in the principles of mathematics or any of the natural sciences for ungodly purposes. Our reasoning faculty is but a gracious gift of Godhead intended for divine purposes, and not those of our own design.

Vedic Mathematical Sutras

Consider the following three sutras:

1. "All from 9 and the last from 10," and its corollary: "Whatever the extent of its deficiency, lessen it still further to that very extent; and also set up the square (of that deficiency)."
2. "By one more than the previous one," and its corollary: "Proportionately."
3. "Vertically and crosswise," and its corollary: "The first by the first and the last by the last."

The first rather cryptic formula is best understood by way of a simple example: let us multiply 6 by 8.

1. First, assign as the base for our calculations the power of 10 nearest to the numbers which are to be multiplied. For this example our base is 10.
2. Write the two numbers to be multiplied on a paper one above the other, and to the right of each write the remainder when each number is subtracted from the base 10. The remainders are then connected to the original numbers with minus signs, signifying that they are less than the base 10.

6-4
8-2

3. The answer to the multiplication is given in two parts. The first digit on the left is in multiples of 10 (i.e. the 4 of the answer 48). Although the answer can be arrived at by four different ways, only one is presented here. Subtract the sum of the two deficiencies (4 + 2 = 6) from the base (10) and obtain 10 - 6 = 4 for the left digit (which in multiples of the base 10 is 40).

6-4
8-2
4

4. Now multiply the two remainder numbers 4 and 2 to obtain the product 8. This is the right hand portion of the answer which when added to the left hand portion 4 (multiples of 10) produces 48.

6-4
8-2
----
4/8

Another method employs cross subtraction. In the current example the 2 is subtracted from 6 (or 4 from 8) to obtain the first digit of the answer and the digits 2 and 4 are multiplied together to give the second digit of the answer. This process has been noted by historians as responsible for the general acceptance of the X mark as the sign of multiplication. The algebraical explanation for the first process is

(x-a)(x-b)=x(x-a-b) + ab

where x is the base 10, a is the remainder 4 and b is the remainder 2 so that

6 = (x-a) = (10-4)
8 = (x-b) = (10-2)

The equivalent process of multiplying 6 by 8 is then

x(x-a-b) + ab or
10(10-4-2) + 2x4 = 40 + 8 = 48

These simple examples can be extended without limitation. Consider the following cases where 100 has been chosen as the base:

97 - 3 93 - 7 25 - 75
78 - 22 92 - 8 98 - 2
______ ______ ______

75/66 85/56 23/150 = 24/50

In the last example we carry the 100 of the 150 to the left and 23 (signifying 23 hundred) becomes 24 (hundred). Herein the sutra's words "all from 9 and the last from 10" are shown. The rule is that all the digits of the given original numbers are subtracted from 9, except for the last (the righthand-most one) which should be deducted from 10.

Consider the case when the multiplicand and the multiplier are just above a power of 10. In this case we must cross-add instead of cross subtract. The algebraic formula for the process is: (x+a)(x+b) = x(x+a+b) + ab. Further, if one number is above and the other below a power of 10, we have a combination of subtraction and addition: viz:


108 + 8 and 13 + 3
97 - 3 8 - 2
_______ ______

105/-24 = 104/(100-24) = 104/76 11/-6 = 10/(10-6) = 10/4


The Sub-Sutra: "Proportionately" Provides for those cases where we wish to use as our base multiples of the normal base of powers of ten. That is, whenever neither the multiplicand nor the multiplier is sufficiently near a convenient power of 10, which could serve as our base we simply use a multiple of a power of ten as our working base, perform our calculations with this working base and then multiply or divide the result proportionately.

To multiply 48 by 32, for example, we use as our base 50 = 100/2, so we have

Base 50 48 - 2
32 - 18
______

2/ 30/36 or (30/2) / 36 = 15/36

Note that only the left decimals corresponding to the powers of ten digits (here 100) are to be effected by the proportional division of 2. These examples show how much easier it is to subtract a few numbers, (especially for more complex calculations) rather than memorize long mathematical tables and perform cumbersome calculations the long way.

Squaring Numbers

The algebraic equivalent of the sutra for squaring a number is: (a+-b)2 = a2 +- 2ab + b2 . To square 103 we could write it as (100 + 3 )2 = 10,000 + 600 + 9 = 10,609. This calculation can easily be done mentally. Similarly, to divide 38,982 by 73 we can write the numerator as 38x3 + 9x2 +8x + 2, where x is equal to 10, and the denominator is 7x + 3. It doesn't take much to figure out that the numerator can also be written as 35x3 +36x2 + 37x + 12. Therefore,

38,982/73 = (35x3 + 36x2 +37x + 12)/(7x + 3) = 5x2 + 3x +4 = 534

This is just the algebraic equivalent of the actual method used. The algebraic principle involved in the third sutra, "vertically and crosswise," can be expressed, in one of it's applications, as the multiplication of the two numbers represented by (ax + b) and (cx + d), with the answer acx2 + x(ad + bc) + bd. Differential calculus also is utilized in the Vedic sutras for breaking down a quadratic equation on sight into two simple equations of the first degree. Many additional sutras are given which provide simple mental one or two line methods for division, squaring of numbers, determining square and cube roots, compound additions and subtractions, integrations, differentiations, and integration by partial fractions, factorisation of quadratic equations, solution of simultaneous equations, and many more. For demonstrational purposes, we have only presented simple examples.

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http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vishnu_mjs/math/math.html[/tscii:635044475d]

[Idiappam]

"Sigh", tonnes of text 'copied and pasted" but not a single quote from the Vedas or any of that Sanskritic works. Many doubts! Many doubts! Many doubts! Vedic Propadanda! Vedic Propadanda!

What a waste of space!

[gaddeswarup]

I have seen a few books and articles by enthusiasts. One that I found very readable and reliable with some mention of Indian contributions is V.S. Varadarajan's "Algebra in Ancient and Modern Times". A review can be found in :
http://www.maa.org/reviews/aamt.html
and it is available in India at relatively low price.
Swarup

[Uppuma]

Dear SRS,
Very Interesting Article, please connect more sites and informations please.

Pithogorus spent 8 years in INDIA, and he is the father of Greek Philosophy, and MATHS from what he learned from INDIA.

See my Article in INDIAN Heritage post from Wickipedia.

Wikipedia, is like Britanica of Web, for MR.Idiappam.
Uppuma

[SRS]

Dear SRS,
Very Interesting Article, please connect more sites and informations please.

Pithogorus spent 8 years in INDIA, and he is the father of Greek Philosophy, and MATHS from what he learned from INDIA.

See my Article in INDIAN Heritage post from Wickipedia.

Wikipedia, is like Britanica of Web, for MR.Idiappam.
Uppuma

That is interesting. I did not know Pythagorus spent time in India. Maybe if he had spent a little time at Anna U, Mr. Idiappam will sing a different tune. Anyway, it is not surprising the Indians possessed this level of mathematical knowledge. The Chinese were also far ahead of the West (mathematics, physics, astronomy, etc).

[abbydoss1969]

Neither Vedic Nor Mathematics

We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned by the continuing attempts to thrust the so-called `Vedic Mathematics' on the school curriculum by the NCERT.


As has been pointed out earlier on several occasions, the so-called `Vedic Mathematics' is neither 'Vedic' nor can it be dignified by the name of mathematics. `Vedic Mathematics', as is well-known, originated with a book of the same name by a former Sankracharya of Puri (the late Jagadguru Swami Shri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaj) published posthumously in 1965. The book assembled a set of tricks in elementary arithmetic and algebra to be applied in performing computations with numbers and polynomials. As is pointed out even in the foreword to the book by the General Editor, Dr. A.S. Agarwala, the aphorisms in Sanskrit to be found in the book have nothing to do with the Vedas. Nor are these aphorisms to be found in the genuine Vedic literature.
The term "Vedic mathematics'' is therefore entirely misleading and factually incorrect. Further, it is clear from the notation used in the arithmetical tricks in the book that the methods used in this text have nothing to do with the arithmetical techniques of antiquity. Many of the Sanskrit aphorisms in the book are totally cryptic (ancient Indian mathematical writing was anything but cryptic) and often so generalize to be devoid of any specific mathematical meaning. There are several authoritative texts on the mathematics of Vedic times that could used in part to teach an authoritative and correct account of ancient Indian mathematics but this book clearly cannot be used for any such purpose. The teaching of mathematics involves both the teaching of the basic concepts of the subject as well as methods of mathematical computation. The so-called ``Vedic mathematics'' is entirely inadequate to this task considering that it is largely made up of tricks to do some elementary arithmetic computations. Many of these can be far more easily performed on a simple computer or even an advanced calculator.


The book "Vedic mathematics'' essentially deals with arithmetic of the middle and high-school level. Its claims that "there is no part of mathematics, pure or applied, which is beyond their jurisdiction'' is simply ridiculous. In an era when the content of mathematics teaching has to be carefully designed to keep pace with the general explosion of knowledge and the needs of other modern professions that use mathematical techniques, the imposition of ``Vedic mathematics'' will be nothing short of calamitous.
India today has active and excellent schools of research and teaching in mathematics that are at the forefront of modern research in their discipline with some of them recognised as being among the best in the world in their fields of research. It is noteworthy that they have cherished the legacy of distinguished Indian mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujam, V. K. Patodi, S. Minakshisundaram, Harish Chandra, K. G. Ramanathan, Hansraj Gupta, Syamdas Mukhopadhyay, Ganesh Prasad, and many others including several living Indian mathematicians. But not one of these schools has lent an iota of legitimacy to `Vedic mathematics'. Nowhere in the world does any school system teach "Vedic mathematics'' or any form of ancient mathematics for that matter as an adjunct to modern mathematical teaching. The bulk of such teaching belongs properly to the teaching of history and in particular the teaching of the history of the sciences.
We consider the imposition of `Vedic mathematics' by a Government agency, as the perpetration of a fraud on our children, condemning particularly those dependent on public education to a sub-standard mathematical education. Even if we assumed that those who sought to impose `Vedic mathematics' did so in good faith, it would have been appropriate that the NCERT seek the assistance of renowned Indian mathematicians to evaluate so-called "Vedic mathematics" before making it part of the National Curricular framework for School Education. Appallingly they have not done so. In this context we demand that the NCERT submit the proposal for the introduction of `Vedic mathematics in the school curriculum to recognized bodies of mathematical experts in India, in particular the National Board of Higher Mathematics (under the Dept. of Atomic Energy), and the Mathematics sections of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy, for a thorough and critical examination. In the meanwhile no attempt should be made to thrust the subject into the school curriculum either through the centrally administered school system or by trying to impose it on the school systems of various States.
We are concerned that the essential thrust behind the campaign to introduce the so-called `Vedic mathematics' has more to do with promoting a particular brand of religious majoritarianism and associated obscurantist ideas rather than any serious and meaningful development of mathematics teaching in India. We note that similar concerns have been expressed about other aspects too of the National Curricular Framework for School Education. We re-iterate our firm conviction that all teaching and pedagogy, not just the teaching of mathematics, must be founded on rational, scientific and secular principles.




S.G.Dani Professor of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Madhav M. Deshpande Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan
Indranil Biswas Professor of Mathematics at TIFR.
Nirmala B. Limaye Professor of Mathematics University of Mumbai
B.V. Limaye Professor of Mathematics Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Alladi Sitaram, Indian Statistical Institute, B'lore
S. Ramasubramanian, Indian Statistical Inst.,B'ore
V. Pati, Indian Statistical Inst., B'lore
G. Misra, Indian Statistical Inst., B'lore
Jishnu Biswas, Indian Statistical Inst., B'lore
D. P. Sengupta, Indian Inst. of Science(Retd.), B'lore
Alladi Uma, Dept. of English, Univ. of Hyderabad
M. Sridhar, Dept. of English, Univ. of Hyderabad
Amitava Bhattacharya
S.Subramanian, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai
Professor Nitin Nitsure,Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

For the article in Frontline on this subject:


http://www.tifr.res.in/~vahia/dani-vmsm.pdf

[Bärlin]

gopi bhagya madhuvrata
srngiso dadhi sandhiga
khala jivita khatava
gala hala rasandara

While this verse is a type of petition to Krishna, when learning it one can also learn the value of pi/10 (i.e. the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter divided by 10) to 32 decimal places. It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.

The translation is as follows:

O Lord anointed with the yogurt of the milkmaids' worship (Krishna), O savior of the fallen, O master of Shiva, please protect me.

At the same time, by application of the consonant code given above, this verse directly yields the decimal equivalent of pi divided by 10: pi/10 = 0.31415926535897932384626433832792. Thus, while offering mantric praise to Godhead in devotion, by this method one can also add to memory significant secular truths.

why is pi divided by ten? This means that when you want to make a wheel with a radius of 1 meter you'll get only a wheel of 20 cm radius. Even when I chant that verse givven above 10 times, I'll get ten wheels each with 40 cm diameter.

And long before the constant pi was known to humans, they had the knowledge to make wheels. They simply calculated 6 fold radius plus a bit to get the circumference of a wheel.

And Krishna being the lord of Shiva? I think I should run to my red phone and call Siva and clarify this.

[Bärlin]

[tscii:c6a4729824]
why is pi divided by ten? This means that when you want to make a wheel with a radius of 1 meter you'll get only a wheel of 20 cm radius. Even when I chant that verse givven above 10 times, I'll get ten wheels each with 40 cm diameter.


SRS the great vedic mathematician,

can you perhaps tell me what is wrong there in the above?

This is what happened to so called great vedic mathematics: They did not know to make the best out of it!

(Vedic ?) Indians "invented" the 0 and had the knowledge about 1 but it was Leibniz the first to define the dual system - YES & NO, TRUE & FALSE, 0 & 1, To Be and Not to Be. Okay, you may argue that to be and not to be is from Shakespeare. And again you are wrong because William Shakespeare invented to be or not to be![/tscii:c6a4729824]

[SRS]

[tscii]

gopi bhagya madhuvrata
srngiso dadhi sandhiga
khala jivita khatava
gala hala rasandara

While this verse is a type of petition to Krishna, when learning it one can also learn the value of pi/10 (i.e. the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter divided by 10) to 32 decimal places. It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.

The translation is as follows:

O Lord anointed with the yogurt of the milkmaids' worship (Krishna), O savior of the fallen, O master of Shiva, please protect me.

At the same time, by application of the consonant code given above, this verse directly yields the decimal equivalent of pi divided by 10: pi/10 = 0.31415926535897932384626433832792. Thus, while offering mantric praise to Godhead in devotion, by this method one can also add to memory significant secular truths.

why is pi divided by ten? This means that when you want to make a wheel with a radius of 1 meter you'll get only a wheel of 20 cm radius. Even when I chant that verse givven above 10 times, I'll get ten wheels each with 40 cm diameter.

And long before the constant pi was known to humans, they had the knowledge to make wheels. They simply calculated 6 fold radius plus a bit to get the circumference of a wheel.

The point of the pi calculation is not to make bicycle wheels. pi/10 gives the same value as pi to 32 decimal places. Pi is an "irrational" number; some type of numerical technique is needed to approximate its value. These days, of course, the approximation is done using a computer. It is amazing that a simple mantra can do exactly what a computer does, yielding the exact same result:
It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.

[SRS]

Neither Vedic Nor Mathematics

We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned by the continuing attempts to thrust the so-called `Vedic Mathematics' on the school curriculum by the NCERT.


As has been pointed out earlier on several occasions, the so-called `Vedic Mathematics' is neither 'Vedic' nor can it be dignified by the name of mathematics. `Vedic Mathematics', as is well-known, originated with a book of the same name by a former Sankracharya of Puri (the late Jagadguru Swami Shri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaj) published posthumously in 1965. The book assembled a set of tricks in elementary arithmetic and algebra to be applied in performing computations with numbers and polynomials. As is pointed out even in the foreword to the book by the General Editor, Dr. A.S. Agarwala, the aphorisms in Sanskrit to be found in the book have nothing to do with the Vedas. Nor are these aphorisms to be found in the genuine Vedic literature.
The term "Vedic mathematics'' is therefore entirely misleading and factually incorrect. Further, it is clear from the notation used in the arithmetical tricks in the book that the methods used in this text have nothing to do with the arithmetical techniques of antiquity. Many of the Sanskrit aphorisms in the book are totally cryptic (ancient Indian mathematical writing was anything but cryptic) and often so generalize to be devoid of any specific mathematical meaning. There are several authoritative texts on the mathematics of Vedic times that could used in part to teach an authoritative and correct account of ancient Indian mathematics but this book clearly cannot be used for any such purpose. The teaching of mathematics involves both the teaching of the basic concepts of the subject as well as methods of mathematical computation. The so-called ``Vedic mathematics'' is entirely inadequate to this task considering that it is largely made up of tricks to do some elementary arithmetic computations. Many of these can be far more easily performed on a simple computer or even an advanced calculator.


The book "Vedic mathematics'' essentially deals with arithmetic of the middle and high-school level. Its claims that "there is no part of mathematics, pure or applied, which is beyond their jurisdiction'' is simply ridiculous. In an era when the content of mathematics teaching has to be carefully designed to keep pace with the general explosion of knowledge and the needs of other modern professions that use mathematical techniques, the imposition of ``Vedic mathematics'' will be nothing short of calamitous.
India today has active and excellent schools of research and teaching in mathematics that are at the forefront of modern research in their discipline with some of them recognised as being among the best in the world in their fields of research. It is noteworthy that they have cherished the legacy of distinguished Indian mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujam, V. K. Patodi, S. Minakshisundaram, Harish Chandra, K. G. Ramanathan, Hansraj Gupta, Syamdas Mukhopadhyay, Ganesh Prasad, and many others including several living Indian mathematicians. But not one of these schools has lent an iota of legitimacy to `Vedic mathematics'. Nowhere in the world does any school system teach "Vedic mathematics'' or any form of ancient mathematics for that matter as an adjunct to modern mathematical teaching. The bulk of such teaching belongs properly to the teaching of history and in particular the teaching of the history of the sciences.
We consider the imposition of `Vedic mathematics' by a Government agency, as the perpetration of a fraud on our children, condemning particularly those dependent on public education to a sub-standard mathematical education. Even if we assumed that those who sought to impose `Vedic mathematics' did so in good faith, it would have been appropriate that the NCERT seek the assistance of renowned Indian mathematicians to evaluate so-called "Vedic mathematics" before making it part of the National Curricular framework for School Education. Appallingly they have not done so. In this context we demand that the NCERT submit the proposal for the introduction of `Vedic mathematics in the school curriculum to recognized bodies of mathematical experts in India, in particular the National Board of Higher Mathematics (under the Dept. of Atomic Energy), and the Mathematics sections of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy, for a thorough and critical examination. In the meanwhile no attempt should be made to thrust the subject into the school curriculum either through the centrally administered school system or by trying to impose it on the school systems of various States.
We are concerned that the essential thrust behind the campaign to introduce the so-called `Vedic mathematics' has more to do with promoting a particular brand of religious majoritarianism and associated obscurantist ideas rather than any serious and meaningful development of mathematics teaching in India. We note that similar concerns have been expressed about other aspects too of the National Curricular Framework for School Education. We re-iterate our firm conviction that all teaching and pedagogy, not just the teaching of mathematics, must be founded on rational, scientific and secular principles.




S.G.Dani Professor of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Madhav M. Deshpande Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan
Indranil Biswas Professor of Mathematics at TIFR.
Nirmala B. Limaye Professor of Mathematics University of Mumbai
B.V. Limaye Professor of Mathematics Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Alladi Sitaram, Indian Statistical Institute, B'lore
S. Ramasubramanian, Indian Statistical Inst.,B'ore
V. Pati, Indian Statistical Inst., B'lore
G. Misra, Indian Statistical Inst., B'lore
Jishnu Biswas, Indian Statistical Inst., B'lore
D. P. Sengupta, Indian Inst. of Science(Retd.), B'lore
Alladi Uma, Dept. of English, Univ. of Hyderabad
M. Sridhar, Dept. of English, Univ. of Hyderabad
Amitava Bhattacharya
S.Subramanian, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai
Professor Nitin Nitsure,Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

For the article in Frontline on this subject:


http://www.tifr.res.in/~vahia/dani-vmsm.pdf


If you are willing to call the Chinese liers as well, then I am willing to debate the matter further with you.

[mahadevan]

SRS Wrote: Although Vedic mathematicians are known primarily for their computational genius in arithmetic and algebra, the basis and inspiration for the whole of Indian mathematics is geometry. Evidence of geometrical drawing instruments from as early as 2500 B.C.E. has been found in the Indus Valley

Who said that Indus valley is vedic ? if the indus people knew such things then it is highly likely that the vedics borowed and collated those ideas from the natives.

SRS wrote: The first rather cryptic formula is best understood by way of a simple example: let us multiply 6 by 8. ..............

Hey your method does not work for x X y when x + y =10/100/100, it goes through an infinite spiral. And it does not simplify anything it keeps the complexity the same, multiplication of 2 single/double/.. numbers remains the same after the step one. Neverthless I have seen some other more elegant techniques for multiplying large numbers, not sure if they are vedic or native Indian.

Regarding the Zero we have to give it to the desis, in general and not necessarily to the vedics.

[Bärlin]

The point of the pi calculation is not to make bicycle wheels. pi/10 gives the same value as pi to 32 decimal places. Pi is an "irrational" number; some type of numerical technique is needed to approximate its value. These days, of course, the approximation is done using a computer. It is amazing that a simple mantra can do exactly what a computer does, yielding the exact same result:
It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.
Who said that I wanted to produce bicycle wheels? Did the vedic mathematicians invent bicycle with the pi-mantra?



ka, ta, pa, and ya all denote 1;
kha, tha, pha, and ra all represent 2;
ga, da, ba, and la all stand for 3;
Gha, dha, bha, and va all represent 4;
gna, na, ma, and sa all represent 5;
ca, ta, and sa all stand for 6;
cha, tha, and sa all denote 7;
ja, da, and ha all represent 8;
jha and dha stand for 9; and
ka means zero.

Vedic Star,
unlike you I spent a bit time in decoding the pi-mantra you have provided and located some errors there. So I analyzed your decoding table and coloured the mismatch.
Can you clarify the mismatch to the hubbers? Will you ever refrain from copy and paste, you clown?

AS I have to assume that your vedic brain does not understand the mismatch, I better explain further:
According to you
ka can be 0 and 1
ta can be 1 and 6
tha can be 2 and 7
da can be 3 and 8
sa can be 5, 6, and 7

Why can't you apply all numbers to all consonants and say PaPa x MaMa is Star! ==> 00x00=*! ==> 0 (read Zero)

No one wonders why you were not educated in India. Anyway, copy and paste you have learned very well but nothing else!

[SRS]

SRS Wrote: Although Vedic mathematicians are known primarily for their computational genius in arithmetic and algebra, the basis and inspiration for the whole of Indian mathematics is geometry. Evidence of geometrical drawing instruments from as early as 2500 B.C.E. has been found in the Indus Valley

Who said that Indus valley is vedic ? if the indus people knew such things then it is highly likely that the vedics borowed and collated those ideas from the natives.

Then show me the literature of the so-called "natives" where the same ideas can be found. It seems like you subscribe to AIT, which has been debunked by genetic evidence. Caste system was not imposed on anyone, but native to India itself. Sandeep? has said in another thread that Manu was a South Indian king. So your attempts to separate the "Vedics" from the "natives" leads to nowhere.

[SRS]

[tscii:70b535c170]

The point of the pi calculation is not to make bicycle wheels. pi/10 gives the same value as pi to 32 decimal places. Pi is an "irrational" number; some type of numerical technique is needed to approximate its value. These days, of course, the approximation is done using a computer. It is amazing that a simple mantra can do exactly what a computer does, yielding the exact same result:
It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.
Who said that I wanted to produce bicycle wheels? Did the vedic mathematicians invent bicycle with the pi-mantra?



ka, ta, pa, and ya all denote 1;
kha, tha, pha, and ra all represent 2;
ga, da, ba, and la all stand for 3;
Gha, dha, bha, and va all represent 4;
gna, na, ma, and sa all represent 5;
ca, ta, and sa all stand for 6;
cha, tha, and sa all denote 7;
ja, da, and ha all represent 8;
jha and dha stand for 9; and
ka means zero.

Vedic Star,
unlike you I spent a bit time in decoding the pi-mantra you have provided and located some errors there. So I analyzed your decoding table and coloured the mismatch.
Can you clarify the mismatch to the hubbers? Will you ever refrain from copy and paste, you clown?

AS I have to assume that your vedic brain does not understand the mismatch, I better explain further:
According to you
ka can be 0 and 1
ta can be 1 and 6
tha can be 2 and 7
da can be 3 and 8
sa can be 5, 6, and 7

Why can't you apply all numbers to all consonants and say PaPa x MaMa is Star! ==> 00x00=*! ==> 0 (read Zero)

No one wonders why you were not educated in India. Anyway, copy and paste you have learned very well but nothing else!


I am not following your logic. The use of variables to represent numbers is basic to algebra. The difference is that the Vedics were doing this 2000 yrs before Westerners (Greeks did not know of algebra). [/tscii:70b535c170] Of course the choice of which variable to represent which number is arbitrary.

[Bärlin]

[tscii:e7fb8d9502]

The point of the pi calculation is not to make bicycle wheels. pi/10 gives the same value as pi to 32 decimal places. Pi is an "irrational" number; some type of numerical technique is needed to approximate its value. These days, of course, the approximation is done using a computer. It is amazing that a simple mantra can do exactly what a computer does, yielding the exact same result:
It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.
Who said that I wanted to produce bicycle wheels? Did the vedic mathematicians invent bicycle with the pi-mantra?



ka, ta, pa, and ya all denote 1;
kha, tha, pha, and ra all represent 2;
ga, da, ba, and la all stand for 3;
Gha, dha, bha, and va all represent 4;
gna, na, ma, and sa all represent 5;
ca, ta, and sa all stand for 6;
cha, tha, and sa all denote 7;
ja, da, and ha all represent 8;
jha and dha stand for 9; and
ka means zero.

Vedic Star,
unlike you I spent a bit time in decoding the pi-mantra you have provided and located some errors there. So I analyzed your decoding table and coloured the mismatch.
Can you clarify the mismatch to the hubbers? Will you ever refrain from copy and paste, you clown?

AS I have to assume that your vedic brain does not understand the mismatch, I better explain further:
According to you
ka can be 0 and 1
ta can be 1 and 6
tha can be 2 and 7
da can be 3 and 8
sa can be 5, 6, and 7

Why can't you apply all numbers to all consonants and say PaPa x MaMa is Star! ==> 00x00=*! ==> 0 (read Zero)

No one wonders why you were not educated in India. Anyway, copy and paste you have learned very well but nothing else!


I am not following your logic. The use of variables to represent numbers is basic to algebra. The difference is that the Vedics were doing this 2000 yrs before Westerners (Greeks did not know of algebra). [/tscii:e7fb8d9502] Of course the choice of which variable to represent which number is arbitrary.

Yes, I do understand that you don't understand vedic moron.
The variables you gave to represent numbers are misleading. For example sa can mean 5 or 6 or 7 at the same time according to you. It is not unique. This means that any time a sequence sasa occurs it can mean 55, 56, 57, 65, 66, 67, 75, 76 or 77! Do you get the point or are you already that much confused by your vedic idealogy?

gala hala rasandara - this is the last line of your pi-mantra. According to my calculator the 32th digit must be 5 but yours is 2, why? what happens to the "n" in rasandara? Should it not be rasa dara? Does it make any sense then? When you translate the pi-mantra consonant by consonant then I may perhaps accept but do it first, vedic master!

[SRS]

[tscii:cc9c3ee792]

The point of the pi calculation is not to make bicycle wheels. pi/10 gives the same value as pi to 32 decimal places. Pi is an "irrational" number; some type of numerical technique is needed to approximate its value. These days, of course, the approximation is done using a computer. It is amazing that a simple mantra can do exactly what a computer does, yielding the exact same result:
It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places.
Who said that I wanted to produce bicycle wheels? Did the vedic mathematicians invent bicycle with the pi-mantra?



ka, ta, pa, and ya all denote 1;
kha, tha, pha, and ra all represent 2;
ga, da, ba, and la all stand for 3;
Gha, dha, bha, and va all represent 4;
gna, na, ma, and sa all represent 5;
ca, ta, and sa all stand for 6;
cha, tha, and sa all denote 7;
ja, da, and ha all represent 8;
jha and dha stand for 9; and
ka means zero.

Vedic Star,
unlike you I spent a bit time in decoding the pi-mantra you have provided and located some errors there. So I analyzed your decoding table and coloured the mismatch.
Can you clarify the mismatch to the hubbers? Will you ever refrain from copy and paste, you clown?

AS I have to assume that your vedic brain does not understand the mismatch, I better explain further:
According to you
ka can be 0 and 1
ta can be 1 and 6
tha can be 2 and 7
da can be 3 and 8
sa can be 5, 6, and 7

Why can't you apply all numbers to all consonants and say PaPa x MaMa is Star! ==> 00x00=*! ==> 0 (read Zero)

No one wonders why you were not educated in India. Anyway, copy and paste you have learned very well but nothing else!


I am not following your logic. The use of variables to represent numbers is basic to algebra. The difference is that the Vedics were doing this 2000 yrs before Westerners (Greeks did not know of algebra). [/tscii:cc9c3ee792] Of course the choice of which variable to represent which number is arbitrary.

Yes, I do understand that you don't understand vedic moron.
The variables you gave to represent numbers are misleading. For example sa can mean 5 or 6 or 7 at the same time according to you. It is not unique. This means that any time a sequence sasa occurs it can mean 55, 56, 57, 65, 66, 67, 75, 76 or 77! Do you get the point or are you already that much confused by your vedic idealogy?

gala hala rasandara - this is the last line of your pi-mantra. According to my calculator the 32th digit must be 5 but yours is 2, why? what happens to the "n" in rasandara? Should it not be rasa dara? Does it make any sense then? When you translate the pi-mantra consonant by consonant then I may perhaps accept but do it first, vedic master!

What are you trying to say? Double meanings are allowed. The article says very clearly:

For example kapa, tapa, papa, and yapa all mean 11. By a particular choice of consonants and vowels one can compose a poetic hymn with double or triple meanings.

[Uppuma]

Friends,

It has been pointed out in various threads, all English number's names are from Sanskrit.

The names of number
Two from Tuvithiyai
Three from Thrithiyai; also Tri came from this
Four- IT is Chathurthi- became Quathur- to Quadra and Square to Four
Five- Panchami- became PENTA - TO five and Pancha,p gone tamil anju cames
Six is from SASHTI- became hexta- hexagon and six
Seven from Septhami- and September in calender means seventh month.
Eight- From Oshtami- becaME 0CTA- Eight
Nine - from Navami
Ten- thasami
One- Ptatham became PRIME

This expalains origin of MATHEMATICS.
uPPUMA

[Eelavar]

[tscii:6e295c5ebc]Summa what do you think about that ?

The Sankrit numbers(2-10) Dwi, Tri, Chatur, Pancha, Shat, Sapta, Ashta, Nava, Dasha

The numbers in other language, there is only some interchangability:

The Hindi numbers: Ek, Do, Tin, Char, Panja, che, sat, aat, nuo, das

The French numbers: Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix

The German numbers: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn

The Latin numbers: unus, duo, tres, quattuor, quinque, sex, septem, octo, novem

There is a strong common link between Sanskrit and the European languages....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I like this topic because i love mathematic..
There is no other logical language than mathematic..
If you know well vedic mathematic , you don't need a calculator to do complex oprerations...

For who it may interest, there is a full course in vedic mathematic at this link :

www.vedamu.org

Look an example :

For a fraction of the form in whose denominator 9 is the last digit, we take the case of 1 / 19 as follows:

For 1 / 19, 'previous' of 19 is 1. And one more than of it is 1 + 1 = 2.

Therefore 2 is the multiplier for the conversion. We write the last digit in the numerator as 1 and follow the steps leftwards.

Step. 1 : 1

Step. 2 : 21(multiply 1 by 2, put to left)

Step. 3 : 421(multiply 2 by 2, put to left)

Step. 4 : 8421(multiply 4 by 2, put to left)

Step. 5 : 168421 (multiply 8 by 2 =16, 1 carried over, 6 put to left)

Step. 6 : 1368421 ( 6 X 2 =12,+1 [carry over]

= 13, 1 carried over, 3 put to left )

Step. 7 : 7368421 ( 3 X 2, = 6 +1 [Carryover]

= 7, put to left)

Step. 8 : 147368421 (as in the same process)

Step. 9 : 947368421 ( Do – continue to step 18)

Step. 10 : 18947368421

Step. 11 : 178947368421

Step. 12 : 1578947368421

Step. 13 : 11578947368421

Step. 14 : 31578947368421

Step. 15 : 631578947368421

Step. 16 : 12631578947368421

Step. 17 : 52631578947368421

Step. 18 : 1052631578947368421

Now from step 18 onwards the same numbers and order towards left continue.

Thus 1 / 19 = 0.052631578947368421

Beautiful !!!!! There is no other word to describe this genious operation !!!

[/tscii:6e295c5ebc]

[mahadevan]

Hi Uppuma
English belongs to Indo European group of languages, the same group that prakrits belong to and sanskrit came from prakrit and tamil. So it would surprising only if sanskrit numbers did not resemble english.

[karuvaadu]

[tscii:ab8d26df6a]
ka can be 0 and 1
ta can be 1 and 6
tha can be 2 and 7
da can be 3 and 8
sa can be 5, 6, and 7


What are you trying to say? Double meanings are allowed. The article says very clearly:

For example kapa, tapa, papa, and yapa all mean 11. By a particular choice of consonants and vowels one can compose a poetic hymn with double or triple meanings. [/quote]

SRS>kapa, tapa, papa, and yapa all mean 11
yes, but Bärlin says something different

rasandara - 2792 ought to be the last 4 digits of the 32 digits you gave and rasandara represents.

But as Bärlin explains that "rasandra" represents 2592, 2692 and 2792. This simply means that rasandra can be any of these 4 numbers. If nobody knows that this mantra is pi-mantra then it simply means nothing. Something of no value. In other words 2592, 2692 and 2792 all deliver rasandra but only 2792 are the last 4 digits of the pi/10 you have givven above.

So this is just misleading and confusing. That is why you are not understanding anything![/tscii:ab8d26df6a]

[indian224080]

Hi Uppuma
English belongs to Indo European group of languages, the same group that prakrits belong to and sanskrit came from prakrit and tamil. So it would surprising only if sanskrit numbers did not resemble english.

Sanskrit Came from Tamil :rotfl: :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

[karuvaadu]

[tscii:1c690ef4bd]I say that the english one is from tamil onRu-onnu-oNdu! What do you vedics say now? ?

The German numbers: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn

Deutsch - Tamil
eins - ains
zwei (sometimes zwo) - tsvai (tsvo)
drei - dhRai
vier - (f)viar
fünf - (f)vyun(f)v
sechs - seks
sieben - sIpen
acht - akd
neun - noyn
zehn - sEn
11 - elf - el(f)v
12 - zwölf - tsvel(f)v

So the english numbers are more germanic than of any other.

For example take the "shit" (cit -in tamil) - the scots say shite (cait - in tamil) and the germans say Scheiße (caise - in tamil)

Further England comes from Angelland which is german meanig the land for angling. And the germans spoke of Angelsachsen (angelsaksen in tamil) which only means the angling Saxons. Saxons are one of the german tribes like the Bavarians, Prussians, Swabians. English is also very near to Low German that is still spoken by some of the north costal Germans.[/tscii:1c690ef4bd]

[SRS]

--

[SRS]

Who calculated the value of pi first?

The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have (1999) officially published that Budhayan's works dates to the 6th Century, which is long before the European mathematicians.

[SRS]

[tscii:43b1a401bb]
Did Bhaskar II discover calculus?

Bhaskar II was born in Vijapur in the province of Karnataka in 1114 A.D. He wrote Siddhanta-Shiromani in 1150, which became a classical text in Mathematics and Astronomy. The book is divided in four parts: Lilavati deals with arithmetic, Bijaganita with algebra, Ganitadhyaya and Goladhyaya with astronomy.

In Siddhanta Shiromani, Bhaskar II defines two kinds of planetary velocities: Sthula gati (average speed) and Sukshma or Tatkaliki gati (instantaneous velocity). The process of finding instantaneous velocity involves the use of differential calculus. There is definite proof that Bhaskar II carried out such calculations using the method of differentiation.

According to Hindu astronomy,

l = lmean ± r sina/R

where,

l = true longitude

lmean = mean longitude

r = radius of the epicycle

a = anomaly

and,

R = radius of the deferent cycle


Bhaskar II formulates the expression for the tatkaliki gati (instantaneous velocity) as follows:

"To find the instantaneous velocity (in longitude) of the planet, the kotiphala is to be multiplied by the time rate of change of anomaly and divided by the radius, and the quotient (thus obtained) is to be added to or subtracted from the velocity of the mean planet according as its position is in the six signs from the beginning of Cancer or Capricorn."

Expressed mathematically,

dl/dt = dlmean/dt ± (r cosa/R) da/dt

where,

r cosa = kotiphala

This equation not only provides his familiarity with the notion of differentiation, but also shows his knowledge of the expression

d(sina)/da = cosa


After Bhaskar II, India went through a long hostile foreign rule, and could not produce any mathematician of his caliber for a long time to come.


Reference: D. M. Bose, S.N. Sen and B. V. Subbarayappa, "A Concise History of Science in India", Indian National Science Academy, 1971, p. 203
[/tscii:43b1a401bb]

[Eelavar]

And finally Ramanujan Srinivasa developped the quadratic equation which now permit to the computer to calculate pi with billions of decimals....

http://ic.net/~jnbohr/java/formula.gif

http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Pi/piramanujan.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Tribute to this genious mathematician.

His works began only be studied and understood.

Ramanujan left a book which contain many formulas witout proofs, he was a real genious.

P.S: Ramanujan found many different formules to calculate Pi.

[SRS]

And finally Ramanujan Srinivasa developped the quadratic equation which now permit to the computer to calculate pi with billions of decimals....

http://ic.net/~jnbohr/java/formula.gif

http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Pi/piramanujan.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Tribute to this genious mathematician.

His works began only be studied and understood.

Ramanujan left a book which contain many formulas witout proofs, he was a real genious.

P.S: Ramanujan found many different formules to calculate Pi.

Yes, Ramanujan, greatest Indian mathematician of all time, Brahmana who attributed all his success to the Namagiri goddess... you can be sure you won't find his portrait on the walls of Anna U. :lol: I am not sure if he deserves a separate thread. But since we are outlining his achievements (not going into them in detail) this thread will do.

[rajraj]

Yes, Ramanujan, greatest Indian mathematician of all time, Brahmana who attributed all his success to the Namagiri goddess... you can be sure you won't find his portrait on the walls of Anna U. :lol:

The computing center in Anna Universisty is named after Ramanujan. :lol:

[Eelavar]

[tscii:d21eaca669]
You are saying they used π since 800 BC in India and I don't deny that! I only say that pi is not the invention by Indians first when it is known to Agyptians in 1700 BC already. You must know that 1700 BC is 900 years earlier than 800 BC! Or do you want to deny it?

... It's not a logical thinking ...

Who said you that Indian Civilisation didn't exist before 1700 B.C ??
Harrapa and Indus Valley cities were said to be the one of the most anciant cities until that they discoverd the Dwarka underwater city in Gujarat which is estimitated to 7500 B.C , do you know that my srilankan bro ?

It is not myth but reality.
[/tscii:d21eaca669]

[Uppuma]

Friends,

Mathematics and its origins are from India, Bible has quiet a lot of Maths wrongly.

And friend says- Ramanujam developed it because he went Abroad.

I have put the article from Wikipedia- in Indian Heritage page NO-13, which acknoledges it.

Bill Gates, when asked if Indian were not allowed to work in his Company. in USA, he would move to India.

So Foriegners have the skill to develop it and market commercially, but the basic is from India.
uppuma

[KoH]

[tscii:5c8a3466de]
You are saying they used π since 800 BC in India and I don't deny that! I only say that pi is not the invention by Indians first when it is known to Agyptians in 1700 BC already. You must know that 1700 BC is 900 years earlier than 800 BC! Or do you want to deny it?

... It's not a logical thinking ...

Who said you that Indian Civilisation didn't exist before 1700 B.C ??
Harrapa and Indus Valley cities were said to be the one of the most anciant cities until that they discoverd the Dwarka underwater city in Gujarat which is estimitated to 7500 B.C , do you know that my srilankan bro ?

It is not myth but reality.
[/tscii:5c8a3466de]
My srlinkan bro,
what is not a logical thinking?
I said that the egyptians had the knowledge of pi = 3.16... arrounf 1700 BC. It is found on papyrus of that time. This also means that they had already invented writing too.
The matter about pi the vedic moron SRS is talking about is from 800 BC. This Indian pi =3,003 was also not that "accurtae" as of that egyptian.
This only shows that
i) Indians were late in "inventing" pi (later than the Egyptians)
ii) Indians were not accurate with the pi (than the Egyptians)
iii) Indians invented their own pi

Bearing the knowledge about pi has nothing to do with a society that can be called a civilisation, my dear srilankan bro!

[KoH]

Bill Gates, when asked if Indian were not allowed to work in his Company. in USA, he would move to India.

No! He will not move to India! His company will move to India, if ever! Do you think that Bill Gates will feel comfortable if he wants to walk through an Indian city?
And if he ever moves to India he will probably come as a deity like Alexander turned Skantha!



So Foriegners have the skill to develop it and market commercially, but the basic is from India.
uppuma
Of course! They are only good as coolies and very happy that they have an earning and work until death assuming that everything is their fate. Not without a reason there is a caste system in India! If the Indians are born to serve others rather than make the use of their own knowledge then it had to be so! And if the rare knowledge is also kept unknown for the majority then they will always be th coolies. In the past, the present and very well also in the future! India is a country that does not change the time, the system and the fate!

[Eelavar]

[tscii:3a1a35e8e4]"Bearing the knowledge about pi has nothing to do with a society that can be called a civilisation, my dear srilankan bro!"

What I tried to say is that a civilisation should forcebily know Pi...Otherwise we cannot talk about civilisation...

Pi is not an "invention"...
Nobody can invent Pi, because Pi already exists, and can't be invented...

Pi number is more a conception than an invention..

Pre computer calculations of
Mathematician Date Places Comments Notes


1 Rhind papyrus 2000 BC 1 3.16045 (= 4(8/9)2)
2 Archimedes 250 BC 3 3.1418 (average of the bounds)
3 Vitruvius 20 BC 1 3.125 (= 25/8)
4 Chang Hong 130 1 3.1622 (= 10)
5 Ptolemy 150 3 3.14166
6 Wang Fan 250 1 3.155555 (= 142/45)
7 Liu Hui 263 5 3.14159
8, Zu Chongzhi 480 7 3.141592920 (= 355/113)
9 Aryabhata 499 4 3.1416 (= 62832/2000)
10 Brahmagupta 640 1 3.1622 (= 10)
11 Al-Khwarizmi 800 4 3.1416
12 Fibonacci 1220 3 3.141818
13 Madhava 1400 11 3.14159265359
14 Al-Kashi 1430 14 3.14159265358979
15 Otho 1573 6 3.1415929
16 Viète 1593 9 3.1415926536
17 Romanus 1593 15 3.141592653589793
18 Van Ceulen 1596 20 3.14159265358979323846
19 Van Ceulen 1596 35 3.1415926535897932384626433832795029
20 Newton 1665 16 3.1415926535897932
21 Sharp 1699 71
22 Seki Kowa 1700 10
23 Kamata 1730 25
24 Machin 1706 100
25 De Lagny 1719 127 Only 112 correct
26 Takebe 1723 41
27 Matsunaga 1739 50
28 von Vega 1794 140 Only 136 correct
29 Rutherford 1824 208 Only 152 correct
30 Strassnitzky, Dase 1844 200
31 Clausen 1847 248
32 Lehmann 1853 261
33 Rutherford 1853 440
34 Shanks 1874 707 Only 527 correct
35 Ferguson 1946 620

Computer calculations of
Mathematician Date Places Type of computer

Ferguson Jan 1947 710 Desk calculator
Ferguson, Wrench Sept 1947 808 Desk calculator
Smith, Wrench 1949 1120 Desk calculator
Reitwiesner et al. 1949 2037 ENIAC
Nicholson, Jeenel 1954 3092 NORAC
Felton 1957 7480 PEGASUS
Genuys Jan 1958 10000 IBM 704
Felton May 1958 10021 PEGASUS
Guilloud 1959 16167 IBM 704
Shanks, Wrench 1961 100265 IBM 7090
Guilloud, Filliatre 1966 250000 IBM 7030
Guilloud, Dichampt 1967 500000 CDC 6600
Guilloud, Bouyer 1973 1001250 CDC 7600
Miyoshi, Kanada 1981 2000036 FACOM M-200
Guilloud 1982 2000050
Tamura 1982 2097144 MELCOM 900II
Tamura, Kanada 1982 4194288 HITACHI M-280H
Tamura, Kanada 1982 8388576 HITACHI M-280H
Kanada, Yoshino, Tamura 1982 16777206 HITACHI M-280H
Ushiro, Kanada Oct 1983 10013395 HITACHI S-810/20
Gosper Oct 1985 17526200 SYMBOLICS 3670
Bailey Jan 1986 29360111 CRAY-2
Kanada, Tamura Sept 1986 33554414 HITACHI S-810/20
Kanada, Tamura Oct 1986 67108839 HITACHI S-810/20
Kanada, Tamura, Kubo Jan 1987 134217700 NEC SX-2
Kanada, Tamura Jan 1988 201326551 HITACHI S-820/80
Chudnovskys May 1989 480000000
Chudnovskys June 1989 525229270
Kanada, Tamura July 1989 536870898
Chudnovskys Aug 1989 1011196691
Kanada, Tamura Nov 1989 1073741799
Chudnovskys Aug 1991 2260000000
Chudnovskys May 1994 4044000000
Kanada, Tamura June 1995 3221225466
Kanada Aug 1995 4294967286
Kanada Oct 1995 6442450938
Kanada, Takahashi Aug 1997 51539600000 HITACHI SR2201
Kanada, Takahashi Sept 1999 206158430000 HITACHI SR8000



P.S: This list is not forcebily correct, because we don't know if man before 2000 BC found the value of Pi.
We must not conlcude that because we have not written proofs that man never found the value of Pi before.
In the Indian text the Sulba Sutras the ratio for the area is given as 3.088 while the ratio for the circumference is given as 3.2. [/tscii:3a1a35e8e4]

[Uppuma]

[tscii:bebaf74984]Friends, have a look at the following site :


VEDIC MATHEMATICS NEWSLETTER
ISSUE No. 23
Vedic Mathematics is becoming increasingly popular as more and more people are introduced to the beautifully unified and easy Vedic methods. The purpose of this Newsletter is to provide information about developments in education and research and books, articles, courses, talks etc., and also to bring together those working with Vedic Mathematics. If you are working with Vedic Mathematics - teaching it or doing research - please contact us and let us include you and some description of your work in the Newsletter. Perhaps you would like to submit an article for inclusion in a later issue or tell us about a course or talk you will be giving or have given.

If you are learning Vedic Maths, let us know how you are getting on and what you think of this system.
*****************************
This issue’s article is taken from a longer article by Andrew Nicholas. The full article can be viewed at www.vmacademy.com
INDIA’S SYSTEM OF MENTAL MATHEMATICS

THE VEDIC IDEAL

In the vedic system, the work is done mentally. This stems from the tradition being an oral one.

In practice, today, the initial problem or question is usually written down and the answer or solution also. The work being done mentally, a one-line answer results. This is the vedic ideal.

BACKGROUND
But what is this word ‘vedic’? It refers to an ancient period in India’s history. Tradition has it that the system of the vedas covered all branches of knowledge. Originally an oral tradition, it began to be written down around 1600 or 1700BC, according to western scholars. Over the next thousand years four vedas, as they were called, were recorded - rig-veda, yajur-veda, sama-veda and atharva-veda.

An appendix to this last contained a section headed ‘Ganita Sutras’, i.e. mathematical formulae, or principles. In the nineteenth century scholars began to look at it, but could make no sense of what they found there: statements such as, ‘In the reign of King Kamsa, famine, pestilence, and insanitary conditions prevailed.’

Then a brilliant south Indian scholar, Shri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji (1884-1960), began a detailed investigation. He concluded that the above statement about King Kamsa was a cryptic form of the decimal fraction for 1/17, using letters to represent single-digit numbers, much as we might use the letter A to represent 1, and B to represent 2, etc.

Having obtained one clue, further investigation led him to conclude that the whole of mathematics is based on 16 sutras, and he finally wrote 16 volumes on the topic.

Then events intervened. He was virtually forced into becoming a Shankaracharya. Hindu India has four of these top religious leaders - a bit like having four Popes.

The upshot was that he left his beloved vedic mathematics alone for many years. Returning to the subject in the 1950‘s, it emerged that the 16 volumes had been lost. On realising this, he decided to re-write them all, and began by writing a book intended to introduce the whole series. Ill health stopped him from getting any further, and he died in 1960. This introductory book is now all that we have by him. It was first published in 1965.

DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT NUMBER

Western version

When measuring weight, the bigger the number, the greater the weight. Similarly for temperature, length, electric current etc. We are used to the idea that larger numbers are weightier.

Vedic version

In the vedic system, numbers are viewed differently. An analogy is telephone numbers, which we don’t associate with quantity. They are patterns of digits acting as addresses.

Similarly, when working to a base of ten (as we normally do), the vedic system deals with the single-digit numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, up to 9, together with the zero, arranged in different patterns. For example, we don’t divide by 52, we divide by 5, and take account of the 2 afterwards. This shift of focus eliminates the heaviness, or weight, associated with the common view of numbers. The vedic mathematician considers a number such as 52 as 5 and 2 in succession.

IS VEDIC MATHEMATICS CURRENTLY USED IN INDIA?

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT DEVELOPMENTS THERE?

To answer the first question first, yes and no. It is used there to some extent. Here is a brief account of the developments.

Tirthaji died in 1960

‘Vedic Mathematics’ was published in 1965

Before going to India in 1981 I wrote to all Indian universities to find out what more was known about the subject. About 30% of them replied. No one could tell me anything more about it. Evidently the subject was being neglected. However, one or two letters pointed me to Tirthaji’s last residence and ashram in Nagpur. Visiting there, I was invited to return the following year to teach a fortnight’s course.

These days, the subject can be taught in schools, alongside the conventional system. Where this is done, I am told, the pupils have no problem with learning the two approaches side-by-side - the western and the vedic.

There is also a passionate debate raging about the status of Tirthaji’s system. Some argue that it is historically accurate, despite the lack of normal historical evidence. Others argue that, lacking evidence for its historical validity, it should be dismissed - despite the fact that, mathematically, it works.

My view (which I am not alone in holding) is that it is a reconstruction. At present we are unable to say for sure that it is historically accurate - nor to prove that it is not. This is because we are dealing with an oral tradition, and it is no surprise that written evidence may not be available.

WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL OF THE SYSTEM?

Tirthaji points out that it normally takes about 16 years to go from first steps in mathematics to a Degree in the subject. (e.g. from age 5 to age 21). But he states that with the vedic system the course in its entirety could be done in about two years! Of course, at present we don’t have all the material that’s needed available.

Needless to say, however, this would benefit everybody - not least those who are not interested in mathematics and would prefer to spend less time on it!

I think, myself, that once vedic mathematics begins to win general acceptance it will lead people to question other academic disciplines. Are rapid methods available in other subjects? If so, are they being used, and if not can they be developed?
****************************
NEWS
****************************
New course in london

Following the successful recent course at Imperial College another introductory course is to take place at the Regency Hotel, Queen’s Gate, London, SW7 5AG, on five Mondays from 29th April 2002. Time: 7.00 to 8.30 pm. Course fee: 30 pounds (20 pounds, students and concessions). Enquiries: tel. 020 8688 2642. Topics covered: Squares and Cubes, pi and the Vedic numeral code, Easy Calculus, Fibonacci within Nature, Mathematics and Mind.

BUSINESS APPLICATION OF A VM SUTRA

“Business India” has published an interesting article by Chetan Dalal entitled “Practical application of Vedic mathematics – Vedic mathematics has certain visual solutions which could be applied in problem solving”. This is on the application of Anurupye Shunyam Anayat (zero value of one of the variables in Simultaneous equations where the other variables are in perfect proportion to constants) illustrated in an Insurance claim. The article ends:

“This illustration . . . emphasizes on the simplicity of the tenets of the sutras of vedic mathematics. Perhaps research and intensive study of vedic scriptures might reveal even more advanced applications. What is illustrated above is a very elementary application of the sutra. The depth and richness of the vedic knowledge is beyond description. Greater research and more teamwork in sharing of ideas and interpretation may provide revolutionary results.”

It would be good to see more such applications of the Vedic Sutras.

MULTIPLICATION ON THE FINGERTIPS

A lot of interest was taken in the article in the last newsletter. Mr. Carlos Javier Maya from Mexico has given an idea for doing multiplications of 2 digit by 2 digit on the hands when the multiplier is 19. Mrs Sharma is developing the methods further and is currently conducting a series of courses on Vedic Mathematics.

Dr Abhijit Das in Mumbai, India, has also been researching this area, but without using fingers. We hope to have an article by him for the next newsletter.

COSMIC CALCULATOR COURSE NOW AVAILABLE

As stated in the last newsletter this Vedic Maths course, that covers the National Curriculum for England and Wales, can now be obtained. In India you can purchase whatever you need from Motilal Banarsidass shops and presumably from other bookshops.

The ISBN’s are as follows:

Full set: 81-208-1871-7

Book 1: 81-208-1862-8

Book 2: 81-208-1863-6

Book 3: 81-208-1864-4

Teachers Guide: 81-208-1865-2

Answer Book 1: 81-208-1866-0


To purchase the course in the UK contact:

Motilal Books, PO Box 324, Borehamwood, WD6 1NB

Tel: 0208 905 1244

Mailto:info@mlbduk.com

Price 39.75 pounds



For the USA contact:

THE SACRED SCIENCE INSTITUTE who have the books on order.

Address: PO Box 3617, Idyllwild, CA 92549-3617

http://www.sacredscience.com

mailto:institute@sacredscience.com

Tel: +1 (909) 659-8181

Fax: +1 (909) 659-8383

****************************

WORKSHOPS IN INDIA
If you want to know about Vedic Mathematics Workshops or research in India send an email to Mr R. P. Jain at mlbd@vsnl.com

****************************
CORRESPONDENCE

Email:

First of all I am thankful to those who are behind this effort of rejuvenating vedic science or mathematics.

I have learned very few mathema-tactics when I was giving some scholarship exams in 4 th standard. These were taught to me by my Nanny at that time. I could score 99/100 in that exam. and much of it due to use of vedic maths. But afterwards I never pursued it. I have done engineering and after so much of years have passed now I have decided to study vedic maths from scratch. I have done tutorials from your site and they are simply best to add my interest. So please subscribe me as student and pls. guide me what next I should do.
****************************
Your comments about this Newsletter are invited.

If you would like to send us details about your work or submit an article for inclusion please let us know on news@vedicmaths.com

Previous issues of this Newsletter can be copied from the Web Site: www.vedicmaths.org

Issue 1: An Introduction

Issue 2: "So What's so Special about Vedic Mathematics?"

Issue 3: Sri Bharati Krsna Tirthaji: More than a Mathematical Genius

Issue 4: The Vedic Numerical Code

Issue 5: "Mathematics of the Millennium"- Seminar in Singapore

Issue 6: The Sutras of Vedic Mathematics

Issue 7: The Vedic Square

Issue 8: The Nine Point Circle

Issue 9: The Vedic Triangle

Issue 10: Proof of Goldbach's Conjecture

Issue 11: Is Knowledge Essentially Simple?

Issue 12: Left to Right or Right to Left?

Issue 13: The Vinculum and other Devices

Issue 14: 1,2,3,4: Pythagoras and the Cosmology of Number

Issue 15: A Descriptive Preparatory Note on the Astounding Wonders of Ancient

Indian Vedic Mathematics

Issue 16: Vedic Matrix

Issue 17: Vedic Sources of Vedic Mathematics

Issue 18: 9 by 9 Division Table

Issue 19: “Maths Mantra”

Issue 20: Numeracy

Issue 21: Only a Matter of 16 Sutras

Issue 22: Multiplication on the Fingertips


To subscribe or unsubscribe to this Newsletter simply send an email to that

effect to news@vedicmaths.com

Please pass a copy of this Newsletter on (unedited) to anyone you think may

be interested.

Editor: Kenneth Williams

Visit the Vedic Mathematics web site at
http://www.vedicmaths.org
mailto:news@vedicmaths.com
uppuma[/tscii:bebaf74984]

[Eelavar]

Please try this one.

http://www.vedamu.org/Mathematics/vedicmathematics.asp

[karuvaadu]

What I tried to say is that a civilisation should forcebily know Pi...Otherwise we cannot talk about civilisation...

It aches my eyes to read what you write thus I better ignore your posts in future. It is very wrong to say that you can not call a civilisation as civilisation without the knowledge of pi!
But for what purpose did a civilisation need pi if not for wheel making first? With the knowledge of pottery the mankind aquired the next knowledge called the wheel. With the aquiring of wheel knowledge they had the need to know about pi. Do you want to say that Inkas, Mayas and Aztekes are not civilisations? They did not know about wheels!



Pi is not an "invention"...
Nobody can invent Pi, because Pi already exists, and can't be invented...

This word invention you are riding of is put into quotation marks by KoH! pi is nothing else than the circumference devided by the diameter of a circle, in other words the wheel. You for sure have seen bullock carts, precisely the wheels of these carts. These wheels are made of wood and coverd with flat iron aginst wearing down. And this was the start of calculating pi. I don't want to say that the ancient egyptions used bullock carts but who knows.


Pi number is more a conception than an invention..

The religion and God is a conception but for sure not science! Or do you want to say that E=mc2 is a concept? Or the center of gravity, elctricity etc? Firs someone must have invented the wheel prior to pi.



....

P.S: This list is not forcebily correct, because we don't know if man before 2000 BC found the value of Pi.
We must not conlcude that because we have not written proofs that man never found the value of Pi before.
In the Indian text the Sulba Sutras the ratio for the area is given as 3.088 while the ratio for the circumference is given as 3.2. [/tscii]
The mankind used 3 X radius + a bit before they calculated with pi. Even without c2 = a2 +b2 they knew how to calculate it: A triangle with an 90 degree angle has one side of the length 3, the other side 4 and the third side 5! Try it! The mankind was not at all dummy, only we are dummy because we are using calculators and computers and don't know about 1 X 1. And we are also kept dummy because the knowledge was available to certain people only, the so called the caste of the priests in Egypt as well as in India!

This discussion only started because I denied the SRS' claim that the Indians aquired the knowledge of pi up to 32 digits ca. 800 BC which is definitely not true!

I would suggest you, my dear srilankan bro, try to understand first before you start to think! What you read and how you read is not important but the understanding. Only then you'll gain logical thinking before you assess me illogical.

[indian224080]

Please try this one.

http://www.vedamu.org/Mathematics/vedicmathematics.asp

Good Link EElavar.
Please continue.

[SRS]

But for what purpose did a civilisation need pi if not for wheel making first? With the knowledge of pottery the mankind aquired the next knowledge called the wheel. With the aquiring of wheel knowledge they had the need to know about pi. Do you want to say that Inkas, Mayas and Aztekes are not civilisations? They did not know about wheels!

Rv. Dinakaran has taught you well indeed, but not about your own history. :lol: Wheels? Pi has many, many uses beyond wheels. The ancient Indians had advanced spacecraft (read Ramayana). Pi is a concept, as someone has already pointed out. The practical application is not at all necessary. What practical application does infinity have? Pure math is justified on its own terms.

[SRS]

By the way, I am of the opinion that the "wheel" was "invented" without any knowledge of pi. A rolling wheel simply represents one type of motion. People must have observed rolling objects and then concieved of a wheel. The dimensions of the circular wheel need not necessarily have been calculated using pi, especially considering that pi is an irrational number - the concern was only with constructing a functional wheel and not the abstract properties of a perfect circle.

[karuvaadu]

But for what purpose did a civilisation need pi if not for wheel making first? With the knowledge of pottery the mankind aquired the next knowledge called the wheel. With the aquiring of wheel knowledge they had the need to know about pi. Do you want to say that Inkas, Mayas and Aztekes are not civilisations? They did not know about wheels!

Rv. Dinakaran has taught you well indeed, but not about your own history. :lol: Wheels? Pi has many, many uses beyond wheels. The ancient Indians had advanced spacecraft (read Ramayana). Pi is a concept, as someone has already pointed out. The practical application is not at all necessary.
Ramayana? Do you believe in Homer's Odyssee? Jules Verne? Ron Hobbard?
Who flew away with Seetha? Raavanan or Raman? Who was Indian? Raavanan or Raman? Who was Lankan? Now tell me who had the knowledge of advanced spacekraft? Indian or Lankan?


What practical application does infinity have? Pure math is justified on its own terms.
The practical application of infinity is the existence of God, isn't it?
"All is this, All is that
All from All
All remains ... " I read somewhere and smashed that book of theroies against the wall!


By the way, I am of the opinion that the "wheel" was "invented" without any knowledge of pi.
Did I say something else?
From my point of view, the wheel was invented for the use of making pots! The same technology is still in use!

[SRS]

But for what purpose did a civilisation need pi if not for wheel making first? With the knowledge of pottery the mankind aquired the next knowledge called the wheel. With the aquiring of wheel knowledge they had the need to know about pi. Do you want to say that Inkas, Mayas and Aztekes are not civilisations? They did not know about wheels!

Rv. Dinakaran has taught you well indeed, but not about your own history. :lol: Wheels? Pi has many, many uses beyond wheels. The ancient Indians had advanced spacecraft (read Ramayana). Pi is a concept, as someone has already pointed out. The practical application is not at all necessary.
Ramayana? Do you believe in Homer's Odyssee? Jules Verne? Ron Hobbard?
Who flew away with Seetha? Raavanan or Raman? Who was Indian? Raavanan or Raman? Who was Lankan? Now tell me who had the knowledge of advanced spacekraft? Indian or Lankan?


What practical application does infinity have? Pure math is justified on its own terms.
The practical application of infinity is the existence of God, isn't it?
"All is this, All is that
All from All
All remains ... " I read somewhere and smashed that book of theroies against the wall!


By the way, I am of the opinion that the "wheel" was "invented" without any knowledge of pi.
Did I say something else?
From my point of view, the wheel was invented for the use of making pots! The same technology is still in use!

Wow... and Indians blame Vedas for casteism. Missionaries have done a far greater injustice - many Indians are in ignorance of their own history! The funny thing is the best scientific minds in the West have all accepted Vedas, while rejecting the King James philosophy put forth by the missionaries.

[karuvaadu]

Hey Astro Kid,

I only wonder why you refer to my post if you are not able to answer my questions?


Wow... and Indians blame Vedas for casteism. Rightly! But this is a Vedic Maths thread and not Vedic Casteism. Create a Vedic Casteism thread and proceed!


Missionaries have done a far greater injustice - many Indians are in ignorance of their own history! And you in Chicago escaped the missionaries it seems! How was your education in "King James" Missionary Univesity in Chicago? You achieved everything by chanting the mantras? I doubt it!


The funny thing is the best scientific minds in the West have all accepted Vedas, while rejecting the King James philosophy put forth by the missionaries. The critical view of the West put them on the Pole Position. Cut, Copy & Paste Philosophy led you straight ahead to the backyard! It is not to blame on "King James'" missionaries but only on the vedic missionaries chanting something without understanding it!

You still did not answer who was capable of flying according to Ramayana? Was it Raavanan or Raaman? Who was flying up, up and away with Seetha? You threw in Raamayanam here and I again ask you who was the first to fly? A Lankan or Indian? Or was it Ikarus? :roll:

[abbydoss1969]

Hey Astro Kid,

I only wonder why you refer to my post if you are not able to answer my questions?


Wow... and Indians blame Vedas for casteism. Rightly! But this is a Vedic Maths thread and not Vedic Casteism. Create a Vedic Casteism thread and proceed!


Missionaries have done a far greater injustice - many Indians are in ignorance of their own history! And you in Chicago escaped the missionaries it seems! How was your education in "King James" Missionary Univesity in Chicago? You achieved everything by chanting the mantras? I doubt it!


The funny thing is the best scientific minds in the West have all accepted Vedas, while rejecting the King James philosophy put forth by the missionaries. The critical view of the West put them on the Pole Position. Cut, Copy & Paste Philosophy led you straight ahead to the backyard! It is not to blame on "King James'" missionaries but only on the vedic missionaries chanting something without understanding it!

You still did not answer who was capable of flying according to Ramayana? Was it Raavanan or Raaman? Who was flying up, up and away with Seetha? You threw in Raamayanam here and I again ask you who was the first to fly? A Lankan or Indian? Or was it Ikarus? :roll:

This thread seems just to be an excuse to thrash christianity and missionaries, and muslim beliefs, while propagating unconfirmed vedic theories, using questionable vedic sources.

[Sundar12345]

Imagine a world without 0? Highly impossible at least now.
Aryabhatta was an indian in india who found the number 0.
The pythogoras theroem was found by BOUDAYAN long long before before pythogoras.

Indian are the one's who did great things in MATHS.
Even PI was found in INDIA

[abbydoss1969]

[tscii:365f52d92b]BACKGROUND
But what is this word ‘vedic’? It refers to an ancient period in India’s history. Tradition has it that the system of the vedas covered all branches of knowledge. Originally an oral tradition, it began to be written down around 1600 or 1700BC, according to western scholars. Over the next thousand years four vedas, as they were called, were recorded - rig-veda, yajur-veda, sama-veda and atharva-veda.

An appendix to this last contained a section headed ‘Ganita Sutras’, i.e. mathematical formulae, or principles. In the nineteenth century scholars began to look at it, but could make no sense of what they found there: statements such as, ‘In the reign of King Kamsa, famine, pestilence, and insanitary conditions prevailed.’




uppuma[/tscii:365f52d92b]

Can you please say which part of veda's these vedic mathematics belong to.

Because when swamiji was asked the same question he seemed to have replied:"they occured in his own Parishishtas and no other"(Parishishtas are the appendix portion )

Also, the fact that the swamiji holds an M A in degree in mathematics is not publicised;maybe it takes a bit of mystery out of the what is essentially speed mathematics :!:

Please read the following link to see the front line article and reply

http://www.tifr.res.in/~vahia/dani-vmsm.pdf


There is a lot of difference between "vedic mathematic" introduced by the thirthaji swami and "indian mathematics" in ancient india. By mixing these two , you are confusing everybody

[karuvaadu]

Imagine a world without 0? Highly impossible at least now.
Aryabhatta was an indian in india who found the number 0.
The pythogoras theroem was found by BOUDAYAN long long before before pythogoras.

Indian are the one's who did great things in MATHS.
Even PI was found in INDIA
Aryabhatta was an Indian in India :lol: It is hard to believe that there was an India in India at that time! Do you have any prove that there was an India at that time? It is the same as to say there existed United Kingdom 2000 years ago! I would like to upgrade my Geographical knowledge, if you don't mind.

Please don't prove us that you are a zero. Please goto the first page and read from the beginning, from the page number one if you don't mind! No zero page there!

The pi is was found in India but about ca. 1000 years later than in Egypt! Please get to page one and read!

Abydoss1969, you are absolutely correct! Not only this thread but the thread called Vedic past of pre-islamic Arabia too! I am trying my best against all odds. And now I am waiting for SRS explanation about who was the first in aquiring the flight according to Raamayanam!

[indian224080]

Oh Sundar u made a mistake . Call Aryabhatta a Tamil and see how the thread goes. U wud be showered praises and Blessings of our divine Tamil supremo forumers.

[Sundar12345]

I did not read the first page So this happened I am extremely sorry.

I am a bit more patriotic so as I saw the topic I wrote it.

[karuvaadu]

Oh Sundar u made a mistake . Call Aryabhatta a Tamil and see how the thread goes. U wud be showered praises and Blessings of our divine Tamil supremo forumers.

-deleted-

Sundar its allright! Nothing against being patriotic but also be patriotic to all the bad things that had been done and being done!

[Sundar12345]

Fine ... and a good post that was.

[Idiappam]

Indianxxx said:
Oh Sundar u made a mistake . Call Aryabhatta a Tamil and see how the thread goes. U wud be showered praises and Blessings of our divine Tamil supremo forumers

I may not agree with what Sundar said, but Aryabhatta, born in now known as Kerala. Read up more of him!

[Uppuma]

Friends,

When it was shown all the European Numeral along with English, as of Sanskrit Origin, friends say it is Indo European, The Sanskrit is the Oldest surviving languages of the world, so we can show that as origin, where as we see Telugu and Kannada existed when Sangam lit was written, so Saying Tamil as Dravidic root is not acceptable to many Scholars in Telugu and Malayalam, who like Pvanar has written articles that Tamil came from their Language.

Every Indian belong to the same Tradition.

Mathematics like many other sciences are Indian gift to the world.

[Idiappam]

Thank you, Uppuma for contributing your share of the Vedic lies!

[Ronnie The Dutch]

What is the sutra for one plus one?

[mahadevan]

The Sanskrit is the Oldest surviving languages of the world

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

It is neither surviving nor old, it is just a liturgical language deviod of any naturality.
The earliest scientific evidence for sanskrit is after BC and there is no proof that it ever was used as a medium of communication, the quintessential attribute of a language. In that sense it is more like a computer langauge(like java, C etc) designed specifically for a purpose (liturgical)!

[mahadevan]

where as we see Telugu and Kannada existed when Sangam lit was written, so Saying Tamil as Dravidic root is not acceptable to many Scholars in Telugu and Malayalam

If Uppuma's parents are alive now it can be said that uppuma never came from them, awesome logic buddy

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[Uppuma]

Dear Friends,

What a great finding by Mahadevan- When whole world accepts after researches, that All Sciences ar from India including MAthematics; and Sangam Tamil Literature stands proofs for that.

Uppuma

[Ronnie The Dutch]

Dear Friends,

What a great finding by Mahadevan- When whole world accepts after researches, that All Sciences ar from India including MAthematics; and Sangam Tamil Literature stands proofs for that.

Uppuma

What are those "All Sciences"?

All is this, All is that?

Could it be that Egyptians were much more advanced in All Sciences rather than All Indian Sciences?

[kannannn]

so, finally SRS never answered Bahliner's question! And he says there is a possibility of the letters representing different numbers. Alas, mathematics doesnt permit ambiguity. That's the beauty of it. If x = y, it stays that way and x ~= z when y ~= z. I would like to ask SRS if he can scan a copy of the vedas (published), where these verses are quoted and present them here. Also, I would like to know if I can interpret all the vedic mantras in this fashion.

[SRS]

so, finally SRS never answered Bahliner's question! And he says there is a possibility of the letters representing different numbers. Alas, mathematics doesnt permit ambiguity. That's the beauty of it. If x = y, it stays that way and x ~= z when y ~= z. I would like to ask SRS if he can scan a copy of the vedas (published), where these verses are quoted and present them here. Also, I would like to know if I can interpret all the vedic mantras in this fashion.

This thread is not really the place to explain that in "Algebra" the choice of variables to represent particular quantities is arbitrary.
-deleted-

[mahadevan]

Hi Kannan please do not ask such questions to SRS for his inaction to answer wise questions is not because of lack of intent but just because of lack of ability. See he does not know either the meaning or the spelling of ambiguous. He knows neither science or math. But he is better than solomon because he atleast cuts and pastes from different web sites while solomon cuts and paste from his own postings, but under a different name.

-deleted-

[kannannn]

This thread is not really the place to explain that in "Algebra" the choice of variables to represent particular quantities is arbitrary.
-deleted-

Mr. SRS,
Is it possible to have a civil discussion without any presumptions and antagonism towards anyone? You have still not answered my question.

[stranger]

-deleted-

Enough BS!

Now answer the question in a civilized manner! :twisted:

[SRS]

-deleted-

Moderator's Note: FINAL WARNING: Stay away from religion bashing or face an immediate ban.

[Saya Setju]

-deleted-

Moderator's Note: FINAL WARNING: Stay away from religion bashing or face an immediate ban.


What is the value of a final warning if another final warning follows?

[devapriya]

Friends,
The word VEDA is from Sanskrit word Vidya, tamilised Viththai, meaning knowledge; most of friends can recall schools are named as VIDYALAYAS.
Now Science of Ancient Medicene is called AyurVeda- Science to increase Ayul( LIFE Period). Hence Maths of Ancient Knowledge can well be Vedic Maths.
The Name Indian Maths is interesting on the look, the Name INDIAN- comes from Vedic Traction; as per which-the Landmass (STAN) between Himalayas and INDU Maga Samudra is the Chosen Land of God, and this place is called HINDUSTAN and people as HINDUS. Now why should we call by corrupt form of Hindu, rather Vedic is much better.
Friends- other accusation was that the Revered. Shankaracharya, who wrote the book, had M.A. in Mathematics and was not said in Public. The book has many introductions, and this is stated. He got his MA in 1904, the book got published in 1960, No other 1000s of MA, or further Phds, could not bring such a detailed Faster Method of Mathematics. Please do not discredit a Person of His Achievement.
Now Companies from Other Countries sell High Speed Mathematics teaching at Rs.500/- per month for 4 hours class per month naming Abacus, taking Cue from the above book.
We have from Bower Manuscript, a Mathematical Manuscript dated to 50 BCE in SANSkrit and of AyurVeda in plenty from 2nd Cen. CE onwards.
Which of the Indo-Eurpean language group, is dated securely to have existed in pre- Christian era, is dated scientifically with the help of dated inscriptions or artifacts? The existence of Proto Indo European language before say 3rd-4th centuries BC is purely based on conjectural inference. How a language, the existence of which is not known by any verifiable means for over three thousand years except in hypothesis, could be accepted as the language and that Sanskrit burrowed from it.
All the Numerals have Sanskrit names, and many proofs in abundance is given, and further can be added.

[bis_mala]

[tscii:24c8990831]
Friends,

When it was shown all the European Numeral along with English, as of Sanskrit Origin, friends say it is Indo European, The Sanskrit is the Oldest surviving languages of the world, so we can show that as origin, where as we see Telugu and Kannada existed when Sangam lit was written, so Saying Tamil as Dravidic root is not acceptable to many Scholars in Telugu and Malayalam, who like Pvanar has written articles that Tamil came from their Language.

Every Indian belong to the same Tradition.

Mathematics like many other sciences are Indian gift to the world.

Uppumaa should not have brought up the language issue in this thread and hidden it among posts dealing with mathematics. There is no proof that Skrt is the oldest surviving language of the world. Sanskrit cannot be called a "surviving" language as it is not in the ordinary home speech in any state in India, though attempts are being made to study and apply it in everyday life by a negligible number of people on a promotional basis. It did not matter much if Tamil came from Telugu or Malayalam as all these are sister languages and from the same root but the fact remains that the other Dravidian languages had not preserved their lexical and other features as well and pure as Tamil language had.
Sanskrit was "perfected” sometime in 4c ACE. In fact the Vedic language (Rig) has been said to be different from Sanskrit and some authorities refer to Rig language as Rigkrit to show that it was a different language.

If Uppuma removes or edit his post, I will do likewise. as this is not the thread for this argument.
[/tscii:24c8990831]

[bis_mala]

[tscii:813fd54b9d]
Friends,
The word VEDA is from Sanskrit word Vidya, tamilised Viththai, meaning knowledge; most of friends can recall schools are named as VIDYALAYAS.


It is not known for certain as to when the Vedas (the first 3 of them) were actually composed and researchers had given different dates. It can be roughly estimated that they had been composed sometime between 1400 and 1000 BCE (after the Aryans had been settled in India as per Indologists).
There is also a proposition that they were sang by the locals before any outsiders had come in; in that event it must have been composed before 1400 BCE by Dravidians. The priestly order of Brahmins had not been created at the time these were composed. For a long time after their composition, they were orally recited and much of them had been forgotten by the time it was decided to reduce them to writing. Today we have only those which had been successfully retrieved from that oral tradition.

It is common sense when such works were being orally recited for a long time, the users of these hymns were likely to effect changes or supply new words for archaic or forgotten ones. Conflict of versions could not be ruled out. There would be nothing to prevent revisions.

The word Veda is not from "Vidya" or knowledge, there being no "vidya" (body of knowledge) prior to the compositions for them to use such a word. Veda was a word coined from vEithal, which means thatching, interweaving or composing. (The difference between this and other forms of knowledge was that this was COMPOSED.) Veithal being a verb, it is Tamil word and vEtham means a composition. “vE +th+ am”.. The use of this word as name for the Vedas shows that once upon a time, the entire subcontinent was occupied by the Dravidians and their languages and words were spoken throughout the subcontinent.
Now Vidya is also from 'vitthu' seed, the verb for that word being “vithaiththal” (sowing). The term viththai only by figurative extension means knowledge. “Veda” can also mean grass bound together and used as a broom during rites, which again is also from the Tamil word vEithal; it appears that the word was subsequently used to refer to the mantras being chanted and thereafter to the entire collection.

Besides this, there are 800 Tamil words found to have been used in the Rig Veda. Refer to Kamil Svellebelle and Devaneyap PaavaaNar.for the list words. Dr Sountherapaandian, a recent researcher and Sanskrit scholar has found more.

Devapriya should not have brought up this issue in this thread. I suggest she remove it to the appropriate thread and I would do likewise.
[/tscii:813fd54b9d]

[aravindhan]

We have from Bower Manuscript, a Mathematical Manuscript dated to 50 BCE in SANSkrit and of AyurVeda in plenty from 2nd Cen. CE onwards.
Can you cite a source for that dating, please? I've usually seen the Bower manuscript (or rather, manuscripts, since they're really seven different manuscripts) dated to around 350 - 450 AD, not 50 BC. And the bulk of them deal with medicine, not mathematics.


Which of the Indo-Eurpean language group, is dated securely to have existed in pre- Christian era, is dated scientifically with the help of dated inscriptions or artifacts?
Of the top of my head, I can think of Hittite (attested by tens of thousands of cuneiform inscriptions dating back to the 14th century BC), Mycenean Greek (attested by around six thousand inscriptions in the Linear B script dating back to the 13th century BC or thereabouts), Leptonic Gaulish (inscriptions in the Old Italic script from the 6th century BC), Latin (inscriptions in the Old Italic script from the 6th century BC) and Venetic (inscriptions in the Northern Italic script from the 5th century BC). There are probably more which I can't think off right away. These are older than the oldest established dates for any inscriptions in any Indian language, be it Indo-European or Dravidian.


All the Numerals have Sanskrit names, and many proofs in abundance is given, and further can be added.
In a previous post replying to you in your incarnation as Solomon, I explained why the Sanskrit numbers could not have linguistically given rise to the numeral systems in other Indo-European languages. It would be good if you explained, preferably with reference to scholarly sources, why you disagree.

[abbydoss1969]

:clap: :clap:

[Saya Setju]

Dear foes,

during my researches in Germany I came across a stone inscription telling that there were black skinned traders belonging to a great civilisation from lemuria who spoke a languange called thamiz. They had been dealing with gems, pearls and white skinned slaves, said to be north indian nomads who were well doing in taking care of cattle.

It is said that these people (cattle drivers) introduced the '0' here in Germany and the Germans the '00' there after. The zero was used by the nomads to call the Germans idiots and the Germans used the double zero to indicate the lavotory, the home of the nomads. Anywhere you see a '00' it is a toilet only. The history tells that the second zero was used to tag the nomads as the zero of the zeros.

As long as Uppuma aka XYZ aka 123 aka --- is comming up with fiction it will be wrong of me to provide you the link that was on a stone inscription that is said to be over 5000 years old.

Saya Setju
:lol:

What happened to SRS the vedic zero? Is he inventing the pi once again? Is he busy with a wild search for new vedic maths?

[devapriya]

[tscii:0fa196b1dd]Friends,
The Root of the Sanskrit word Veda is verymuch known and widely accepted, and Bismala can stop unwarranted assuming roots.

Aravindanji- please come, I have read your discussions with Solomon, and felt both gave lots and lots of information which otherwise is unknown. I feel that you have mostly conceded to the points raised by Solomon with little Reservations – such as close – not so easy., etd.,

The days of Maraimalai Aadigal and Devaneyan- writing anything as research opinion are gone, and Aravindanji seems silent when the likes of fsg-bismala misinterpret Tamil Sangam Lit. and Sanskrit words as Tamil. Now Thankyou for bringing on inscriptions, my detailed postings shortly please, as I am little busy.
The point was Aryan Invasion later incoming Theory, which now puts Aryan coming in from 8000BCE TO 1500BCE and Dravidians in 3000 BCE. I do not believe both and that is why Numerals can be from Sanskrit- I bring to your attention- a recent book sold in Amazon, showing the latest DNA research

The Real Eve : Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa (Paperback)
by Stephen Oppenheimer -This trip though genetic and human time has suggested two extraordinary conclusions: first that the Europeans genetic homeland was originally in south asia in the PakistanGulf Region over 50000 year ago; and second that the Europeans ancestors follwoed at least two widely seperated routes to
arrive, ultimately in the same cold but rich garden.
Some clear points in this book - So such thing as Aryan Invasion of India - Next ALL non-African humans resided in India from 85k to 60k years ago - The root DNA for all non-africans is in India

And for example you referred Hittite, these were deciphered with interpreted mythologies and variations and disputes continue.
Semitic Languages themselves has moved away from this.
Moreover, even Hebrew did not have script for Vowel Points till 800CE, which were introduced later.

Hence I am unable to accept European or middle east supremacy.

Mathematical Knowledge of India, is well acknowledged and why friends dispute on this? Bower manuscript- I have read from reliable author- one single sheet with Mathematic discussion dating to 50 BCE, and as it was not in my Electronic Achieves please give me time for giving source.

I as per International Scholars believe, that many sciences such as Maths, Medicene, Astronomy, Astrology etc., moved from India to every part of world, and I shall give links to various International Authors views in my next posts.
Devapriya.
[/tscii:0fa196b1dd]

[aravindhan]

The days of Maraimalai Aadigal and Devaneyan- writing anything as research opinion are gone, and Aravindanji seems silent when the likes of fsg-bismala misinterpret Tamil Sangam Lit. and Sanskrit words as Tamil.
That's largely because I haven't studied the Pavanar method of deriving etymologies, so I can't readily point to where it doesn't meet scholarly standards even though I can see that its results don't. It's not exactly objective to criticise a methodology I know very little about just because I disagree with the results, and a discussion of that sort will be enormously unproductive.

On the other hand, the points you in your various incarnations have raised happen to be things I do know about, so it's not difficult for me to point out why I disagree with your conclusions.


The Real Eve : Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa (Paperback) by Stephen Oppenheimer
I have read Oppenheimer's work. One needs to be a little careful in using it, though, because he is writing for a popular audience, not a scientific one. As a result, he speaks of general trends rather than specifics. He asks the question of "when did humans spread to this region", not "At what time did the ancestors of each group presently living in this region move here." This means that his findings are does not actually speak to the question of the migration of the Aryans, because that is not an issue he considers, just as his "Eden in the East" does not speak to the existence of Kumarikkandam.


Some clear points in this book - So such thing as Aryan Invasion of India - Next ALL non-African humans resided in India from 85k to 60k years ago - The root DNA for all non-africans is in India
That is his claim, yes. However, the question of exactly when and the ancestors of present-day Indians moved here remains open. Science has published a series of more scientifically oriented papers which touch upon this question:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/308/5724/965
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5724/1034
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5724/996


And for example you referred Hittite, these were deciphered with interpreted mythologies and variations and disputes continue.
Semitic Languages themselves has moved away from this.
Hittite is an Indo-European language, not a semitic one.


Hence I am unable to accept European or middle east supremacy.
Nor am I. However, I am equally unable to accept ancient Vedic supremacy. Or, in general, any claims of supremacy.


Mathematical Knowledge of India, is well acknowledged and why friends dispute on this?
Several of the claims made on this thread go far beyond what is acknowledged. For instance, whilst the Sanskrit verse on pi keeps cropping up as an example of "ancient" Indian knowledge (and has been cited on this thread as such), no-one I have asked has been able to cite an early source for it. One correspondent said he had found it in a book, printed in the 1970s, where it was cited as an example of how the mnemonic technique could be used, and made no claim as to the antiquity of the verse. Unfortunately, he did not give me the name of the book.

It is also troubling that we tend to completely ignore cases where ancient Indian mathematics got things wrong. For example, Aryabhatta's formulae for calculating the area of a pyramid are simply incorrect (Elfering's protestations notwithstanding). We do not address the total lack of interest in experimental verification which they seemed to display in relation to the pure sciences, the use of mimamsa of all things to interpret the works of earlier mathematicians, the correction by commentators of portions of Aryabhatta's and other texts which they found unacceptable and - above all - the fact that most mathematics texts saw it only as a means to more effectively conducting astrological predictions and performing religious rituals. None of these are positive tendencies, but we simply cannot understand our country's past or face up to the realities of our present until we accept and seriously try to understand them. Why do we need to idealise and romanticise Indian culture and ancient Indian society? Why can't we feel secure enough of who we are to accept it as it was and as it is?

[stranger]

:clap:

It is unfortunate no genius has anything to counter argue with Mr. Aravindhan! :roll:

[kannannn]

Aravindan, very well put. Unfortunately people like devapriya only look at (or better, choose to believe) portions of references that suit them. The journey of ancient man as described by Oppenheimer does not concern Aryan invasion at all, as you said. BTW comparison of time periods do not make sense at all in this case. Perhaps a graphic description of Oppenheimer's work will help devapriya see things in the right perspective:
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey

[SRS]

Getting this thread back on track! Here are some comments from Dr. Subhash Kak:

- I have read the book edited by you and Dr TRN Rao (Computing Science in Ancient India, University of Southwestern Louisiana Press) on some surprising mathematics: pi to many decimal places, Sayana's accurate calculation of the speed of light, hashing algorithms, the binary number system of Sanskrit meters -- are these mere coincidences or is there conclusive evidence of advanced mathematics? -

DR. SUBHASH KAK: The binary number system, hashing, various codes, mathematical logic (Navya Nyaya), or a formal framework that is equivalent to programming all arose in ancient India. This is all well known and it is acknowledged by scholars all over the world. I shouldn't forget to tell you that a most advanced calculus, math and astronomy arose in Kerala several centuries before Newton.

In particular, I am amazed, as a layman, by the evidence that Sayana, circa 1300 CE, who was prime minister at the court of the Vijayanagar Emperor Bukka I, calculated the speed of light to be 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha, which does come to 186,536 miles per second.

Truly mind-boggling! The speed of light was first measured in the West only in the late 17th century. So how could the Indians have known it? If you are a sceptic, then you will say it is a coincidence that somehow dropped out of the assumptions regarding the solar system. If you are a believer in the powers of the mind, you would say that it is possible to intuit (in terms of categories that you have experienced before) outer knowledge. This latter view is the old Indian knowledge paradigm. If it were generally accepted it would mean an evolution in science much greater than the revolution of modern physics.

- It is also well-known that the Vedic or Puranic idea of the age of the universe is some 8 billion years, which is of the order of magnitude of what has been estimated by modern astrophysicists. Is this also a mere coincidence? -

DR. SUBHASH KAK: Again, either a coincidence, or the rishis were capable of supernormal wisdom. Don't forget that the Indian texts also speak about things that no other civilization thought of until this century. I am speaking of air and space travel, embryo transplantation, multiple births from the same embryo, weapons of mass destruction (all in the Mahabharata), travel through domains where time is slowed, other galaxies and universes, potentials very much like quantum potential (Puranas). If nothing else, we must salute the rishis for the most astonishing and uncanny imagination.

- You also suggest that that the modern computer science term for context-free languages, the Backus-Naur Form, should more accurately be called the Panini-Backus Form, since Sanskrit grammarian Panini invented the notion of completely and unambiguously defined grammars (and devised one such for Sanskrit) as early as about 500 BCE. -

DR. SUBHASH KAK: Oh yes, all this is well established and well known, as also the Indian development of mathematical logic.

[SRS]

If the Indians were able to calculate the speed of light and accurately measure the age of the Universe, it comes as no surprise that they were able to approximate pi to several decimal places. Unfortunately, many in this thread fail to see how these discoveries are interrelated.

[stranger]

The thread was going just fine.

Why do you fill up with TRASH now????

Respond to Aravindhan's post, NOW!

[stranger]

The extract of Mr. Aravindhan's questions and criticisms are HERE!



* Several of the claims made on this thread go far beyond what is acknowledged. For instance, whilst the Sanskrit verse on pi keeps cropping up as an example of "ancient" Indian knowledge (and has been cited on this thread as such), no-one I have asked has been able to cite an early source for it.

* One correspondent said he had found it in a book, printed in the 1970s, where it was cited as an example of how the mnemonic technique could be used, and made no claim as to the antiquity of the verse.

* Unfortunately, he did not give me the name of the book.

It is also troubling that we tend to completely ignore cases where ancient Indian mathematics got things wrong. For example,

* Aryabhatta's formulae for calculating the area of a pyramid are simply incorrect (Elfering's protestations notwithstanding).

* We do not address the total lack of interest in experimental verification which they seemed to display in relation to the pure sciences, the use of mimamsa of all things to interpret the works of earlier mathematicians, the correction by commentators of portions of Aryabhatta's and other texts which they found unacceptable and - above all - the fact that most mathematics texts saw it only as a means to more effectively conducting astrological predictions and performing religious rituals.

* None of these are positive tendencies, but we simply cannot understand our country's past or face up to the realities of our present until we accept and seriously try to understand them.

* Why do we need to idealise and romanticise Indian culture and ancient Indian society?

* Why can't we feel secure enough of who we are to accept it as it was and as it is?

I want to SEE the EXPERTS' opinion on these comments and criticisms, HERE !

Dont fill up with TRASH again! :twisted:

[kannannn]

Getting this thread back on track! Here are some comments from Dr. Subhash Kak:


:lol: :lol: SRS!! Your Dr. Subhash Kak is a joke. When he visited IISc, Bangalore a couple of years ago, to talk on his datings of Ramayana and Mahabharata, he couldn't answer a simple question of mine: 'How does he know that the star and planet positions as quoted by the authors of these epics were not thought up by them to give antiquity to the stories?'. So much for his expertise. As Stranger said stick to the topic.

[viLakkumaaru]

Dont fill up with TRASH again! :twisted:It is very kind of you to beg a vedic trash not to be a trash. SRS's trash is its treasure.


Getting this thread back on track! Yeah, but don't use a wheel with vedic pi. I hate limping! Especially yours.


As Stranger said stick to the topic.This SRS moron is a cut and paste clown. Is pasting the same as sticking?
:lol:

Anyway, I have a question though. Is a malaiyaLi vedic too?

[stranger]

:lol: :lol: SRS!!

Your Dr. Subhash Kak is a joke. When he visited IISc, Bangalore a couple of years ago, to talk on his datings of Ramayana and Mahabharata, he couldn't answer a simple question of mine : 'How does he know that the star and planet positions as quoted by the authors of these epics were not thought up by them to give antiquity to the stories?'.

So much for his expertise.

:rotfl:

So, Kannan is an "IISc breed" too! :D

No wonder clowns are getting on in your nerve! :lol:

[SRS]

The extract of Mr. Aravindhan's questions and criticisms are HERE!



* Several of the claims made on this thread go far beyond what is acknowledged. For instance, whilst the Sanskrit verse on pi keeps cropping up as an example of "ancient" Indian knowledge (and has been cited on this thread as such), no-one I have asked has been able to cite an early source for it.

* One correspondent said he had found it in a book, printed in the 1970s, where it was cited as an example of how the mnemonic technique could be used, and made no claim as to the antiquity of the verse.

* Unfortunately, he did not give me the name of the book.

It is also troubling that we tend to completely ignore cases where ancient Indian mathematics got things wrong. For example,

* Aryabhatta's formulae for calculating the area of a pyramid are simply incorrect (Elfering's protestations notwithstanding).

* We do not address the total lack of interest in experimental verification which they seemed to display in relation to the pure sciences, the use of mimamsa of all things to interpret the works of earlier mathematicians, the correction by commentators of portions of Aryabhatta's and other texts which they found unacceptable and - above all - the fact that most mathematics texts saw it only as a means to more effectively conducting astrological predictions and performing religious rituals.

* None of these are positive tendencies, but we simply cannot understand our country's past or face up to the realities of our present until we accept and seriously try to understand them.

* Why do we need to idealise and romanticise Indian culture and ancient Indian society?

* Why can't we feel secure enough of who we are to accept it as it was and as it is?

I want to SEE the EXPERTS' opinion on these comments and criticisms, HERE !

Dont fill up with TRASH again! :twisted:


The Chinese also approximated the value of pi. As I just pointed out, the approximation of pi is nothing compared with calculating the speed of light or the age of the universe. The problem with you backwards is you can't see the BIG picture... you focus on one trivial detail. Now, you won't find this written on your certificate, but science integrates many different disciplines. Only this integration can give a proper description of the phenomenon. What experimental verification... even experimental verification is not a perfect process. Go and read up on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Also, it is only the physical sciences that rely on so-called experimental verification... the final proof is ultimately mathematical. If you want to argue with this, find me an experimental verification for the 4th dimension! Idealising and romanticising? These are all facts. Unfortunately you backwards can't read properly... now read this sentence very, very carefully:

if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

I know that is very hard for a backwards like you to understand. Go and throw a chappal to relieve your frustrations. Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

[SRS]

Getting this thread back on track! Here are some comments from Dr. Subhash Kak:


:lol: :lol: SRS!! Your Dr. Subhash Kak is a joke. When he visited IISc, Bangalore a couple of years ago, to talk on his datings of Ramayana and Mahabharata, he couldn't answer a simple question of mine: 'How does he know that the star and planet positions as quoted by the authors of these epics were not thought up by them to give antiquity to the stories?'. So much for his expertise. As Stranger said stick to the topic.

Is he a joke because he has a Ph.D in electrical engineering or because he didn't answer your question? Please kindly present your credentials here (Ph.D, name of articles published in scientific journals, etc, subject to Wikepedia verification). If I remember right, you are the same clown who asked how one letter can represent several numbers. Ever heard of the reverse process, binary? Perhaps you should have asked Dr. Subhash Kak, expert on quantum computing, for an explanation. :lol: :lol:

[kannannn]

:lol: :lol: SRS!!

Your Dr. Subhash Kak is a joke. When he visited IISc, Bangalore a couple of years ago, to talk on his datings of Ramayana and Mahabharata, he couldn't answer a simple question of mine : 'How does he know that the star and planet positions as quoted by the authors of these epics were not thought up by them to give antiquity to the stories?'.

So much for his expertise.

:rotfl:

So, Kannan is an "IISc breed" too! :D

No wonder clowns are getting on in your nerve! :lol:

Stranger, neengalum IISc? Which dept?

[kannannn]

Is he a joke because he has a Ph.D in electrical engineering or because he didn't answer your question? Please kindly present your credentials here (Ph.D, name of articles published in scientific journals, etc, subject to Wikepedia verification). If I remember right, you are the same clown who asked how one letter can represent several numbers. Ever heard of the reverse process, binary? Perhaps you should have asked Dr. Subhash Kak, expert on quantum computing, for an explanation. :lol: :lol:

SRS, I dont have to present my credentials here. And I certainly dont need your stamp of authorization. But FYI, I'm no lesser atleast degree wise. Anyway, who said one needs a PhD in EE to ask a question on the dating of epics? And I dont want to spam this thread. I wish you too would do so and answer the pertinent questions.

[SRS]

Is he a joke because he has a Ph.D in electrical engineering or because he didn't answer your question? Please kindly present your credentials here (Ph.D, name of articles published in scientific journals, etc, subject to Wikepedia verification). If I remember right, you are the same clown who asked how one letter can represent several numbers. Ever heard of the reverse process, binary? Perhaps you should have asked Dr. Subhash Kak, expert on quantum computing, for an explanation. :lol: :lol:

SRS, I dont have to present my credentials here. And I certainly dont need your stamp of authorization. But FYI, I'm no lesser atleast degree wise. Anyway, who said one needs a PhD in EE to ask a question on the dating of epics? And I dont want to spam this thread. I wish you too would do so and answer the pertinent questions.

You have made your level of knowledge very clear:

------

kannannn
Junior Hubber


Joined: 10 Dec 2004
Posts: 83
Location: UK
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject:
so, finally SRS never answered Bahliner's question! And he says there is a possibility of the letters representing different numbers.

---------------

Obviously you know nothing of binary. :lol: :lol: You also have a problem with basic reading skills. If you had read the original article:

By a particular choice of consonants and vowels one can compose a poetic hymn with double or triple meanings.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[stranger]

I think the moderators should ban this guy, SRS for talking NONSENSE and LIES. :twisted:

Indians dont want to get a better look by LYING and MANIPULATING the FACTS for sure! 8-)

--------------
kannan: I will pm you sometime later! Take it easy:)

[SRS]

Getting this thread back on track! Here are some comments from Dr. Subhash Kak:


:lol: :lol: SRS!! Your Dr. Subhash Kak is a joke. When he visited IISc, Bangalore a couple of years ago, to talk on his datings of Ramayana and Mahabharata, he couldn't answer a simple question of mine: 'How does he know that the star and planet positions as quoted by the authors of these epics were not thought up by them to give antiquity to the stories?'. So much for his expertise. As Stranger said stick to the topic.

Every great ancient culture had astronomers. Many of the astronomical discoveries made were "similar" but of course some were diferent. Star and planet positions however, is very simple astronomy. Only a clown such as yourself will ask such nonsense. Not surprised the great Dr. Subhash Kak did not answer to such nonsense. On the other hand, if you had presented your "certificate" to him, he might have relented. Then again, I question what those of low-caliber IQ's were doing at the "conference" period, unless of course it was a talk open to the general public.

[indian224080]

When did SRS lie?
Numbers (1,0) representing different Characters Aint a Lie.
Similarly Letters(A->F) representing Numbers Ain't a Lie.
Where did Lies come into this thread from?

[stranger]

Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

SO WHAT?????????????

Any idiot can get a Ph.D! :lol:

[SRS]

I think the moderators should ban this guy, SRS for talking NONSENSE and LIES. :twisted:

Indians dont want to get a better look by LYING and MANIPULATING the FACTS for sure! 8-)

--------------
kannan: I will pm you sometime later! Take it easy:)

Where is the lie and where is the manipulation? Do you want to deny that two cultures in such close proximity to each other as India and China shared no information whatsoever? Do you want to deny that every ancient culture had some form of astronomy? Go ahead and deny... when you use terms such as "lie" and "manipulation" that is the implication. But in conclusion, you are only implicating yourself as "ignorant" because history cannot be rewritten!

[stranger]

Indian:

I wnat you to make some comment on Aravindhan's remarks before you go on BS anymore.

Do you agree with his conclusions or not:

1) Yes

2) No

3) I dont know.

Pick one answer and give it to me NOW! Thanks! :)

[SRS]

Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

SO WHAT?????????????

Any idiot can get a Ph.D! :lol:

But one cannot cannot get a Ph.D in EE with no knowledge of binary, I assure you of that. :lol:

[stranger]

if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

This is the kind of NONSENSE I am talking about.

This is called BULLSHIT.

Indian: it is best for you to keep your mouth closed for a while!

[SRS]

if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

This is the kind of NONSENSE I am talking about.

This is called BULLSHIT.

Indian: it is best for you to keep your mouth closed for a while!

:lol: Great display of ignorance. But even ignorance demands an explanation (sometimes at least). Now can you explain your reasons for the above statement? I can explain mine: (I) proximity of India to China. Do you want to deny the Indians had no contact with the Chinese? (II) Pure maths is pure maths. The methods may be different, but the end result is the same.

[kannannn]

Can't you see the reason for the above statement SRS? 'very strong possibility' is not evidence. :rotfl:

[stranger]

if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

This is the kind of NONSENSE I am talking about.

This is called BULLSHIT.

Indian: it is best for you to keep your mouth closed for a while!

:lol: Great display of ignorance. But even ignorance demands an explanation (sometimes at least). .

This guy is INSANE.

"Probability" is nothing but BULLSHIT!

These kind of statements are NOT acceptable in any world where people HAVE BRAIN!

I insist the moderators to BAN this guy! :twisted:

[SRS]

Can't you see the reason for the above statement SRS? 'very strong possibility' is not evidence. :rotfl:

Actually "very strong possibility" is the basis of quantum mechanics; a Ph.D such as yourself must already know that. Perhaps you and UKW a.k.a ramadoss a.k.a stranger should roll on the floor with an actual physics book. Then again, I am not sure that the chappal-throwing man who opposed the Hindi imposition gave consideration to the range of the chappal. :lol: By the way, there is no need to rely on possibilities in this case. It is a well-established fact:

---------

ir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) a Hungarian and author of several books including Ra`jatarangini: a chronicle of the kings of Kashmir and Innermost Asia : detailed report of explorations in Central Asia, Kan-su, and Eastern Iran carried out and described under the orders of H.M. Indian Government, whose valuable researches have added greatly to our knowledge of Greater India, remarks:

"The vast extent of Indian cultural influences, from Central Asia in the North to tropical Indonesia in the South, and from the Borderlands of Persia to China and Japan, has shown that ancient India was a radiating center of a civilization, which by its religious thought, its art and literature, was destined to leave its deep mark on the races wholly diverse and scattered over the greater part of Asia."

................

he value of Indian trade may be estimated from the well-known passage of Pliny, in which he recorded that India drained the Roman empire of fifty million sesterces every year. The wealth of early India is confirmed by the lament of Pliny the Elder in Historica Naturalis (Natural History), completed in 77 AD that all of Rome's coffers were being emptied into India to satisfy Roman demand for transulent Indian muslins. Pliny's statement is corroborated by the discovery, in India, of innumerable gold coins of the Roman emperors, which must have come here in course of trade. Most of the coins have been found. Most of these coins have been found in South India, and their evidence is corroborated by many passages in classic Tamil literature. We read of 'Yavanas of harsh speech' with many wares; of foreign merchants thronging sea-port towns like Mamallapuram, Puhar, and Korkai; or busy customs officials, and those engaged in loading and unloading vessels in the harbor. The wealth of the Roman Empire reached India through the ports of Kalyan, Chaul, Broach, and Cambay in Western India. Tamralipti was an important port in Bengal. It carried on trade with China, Lanka, Java and Sumatra. In the Andhra region, the ports were Kadura and Ghantasala, Kaveripattanam (Puhar) and Tondail were the ports of the Pandya region. The ports of Kottayam and Muziris were on the Malabar coast. There was a great maritime trade between India and Southeast Asia and China. The rulers of India facilitated trade by building and maintaining lighthouses at the necessary points and by keeping sea routes free and safe from pirates.

---------------------------

[stranger]

* Actually "very strong possibility" is the basis of quantum mechanics; a Ph.D such as yourself must already know that.

*Perhaps you and UKW a.k.a ramadoss a.k.a stranger should roll on the floor with an actual physics book.

* Then again, I am not sure that the chappal-throwing man who opposed the Hindi imposition gave consideration to the range of the chappal. :lol: By the way, there is no need to rely on possibilities in this case. It is a well-established fact: -

This guy should be sent off before he pollutes everything HERE!

Look at the NONSENSE he comes up with!

I repeat, this guy should be BANNED for insanity! :twisted: I mean it! :twisted:

[stranger]

Indian:

I wnat you to make some comment on Aravindhan's remarks before you go on BS anymore.

Do you agree with his conclusions or not:

1) Yes

2) No

3) I dont know.

Pick one answer and give it to me NOW! Thanks! :)

I want an answer HERE, INdian!

Where the HELL ARE YOU :?: :twisted:

[SRS]

Haha, Indian, don't answer the clown. He is trying to divert attention from his badly shattered arguments.

[stranger]

Seems like "Indian" is hiding somewhere as he could not pick 1) or 2) or 3).

Who knows he might pick all the three too! :lol:

[stranger]

Haha, Indian, don't answer the clown. He is trying to divert attention from his badly shattered arguments.

Here is the best part of your argument!!!!


now read this sentence very, very carefully: if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

Why do you think everybody is STUPID like you to buy your BULLSHIT?????

Chinese discovered gun-powder and so there is a great probability that Indians must have discovered that too!!!

If chinese could, why cant Indians???? :lol:

What an Idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Surya]

Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

SO WHAT?????????????

Any idiot can get a Ph.D! :lol:


:?



u obviously don't have one....

[SRS]

Haha, Indian, don't answer the clown. He is trying to divert attention from his badly shattered arguments.

Here is the best part of your argument!!!!


now read this sentence very, very carefully: if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

Why do you think everybody is STUPID like you to buy your BULLSHIT?????

Chinese discovered gun-powder and so there is a great probability that Indians must have discovered that too!!!

If chinese could, why cant Indians???? :lol:

What an Idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, the Indians knew of gunpowder. This is no surprise if one accepts they were experts in chemistry. Read the following:

-------

Military science - Gunpowder

In regard to military science, the Ramayana and the Puranas make frequent mention of Shataghnis, or canons, being placed on forts and used in times of emergency. A canon was called "Shataghni" because it meant the fire weapon that kills one hundred men at once. They ascribe these agniyastras, or weapons of fire, to Visvakarma, the architect of the Vedic epics. Rockets were also Indian inventions and were used in native armies when Europeans first came into contact with them. As per Dante's Inferno, Alexander mentioned in a letter to Aristotle, that terrific flashes of flame showered on his army in India. The Shukra Neeti is an ancient text that deals with the manufacture of arms such as rifles and guns. In The Celtic Druids (pp-115-116), Godfrey Higgins provides evidence that Hindus knew of gun powder from the remotest antiquity.

(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 27-28).

According to Sir A. M. Eliot and Heinrich Brunnhofer (a German Indologist) and Gustav Oppert, all of whom have stated that ancient Hindus knew the use of gunpowder. Eliot tells us that the Arabs learnt the manufacture of gunpowder from India, and that before their Indian connection they had used arrows of naptha. It is also argued that though Persia possessed saltpetre in abundance, the original home of gunpowder was India. In the light of the above remarks we can trace the evolution of fire-arms in the ancient India.

(source: German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies writing in German - By Valentine Stache-Rosen. p.92). (For more information on Military science please refer to chapter on War in Ancient India).

http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Hindu_Culture1.htm#Chemistry%20and%20metallurgy

[bis_mala]

It is also argued that though Persia possessed saltpetre in abundance, the original home of gunpowder was India.

So these are all argued, but not proved. That's fine!!

[viLakkumaaru]

Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

SO WHAT?????????????

Any idiot can get a Ph.D! :lol:


:?



u obviously don't have one....
I have two. Can I perhaps mortgage one of them?

You for sure get one for being the SRS deputy.

[stranger]

u obviously don't have one....

Is that SO?!

How would do you know that?!

Is that because I am not an idiot for sure?! :lol:

[stranger]

Yes, the Indians knew of gunpowder. This is no surprise if one accepts they were experts in chemistry. Read the following:


Military science - Gunpowder

http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Hindu_Culture1.htm#Chemistry%20and%20metallurgy

Again coming up with some web-crap written by a lunatic!

What a copy-paste clown you are! :shock:

[viLakkumaaru]

Unfortunately you backwards can't read properly... now read this sentence very, very carefully:

if the ancient Chinese were able to approximate the value of pi, there is a very strong probability that the Indians also were.

I know that is very hard for a backwards like you to understand. Go and throw a chappal to relieve your frustrations. Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

Fortunately you forwards can't write properly ... now read this sentence very, very carefully:

If the ancient chinese were able to use bamboo sticks, there is a very strong probability that the indians also were. But they did not, why
If the ancient chinese were able to follow Buddhism then so were indians. But they did not and still don't, why?

Can any forward tell me why and how you approximate the pi up to 32 decimals?
9.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999 is also an approximated value of pi and is more than 32 decimals. Is there anybody to prove me wrong?

[stranger]

Come on Indian!

Pick 1) or 2) or 3) or all the three!

I am waiting to hear from you! :lol:

[viLakkumaaru]

Rockets were also Indian inventions and were used in native armies when Europeans first came into contact with them.
How does it come that such an advanced civilisation was overrun by so many folks so often.
Vedic past of Arabia became islamic.
Vedic Aryan theorie produced Europeans to come and rape India
Persians defeated vedic India umpteen times.
Dravidians went to the North to show them their boundries.
Vedic electrical engineers delt with electricity and passed on the info to Faraday, Ohm and Tesla.

Yes, Indians were also the first to fly to Moon and his name was Neil Armstrong. His name in Tamil: niil kaippalam!

Copy and Paste is the one and only invention of Indian origin as SRS clearly demonstrates.

[indian224080]

I guess Stranger required Answers to these questions.



* Several of the claims made on this thread go far beyond what is acknowledged. For instance, whilst the Sanskrit verse on pi keeps cropping up as an example of "ancient" Indian knowledge (and has been cited on this thread as such), no-one I have asked has been able to cite an early source for it.

Yes It takes time for truth to come out. But eventually it does come out as Now. Its just like a Submerged Dwaraka. People used to consider Stories of Krishna as mere fables but now? They have some evidence.

And if you want proofs for every post then probably u cannot post anything. As a good proof begins with a solid assumption. Why bother when we have lot of posts on tamil even stupid posts like Dravdian country extending to South America. Duh!!! Why not extend till Mars?



* One correspondent said he had found it in a book, printed in the 1970s, where it was cited as an example of how the mnemonic technique could be used, and made no claim as to the antiquity of the verse.

Okay Yes So what he had told you that he had seen it in a book. Well any positive guess on Antiquity cannot be made at any time.


* Unfortunately, he did not give me the name of the book.


Yes, that shows his frankness and clearly exhibits he is not lying.



It is also troubling that we tend to completely ignore cases where ancient Indian mathematics got things wrong. For example,

* Aryabhatta's formulae for calculating the area of a pyramid are simply incorrect (Elfering's protestations notwithstanding).

* We do not address the total lack of interest in experimental verification which they seemed to display in relation to the pure sciences, the use of mimamsa of all things to interpret the works of earlier mathematicians, the correction by commentators of portions of Aryabhatta's and other texts which they found unacceptable and - above all - the fact that most mathematics texts saw it only as a means to more effectively conducting astrological predictions and performing religious rituals.

* None of these are positive tendencies, but we simply cannot understand our country's past or face up to the realities of our present until we accept and seriously try to understand them.

* Why do we need to idealise and romanticise Indian culture and ancient Indian society?

* Why can't we feel secure enough of who we are to accept it as it was and as it is?


Thats not true, In every book the inability to express anything has been clearly illucidated. It is a basic human nature that we try to list out positive things. I am sure everyone here takes pride in saying that he proceeded with this and got it right. there cannot be any genious who has not committed any mistake in proving anything. Now any guy who says that he is expert in cycling does mean that he was once a beginner and he would have gotten hurt when he was trying cycling for the first time. Sania mirza gets awarded a Padmashri for her achievements in Tennis. Now going with ur explanation Indian govt. should not give her padmashri because she has lost in a number of games. Duh! Why are Elections held still in our country when Some elections have miserably failed?

Everyone romanticizes his culture. A man without Loving his culture is a Sanyasi. Just because u r married if u fail to love ur wife will it be a good life? We can accept that she is our wife . Can we fail to romaticize her and just leave her as she is ? Can u stop respecting ur Parents and leave them as they are ?
Sorry friend.

All right coming back to ur question. I am not ready to accept Aravindans answers as such. But i appreciate his honesty in admitting his thoughts. I am for truth.
I am not here for promotion of tamil thereby bashing Vedic scholars.
If u r feeling hard to accept Vedic scholars as real scholars i am sorry you are terribly and fradulently mistaken and will never prosper in ur field.
If someone points out there are no Tamil Mathematics scholars will u agree or not?

I think this shows not only ur biasedness against Sanskrit and anything related to Sanksrit .

Hope all ends well.

[viLakkumaaru]

Dr. Subhash Kak has a Ph.D, it does not matter what clowns like you think.

SO WHAT?????????????

Any idiot can get a Ph.D! :lol:

But one cannot cannot get a Ph.D in EE with no knowledge of binary, I assure you of that. :lol:

This means all the beings who had the knowledge of yes-no, true false, and 0-1 are all phds in EE?

Do you want to say that you could be a PhD if you only had the knowledge of binary?

[stranger]

I am not ready to accept Aravindans answers as such. But i appreciate his honesty in admitting his thoughts. I am for truth.
I am not here for promotion of tamil thereby bashing Vedic scholars.

I can appreciate that!

This has nothing to do with thamizh. Why do you still live with such a notion?



If someone points out there are no Tamil Mathematics scholars will u agree or not?

Thamizh or Veda are nothing to do with this topic of mathematics.

Just keep them away as much as possible!

BTW, How would you name genius Ramanujan???

I thought he happend to be a thamizhian and a scholar as well! :D

[viLakkumaaru]

Indian:

I wnat you to make some comment on Aravindhan's remarks before you go on BS anymore.

Do you agree with his conclusions or not:

1) Yes

2) No

3) I dont know.

Pick one answer and give it to me NOW! Thanks! :)

Excuse me Strangwer, you can not expect an answer from these clowns because you offer them three options. It is one option too much.

[stranger]

I know, but at least he found a hard way to answer rather than picking a #, which deserves a compliment or not? :roll: ! :D

[indian224080]

Yes Stranger thats what i meant. I am glad u accepted Ramanujan.
When your friends are ready to accept Ramanujan(Great Man) why are they not accepting Aryabhatta,Bhaskaracharya,Baudhyayana. Just because they are not Tamil!?!

The reason why i introduced Tamil/Vedic here is because most of the guys here who have posted in this thread go with that. I am sure Vilakkumaru(clone of someone in the past like koH,karuvaadu etc., may be) like people are here to exploit only the above reason and nothing else. You and ur friends were asking the relevant verse associated with that. Now its equivalent to asking Ramanujans independent proof of bernoli theorem. It sure is available in the book which cannot be reproduced in time nor does anyone have time to go through the book understand the theorem and post it here as such.

[indian224080]

Incase u did not get my previous answer it was a NO. But every "No" requires a reasoning. I am sure there cannot be a "No" without a proof. There may be a "YES" without proof but definetely not a "No". If you had presented some thesis papers you wud have that potential my friend.

[stranger]

Ramanuja is not accepted because he is a thamizh. And aryabhata is not criticized,because he is a non-tamil either. 8-)

I dont really understand what do you trying to imply here! :?

[indian224080]

I think u missed my point. May be i was not clear. I had asked u will you accept if there are no tamil mathematicians. I knew there was Ramanujan or if u go beyond there was Padmanabhan Ramanujam,CVRaman or Chandrasekhar Subramanian and So on and so forth. But the thing was if you are ready to accept them then why not the other Vedic scholars?.
Now i dont want the reply from you that u accept vedic scholars because this was not evident from you or ur friends in this entire thread.

[viLakkumaaru]

When did SRS lie?
Numbers (1,0) representing different Characters Aint a Lie.
Similarly Letters(A->F) representing Numbers Ain't a Lie.
Where did Lies come into this thread from?
Wrong question! Better ask when did SRS not lie?

Idiotic Indian nummeral it is not at all so that A-F is representing numbers. In this case A-F are numbers. They could have also used idly, thosai, idiappam, puttu and rotty instead!

Because our counting system is decimal system and computing is using hexadecimal they need to use some characters for the numbers 10 to 15 ( base 10). Because 10 to 15 have too digits they could be easily mixed up with 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 in Hexadezimal system (would be 16,17, 18, 19, 21 in decimalsystem).
ABCD in hexadecimal system means A*16*16*16 + B*16*16 + C*16 + D*1 = 10*4096 + 11*256 + 12*16 + 13*1 = 40960 + 2816 + 192 + 13 = 43981 in decimal system.

[kannannn]

Yes Stranger thats what i meant. I am glad u accepted Ramanujan.
When your friends are ready to accept Ramanujan(Great Man) why are they not accepting Aryabhatta,Bhaskaracharya,Baudhyayana. Just because they are not Tamil!?!

The reason why i introduced Tamil/Vedic here is because most of the guys here who have posted in this thread go with that. I am sure Vilakkumaru(clone of someone in the past like koH,karuvaadu etc., may be) like people are here to exploit only the above reason and nothing else. You and ur friends were asking the relevant verse associated with that. Now its equivalent to asking Ramanujans independent proof of bernoli theorem. It sure is available in the book which cannot be reproduced in time nor does anyone have time to go through the book understand the theorem and post it here as such.

I think you are missing the point here Indian. Ramanujam's work is undisputed and his theorems are unambiguous. That unfortunately is not the case with the verses posted in this thread. All the copy and paste material are open to different interpretations, which is not mathematics.

[viLakkumaaru]

Idiotic SRS,

can you please write more on BNF? It seems you don't have a single idea about it. This BNF or EBNF is one of the first things you learn in computings along with dual (binary), octal, decimal and hexa decimal systems. So keep the ball flat if you want to play a good football match.

[viLakkumaaru]

Can anyone tell me something or anything at all about Subramaniyan Chandrashekar? Was/is he a Tamil?

[indian224080]

Well Said Kannan.
Be it Sanskrit or Mathematics both can be understood by people in their own field. People here creating foul and raising cry over the verses is similar to Simpson crying foul over Mathematics theorems. I am glad you vouch for Ramanujans theorems, and so in similar fashion Hindu Geometry scholars attest and vouch for Shulba sutras which is exactly reproduced.

[stranger]

* I had asked u will you accept if there are no tamil mathematicians.

* I knew there was Ramanujan or if u go beyond there was Padmanabhan Ramanujam,CVRaman or Chandrasekhar Subramanian and So on and so forth.

* But the thing was if you are ready to accept them then why not the other Vedic scholars?.
.

Well, CV Raman and Chandrashekhar published their work in Nature and PRL and their work was reviewed by experts and accepted for publication after careful analysis.

Journasl in which your Vedic Scholars published their work????:?:

Exactly what kind of background you have Indian????

[viLakkumaaru]

I know, but at least he found a hard way to answer rather than picking a #, which deserves a compliment or not? :roll: ! :D

:idea:
He was using letters instead of numbers. Superb!

But which letter is defined for which number? :roll:

[kannannn]

Well Said Kannan.
Be it Sanskrit or Mathematics both can be understood by people in their own field. People here creating foul and raising cry over the verses is similar to Simpson crying foul over Mathematics theorems. I am glad you vouch for Ramanujans theorems, and so in similar fashion Hindu Geometry scholars attest and vouch for Shulba sutras which is exactly reproduced.

If only hindu geometric scholars attest for the verses here, then what is the point of this discussion. Mathematics is about universal approval. Can someone start his learning of mathematics with the 'sutras' and understand the intricacies of the subject with only that? No way. And I wonder what other 'treasures' are buried in the vedic text, that the ignorant billions spending mathematics researchers are not aware of!! Can anyone post them here. That could be a breakthrough!!!!

[indian224080]

Well, CV Raman and Chandrashekhar published their work in Nature and PRL and their work was reviewed by experts and accepted for publication after careful analysis.

Journasl in which your Vedic Scholars published their work????:?:

Exactly what kind of background you have Indian????

Yes the old journals are Shulba Sutra,Surya Siddhanta,Vedas,Samhitas, Manava Sulba Sutra etc,. etc., I am Sure it would have been reviewed by Indian contemporary experts. But as far as Foreigners reviewing it i am not so sure as how it happened in < 800 BC period.

My Background is a M.S., in CS.

[stranger]

Can anyone tell me something or anything at all about Subramaniyan Chandrashekar? Was/is he a Tamil?

He was a Tamil.

He was born somewhere in north which is Pakistan now.

He became American but stayed as Tamil. :lol:

Check out University of Chicago website! :)

[indian224080]

If only hindu geometric scholars attest for the verses here, then what is the point of this discussion. Mathematics is about universal approval. Can someone start his learning of mathematics with the 'sutras' and understand the intricacies of the subject with only that? No way. And I wonder what other 'treasures' are buried in the vedic text, that the ignorant billions spending mathematics researchers are not aware of!! Can anyone post them here. That could be a breakthrough!!!!

Some of the links earlier given in this thread (Some links have been deleted) have been attested by Hindu mathematicians. Yes there might be more treasures hidden. Who is to do all those? Govt.? Which Govt. has time. Only Scholars with there own personal interest shud do that.

[indian224080]

He was a Tamil.

He was born somewhere in north which is Pakistan now.

He became American but stayed as Tamil. :lol:

Check out University of Chicago website! :)[/quote]


http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Chandrasekhar.html

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was known throughout his life as Chandra. His father was C Subrahmanyan Ayyar and his mother was Sitalaksmi Aiyar. His father, an Indian government auditor whose job was to audit the Northwest Railways, came from a Brahman family which owned some land near Madras, India. Chandra came from a large family, having two older sisters, three younger brothers and four younger sisters. When Chandra was still young his parents moved to Madras and, as he grew up, he was encouraged to seek an education which would see him following his father into government service. However Chandra wanted to be a scientist and his mother encouraged him to follow this route. He had a role model in his paternal uncle Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman who went on to win the Nobel prize in 1930 for his 1928 discovery of Raman scattering and the Raman effect, which is a change in the wavelength of light occurring when a beam of light is deflected by molecules. See [15] for some letters Chandra exchanged with his uncle.

Chandra studied at Presidency College, University of Madras, and he wrote his first research paper while still an undergraduate there. The paper was published in the Proceeding of the Royal Society where it had been submitted by Ralph Fowler. Also at Presidency College with Chandra was Lalitha Doraiswamy, who was the daughter of a family living close to where Chandra's family lived in Madras. They became engaged to marry at this time. Chandra obtained a scholarship from the Indian government to finance his studies in England, and in 1930 he left India to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. From 1933 to 1937 he undertook research at Cambridge, but he returned to India in 1936 to marry Lalitha on 11 September. Mestel writes [2]:-

Their marriage, exceptionally, was by mutual choice rather than by arrangement. Lalitha's family was also very interested in education, and before her marriage she worked as a school headmistress. She was an ever-present support for Chandrasekhar during their fifty-nine years together. There were no children of the marriage.

They returned to Cambridge in 1936 but in the following year Chandra joined the staff at the University of Chicago where he was to remain for the rest of his life. At first he worked in Yerkes Observatory, part of the University of Chicago in Wisconsin. Later he moved to work on the university campus in the city of Chicago. During World War II he worked in the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Two reports, written in 1943, show the type of problems he was working on at this time: the first is On the decay of plane shock waves while the second is The normal reflection of a blast wave.

He was honoured with being appointed Morton D Hull distinguished service professor of the University of Chicago in 1952. Although by that time Chandra had been working in the United States for 15 years, neither he nor his wife had taken out citizenship earlier. However, both became American citizens in the following year and became very much integrated into the life of the country. When Chandra was offered a chair at Cambridge in 1964 he replied by return that he was not interested, so turning down a position which as a young man he would have found the most desirable.

Chandrasekhar published around 400 papers and many books. His research interests were exceptionally broad but we can divide them into topics and rough periods when he was concentrating on these particular topics. First he studied stellar structure, including the theory of white dwarfs, from 1929 to 1939, then stellar dynamics from 1939 to 1943. Next he looked at the theory of radiative transfer and the quantum theory of the negative ion of hydrogen from 1943 to 1950, followed by hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability from 1950 to 1961. During most of the 1960s he studied the equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium but during this period he also began work on topics from general relativity, the radiation reaction process, and the stability of relativistic stars. During the period from 1971 to 1983 he undertook research into the mathematical theory of black holes, then for the last period of his life he worked on the theory of colliding gravitational waves.

In 1930 Chandra showed that a star of a mass greater than 1.4 times that of the Sun (now known as the Chandrasekhar's limit) had to end its life by collapsing into an object of enormous density unlike any object known at that time. He said:-

... one is left speculating on other possibilities ...

namely objects such as black holes. However, this work led to a controversy between Chandra and Eddington who described Chandra's work as:-

... almost a reductio ad absurdum of the relativistic degeneracy formula.

Eddington, who was a leading expert on relativity at this time, argued that:-

... there is no such thing as relativistic degeneracy!.

Chandra was very frustrated by the controversy with Eddington and to a certain extent it influenced the way that he worked through the rest of his life. Many years later Chandra was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics in 1983-

... for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars.

He described this work in The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (1983). He said that:-

... one of the ways in which one may explore the physical content of the general theory of relativity is to allow one's sensibility to its aesthetic base guide in the formulation of problems with conviction in the harmonious coherence of its mathematical structure.

His other books include An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939), Principles of Stellar Dynamics (1942), Radiative Transfer (1950), Plasma Physics (1960), Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability (1961), Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium (1969), Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science (1987), and Newton's Principia for the Common Reader (1995). These texts have played a major role in mathematical astronomy. For example a reviewer wrote of Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability:-

... the author has no peer in the treatment of his main topics of thermal and rotational instability.

Also the review of Principles of Stellar Dynamics rightly asserts:-

The book is written with exceptional clarity ... [It] should prove stimulating to astronomer, mathematician and physicist.

Chandrasekhar was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1962:-

... in recognition of his distinguished researches in mathematical physics, particularly those related to the stability of convective motions in fluids with and without magnetic fields.

The Royal Society also awarded him their Copley Medal in 1984:-

... in recognition of his distinguished work on theoretical physics, including stellar structure, theory of radiation, hydrodynamic stability and relativity.

From 1952 until 1971 Chandrasekhar was editor of the Astrophysical Journal . This journal was originally a local University of Chicago publication, but it grew in stature to become national publication of the American Astronomical Society, then a leading international journal.

Chandrasekhar received many honours for his outstanding contributions some of which, such as the Nobel prize for Physics in 1983, the Royal Society's Royal Medal of 1962 and their Copley Medal of 1984, we have mentioned above. We should also mention, however, that he was honoured with the Bruce medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Henry Draper medal of the National Academy of Sciences (United States), and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Chandra retired in 1980 but continued to live in Chicago where he was made professor emeritus in 1985. He continued to give thought-provoking lectures such as Newton and Michelangelo which he delivered at the 1994 Meeting of Nobel Laureates held in Lindau. He compared Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and Newton's Principia :-

... in the larger context of whether there is any similarity in the motivations of scientists and artists in their respective creative quests.

Other lectures in a similar vein include Shakespeare, Newton and Beethoven or patterns of creativity and The perception of beauty and the pursuit of science.

Chandrasekhar remained active and published in final major book Newton's Principia for the Common Reader at 85 years of age in the final months of his life. Shortly after publication of this work he died from heart failure and was buried in Chicago. He was survived by his wife Lalitha. Let us end this biography by quoting the words of Tayler from [20]:-

[Chandrasekhar] was a classical applied mathematician whose research was primarily applied in astronomy and whose like will probably never be seen again.


Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

[kannannn]

If only hindu geometric scholars attest for the verses here, then what is the point of this discussion. Mathematics is about universal approval. Can someone start his learning of mathematics with the 'sutras' and understand the intricacies of the subject with only that? No way. And I wonder what other 'treasures' are buried in the vedic text, that the ignorant billions spending mathematics researchers are not aware of!! Can anyone post them here. That could be a breakthrough!!!!

Some of the links earlier given in this thread (Some links have been deleted) have been attested by Hindu mathematicians. Yes there might be more treasures hidden. Who is to do all those? Govt.? Which Govt. has time. Only Scholars with there own personal interest shud do that.

Who exactly are these hindu mathematicians, indian? FYI I dug up a link from the previous posts where a group of leading mathematicians in India have argued against the so called 'vedic mathematics'. can you name any prominent Indian mathematician who can vouch for these so-called mathematics?
http://www.tifr.res.in/~vahia/dani-vmsm.pdf

[indian224080]

Who exactly are these hindu mathematicians, indian? FYI I dug up a link from the previous posts where a group of leading mathematicians in India have argued against the so called 'vedic mathematics'. can you name any prominent Indian mathematician who can vouch for these so-called mathematics?
http://www.tifr.res.in/~vahia/dani-vmsm.pdf

Good Link Kannan. I have a question. Did u read the article. It just opposes a Vedic mathematics book published by Shankaracharya of Puri.
But I am very thankful to you.

Because Page 5 of the paper clearly depicts what SRS has been trying to say from Page1. The Shulba Sutras the Verses associated with the Proof of Pi and Pythogoras theorem written by Baudyayana in 800 BC. Thanks to you.
As a result i am going to purchase that book by Sen and Bag. and then try to publish the exact verses here for our fellow brethren.

[viLakkumaaru]

My Background is a M.S., in CS.

Whaaaat? Just a MS?

You are not qualified enough to talk to/with a double PhD!

SRS,
what is your qualification? PhD in cattle driving and soma drinking? Cattle driving and soma drinking can also be seen as vedic mathematics as it is made of numbers and liters.

Stranger, thanks a lot about Chandrasekhar. I heard his name very often with astro physics.

[indian224080]

My Background is a M.S., in CS.
Whaaaat? Just a MS?
You are not qualified enough to talk to/with a double PhD!
.
I dont even feel its worth to reply to you. the only reason why i am posting this is to let u know of that.Good luck in ur personal insults.

[viLakkumaaru]

As a result i am going to purchase that book by Sen and Bag. and then try to publish the exact verses here for our fellow brethren.[/b]

If you need some cash I can organize you some from the hindu temple here!

[stranger]

Yes the old journals are Shulba Sutra,Surya Siddhanta,Vedas,Samhitas, Manava Sulba Sutra etc,. etc., I am Sure it would have been reviewed by Indian contemporary experts.

* But as far as Foreigners reviewing it i am not so sure as how it happened in < 800 BC period.

Do you know even now we have journals like Current Science and Pramana????

Not many quality work is published in those journals.

Anyway, good to know the name of the JOURNALS! :notworthy:

[stranger]

As a result i am going to purchase that book by Sen and Bag. and then try to publish the exact verses here for our fellow brethren.[/b]

Of course that is your money. You can spend it as you like! :)

[viLakkumaaru]

My Background is a M.S., in CS.
Whaaaat? Just a MS?
You are not qualified enough to talk to/with a double PhD!
.
I dont even feel its worth to reply to you. the only reason why i am posting this is to let u know of that.Good luck in ur personal insults.
It is up to you to reply or not. I am not at all your nanny.

Where do you see personal insults? Because I said that I am double PhD and you assume that you are simply nothing?
I am currently going for my third PhD in Hub Cleansing as my username indicates.

[stranger]

Fortunately you forwards can't write properly ... now read this sentence very, very carefully:

If the ancient chinese were able to use bamboo sticks, there is a very strong probability that the indians also were. But they did not, why
If the ancient chinese were able to follow Buddhism then so were indians. But they did not and still don't, why?

Very well said, VM!

The funny part here is His "great probabilty" applies only for finding the value of "pi"! And he uses "quantum mechanics" as a support for his "probability theory"!!!! :roll:

[aravindhan]

[tscii:34bb6386ab]I am saddened by the tone this thread appears to have taken, and I'm sorry that my post seems to have started it off. I'm posting one last contribution to this thread which, I hope, will make it clearer exactly why I intervened in this discussion, and why, precisely, I object to our modern wont of glorifiying ancient India while turning a blind eye to its faults.


When your friends are ready to accept Ramanujan(Great Man) why are they not accepting Aryabhatta,Bhaskaracharya,Baudhyayana. Just because they are not Tamil!?!
Traditional accounts of Aryabhatta suggest his place of birth was Kerala which was, in those days, the Chera kingdom of Tamilakam, thus making him as Tamil as IlankovaTikaL and KulasekarazhvAr. But the fact that he might have been Tamil doesn't change the fact that not all his formulae were correct, nor should it change anyone's view of him. Madhava, who I mention below, was also born in Kerala in the 14th century, when it was still considered a part of the Tamil country. That, too, ought not to change one's opinion of him.


If the Indians were able to calculate the speed of light and accurately measure the age of the Universe, it comes as no surprise that they were able to approximate pi to several decimal places.
Some evidence of that would be much appreciated. Of the values I know, Baudhayana's sulbasutra gives three different values of pi, of which the most accurate gets no closer than 3.114. This is not particularly impressive, but it was good enough for its purpose, which was building altars for Vedic rites.

Later calculations are better. Aryabhatta's value of pi is correct for a fourth-decimal rounding; and Madhava's calculation in the 15th century AD gets it right up to the 11th decimal place which I believe is the most accurate as of that date. These are impressive enough, yet it does not change the fact that they both seem to have primarily been interested in better ways of calculating planetary orbits, for the sake of being able to make better astrological predictions.


Now, you won't find this written on your certificate, but science integrates many different disciplines. Only this integration can give a proper description of the phenomenon.

Of course, and interdisciplinarity is one of the strengths of modern scholarship. Why else does the highest degree a university confers in all disciplines carry the same title, "Philosophiæ Doctor"? And else would we use a title which means, literally, "a teacher of the love of learning"?


What experimental verification... even experimental verification is not a perfect process. Go and read up on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
This would be all well and good if the phenomena we were discussing were at the quantum level. They are not.

In any event, quantum physicists are as interested in experimentation as laypersons are. Thus, for example, cosmic string theory in its original form was abandoned largely because the cosmic microwave background, when measured, did not meet the predictions of the theory; and it is generally accepted that many aspects of currently popular superstring theory will have to be abandoned if the observations we derive from using interferometry to measure gravitational waves do not, as and when our equipment is sensitive enough, indicate the presence of the waves they ought to emit.

Surely you are aware of the vast amount of experimental work currently being done in sub-atomic physics? How then could you claim that the Uncertainity Principle negates the importance of experimentation?


Also, it is only the physical sciences that rely on so-called experimental verification... the final proof is ultimately mathematical.
Not at all, you misunderstand the scientific process. Theories are built mathematically. These theories are then tested experimentally. Newtonian gravity, for example, is a mathematically sound model, but is nonetheless not an accurate depiction of reality because experimental results are at variance with its predictions. If measurements at solar eclipses had failed to demonstrate gravitational lensing, general relativity would have had to be abandoned. This much ought to be obvious to any scientist.


If you want to argue with this, find me an experimental verification for the 4th dimension!

Of course. It isn't hard. The reason the suggestion that time is the fourth dimension, thus creating a curved space-time manifold, has so much acceptance today is because its predictions have been experimentally verified. Gravititional lensing and the precession of Mercury's orbit are the best-known examples. If the analysis of Gravity Probe B's data fails to demonstrate evidence of the geodetic effect, though, the theory will be abandoned.

This is how true science works. It is next to impossible to prove that a theory is right, but it can be proven wrong. In science, one therefore tests the predictions of one's theory, and if these predictions do not fit one's observations, one modifies one's theory to fit the predictions. As Aryabhatta and Bhaskara could easily have done in relation to their formulae, had they but tried. But they didn't, and even today, too many of us in their position would not.


Idealising and romanticising? These are all facts.

The "idealisation" and "romanticisation" consists of playing down or ignoring aspects of our history which do not conform to the idealised picture of our ancient society that is sought to be built up.


Unfortunately you backwards can't read properly...
I'm not very sure what you mean by a "backward", but do feel free to point me to instances in any of my posts which demonstrate a failure to properly comprehend what you've written.

In my view, there's much of worth in ancient India (and we tend to forget that "ancient India" isn't synonymous with any one tradition) that we can learn from. For example, in my student days, I personally used number mnemonics derived from the ancient Indian system to memorise common logarithms, which helped me to save precious minutes during exams and impressed my teachers no end. But that is besides the point. The point is that we must be critical in examining our own past. Being blind to the flaws of our ancestors is the best way of ensuring that we remain oblivious to the ways in which these faults live on in us today. They do in so many ways, that we simply cannot afford to be blind to them, if we are serious about building a better society in our country. Why do we as a nation so easily fall prey to "herbal fuel" and all sorts of similar scams? If we'd only think about it, we'd see how closely this is linked to the reason why we produce so many engineers and researches in technical fields, but so few cutting-edge researchers in the sciences, and how both are linked to the limitations of ancient Indian society of the sort I have tried to point out.

And that is really all I have to say on this topic.[/tscii:34bb6386ab]

[gaddeswarup]

I think that the C.P Ramanujam's name came up in the discuusion. His name is not as well known as it should be. Here is a link to a short biography of C.P.R:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ramanujam.html
Swarup

[SRS]

[tscii] Some evidence of that would be much appreciated. Of the values I know, Baudhayana's sulbasutra gives three different values of pi, of which the most accurate gets no closer than 3.114. This is not particularly impressive, but it was good enough for its purpose, which was building altars for Vedic rites.

The fact of the matter is, the Vedics calculated pi to 32 decimal places. You don't deny that Madhava calculated pi to any number of decimal places. But if Madhava had not been a South Indian, you would cast doubt upoun him as well!




Of course, and interdisciplinarity is one of the strengths of modern scholarship. Why else does the highest degree a university confers in all disciplines carry the same title, "Philosophiæ Doctor"? And else would we use a title which means, literally, "a teacher of the love of learning"?

That is the point I made here. India was not a closed culture. It is well known that the Chinese also made great advances in mathematics and astronomy. To assume that the Indians were not aware of these discoveries and were not influenced by them in some form or another is pure nonsense.



This would be all well and good if the phenomena we were discussing were at the quantum level. They are not.

Any experiment is subject to some form of error. HSP may be for electrons, but any any experiment will give limited results for accuracy and precision.


In any event, quantum physicists are as interested in experimentation as laypersons are. Thus, for example, cosmic string theory in its original form was abandoned largely because the cosmic microwave background, when measured, did not meet the predictions of the theory; and it is generally accepted that many aspects of currently popular superstring theory will have to be abandoned if the observations we derive from using interferometry to measure gravitational waves do not, as and when our equipment is sensitive enough, indicate the presence of the waves they ought to emit.

Surely you are aware of the vast amount of experimental work currently being done in sub-atomic physics? How then could you claim that the Uncertainity Principle negates the importance of experimentation?

Experimentation is simply another method of verification, useful only for physical sciences. The results of classical number theory do not demand any experimentation. Ironically, many of the ideas from pure mathematics become the basis for entirely new concepts in physics... e.g. the notion of N-spaces. This is why the Vedics were able to concieve of quantum mechanics 10, 15 centuries before the West. The phenomenon exists in and of itself. Its existence can be deduced metaphysically/mathematically. Experiment actually limits the scope of the phenomemon to within the range of what is empirically feasible to the human senses.


Of course. It isn't hard. The reason the suggestion that time is the fourth dimension, thus creating a curved space-time manifold, has so much acceptance today is because its predictions have been experimentally verified. Gravititional lensing and the precession of Mercury's orbit are the best-known examples. If the analysis of Gravity Probe B's data fails to demonstrate evidence of the geodetic effect, though, the theory will be abandoned.

The 4th dimension is entirely a consequence of the Riemann Geometry of hyperspace (from pure mathematics) in general. One does not need gravitational lensing or orbital periods to verify the existance of n-dimensions.


This is how true science works. It is next to impossible to prove that a theory is right, but it can be proven wrong. In science, one therefore tests the predictions of one's theory, and if these predictions do not fit one's observations, one modifies one's theory to fit the predictions. As Aryabhatta and Bhaskara could easily have done in relation to their formulae, had they but tried. But they didn't, and even today, too many of us in their position would not.

Again, the mathematical theory and the scientific theory are two different constructs. The scientific application may rely on the MT, but the MT is justified on the basis of axioms that belong entirely to MT.



The "idealisation" and "romanticisation" consists of playing down or ignoring aspects of our history which do not conform to the idealised picture of our ancient society that is sought to be built up.

Since you are biased towards all things Dravidian (Tamil), I highly recommend you read G.H. Hardy's biography of Ramanujan. Without any formal mathemtical training, Ramanujan was able to concieve of theorems that spanned hundreds of yrs relative to the development of Western mathematics. Now of course, many of Ramanujan's discoveries have been put to use in applied science. In the same way H.G. Wells described technology hundreds of yrs before it came into actual being. Like I said, experimentation is there only to limit the phenomena to within the range of the human senses. I am sure that many ancient ppls, not only Indians, knew just as much, if not more, than what we know now. Just because they did not leave the results of their "experiments" in scientific journals does not make their discoveries any lesser.

[aravindhan]

[tscii:38e1aa6830]
The fact of the matter is, the Vedics calculated pi to 32 decimal places. You don't deny that Madhava calculated pi to any number of decimal places.
We have the actual texts where Madhava gives the value of pi upto 11 decimals. There is no equivalent Vedic text. In point of fact, the Sulbasutras, which are late Vedic texts struggle to get a value accurate to one decimal place.


The results of classical number theory do not demand any experimentation. Ironically, many of the ideas from pure mathematics become the basis for entirely new concepts in physics... e.g. the notion of N-spaces. This is why the Vedics were able to concieve of quantum mechanics 10, 15 centuries before the West. The phenomenon exists in and of itself. Its existence can be deduced metaphysically/mathematically. Experiment actually limits the scope of the phenomemon to within the range of what is empirically feasible to the human senses.
You are quite wrong. Mathematical "phenomena" do not "exist" in any sense of the word. Mathematical models are precisely that - models which describe possible phenomena, which may or may not exist. Physical phenomena exist. Try building your house as a tesseract, if you like.


The 4th dimension is entirely a consequence of the Riemann Geometry of hyperspace (from pure mathematics) in general. One does not need gravitational lensing or orbital periods to verify the existance of n-dimensions.
One does not need them to theorise about n-dimensions. One needs them to test the question of whether or not they actually exist outside the realms of mathematical modelling.


Again, the mathematical theory and the scientific theory are two different constructs. The scientific application may rely on the MT, but the MT is justified on the basis of axioms that belong entirely to MT.
This would have been fine if Aryabhatta was engaged in constructing pure mathematical theory. But he wasn't. Have you actually read his Aryabhatia in the original Sanskrit, particularly the last seventy-five verses? That will tell you quite clearly what his mathematics was oriented towards.


I highly recommend you read G.H. Hardy's biography of Ramanujan.
It is interesting that you bring him up. For a brief while, India produced many great men - both scientists and thinkers. I mean of course scientists like CV Raman, JC Bose, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, and Ramanujan, but also thinkers like Vivekananda. Indians in those days had enough humility to realise that Indian civilisation was not the be-all, end-all of this world. They understood that our culture had many shortcomings, and that there was much they could learn from the west. For a while, they set our country on the path to greatness. Unfortunately, we have today acquired this tremendous arrogance that everything that is worth knowing was known by our ancestors, and we need look no further than them for anything. Which is why we must rely on people like JC Bose as examples of Indian accomplishment, for where is his modern day Indian counterpart?


I am sure that many ancient ppls, not only Indians, knew just as much, if not more, than what we know now. Just because they did not leave the results of their "experiments" in scientific journals does not make their discoveries any lesser.
If Aryabhatta and Bhaskara had carried out one simple experiment, they would have discovered that some of their formulae were wrong. One simple experiment. If their successors had had a solid grounding in experimentation, they would not have had to resort to mimamsa - MIMAMSA - to settle scientific disputes.

I am tired of arguing over this. This thread has brought back quite clearly to mind exactly why I left the old hub so many years ago. I refer in particular to statements directed at me such as the famous "you backwards cannot read", and now these:

Since you are biased towards all things Dravidian (Tamil)
and

But if Madhava had not been a South Indian, you would cast doubt upoun him as well!
none of which I will dignify with a response. I find this attitude wearisome in the extreme. I suppose no amount of rules or moderation can change the basic nature of this forum's discussions at its lowest level, and I am absolutely sick and tired of trying to work with it. Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.[/tscii:38e1aa6830]

[gaddeswarup]

Aravindhan,
I hope that you will stay on this time. I enjoyed reading many of your posts and I feel that I learnt some from them.
Regards,
swarup

[thamizhvaanan]

Aravindan,
you have been doing a great work . It is not that you are without any patrons here. In my opinion your comments and remarks are true to the spirit and ambition of this forum, but dont let other people's half-baked remarks hurt your stay here. They simply dont belong to your intellectual level to demand any apprehension.
Dogs may bark but let the caravan go on.

[SRS]

We have the actual texts where Madhava gives the value of pi upto 11 decimals. There is no equivalent Vedic text. In point of fact, the Sulbasutras, which are late Vedic texts struggle to get a value accurate to one decimal place.

That is not true. The text exists but your inferiority complex (the same inferiority complex that believes in AIT) refuses to recognize it. Read very carefully:

"It turns out that decimal form of the transcendental number: Pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433832792 etc was hidden or codified in these following syllables, by chanting: "Gopi Bhagyamaduv rata Shringishodadi Sandiga Kala Jeevitarava Tava Galaddhalara Sangara" (Observing the top line, "go" = 3, "pi" = 1, "bha = 4, "ya" = 1, "ma" = 5, "dhu" = 9, "ra" =2, "ta" = 6 etc giving the first 8 figures of Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter). "



You are quite wrong. Mathematical "phenomena" do not "exist" in any sense of the word. Mathematical models are precisely that - models which describe possible phenomena, which may or may not exist. Physical phenomena exist. Try building your house as a tesseract, if you like.

Where did I say the "mathematical phenomenon" exists? I stated very clearly that the phenomenon can be deduced on the basis of mathematical logic or metaphysical consideration alone. One can easily ask, does the universe extend forever or curve upoun itself? And then one can use topology or some such mathematical means to answer that question. No "physical model" is necessary to do this. It can all be done in the head - which is exactly what the Vedic seers did. Experiments are there to gather data. Certain segments of this quantitative data will eventually be used to give a qualitative assessment of the phenomenon under consideration. Quite often the entire experimental process can be bypassed on the basis of some mathematical proposition alone. For example, Kepler spent 20 yrs gathering data to form his so-called "Kepler's Laws." However, using basic calculus, all of Kepler's Laws can be easily derived within an hr or two. What is the value of experimentation then? I do not question its accuracy. However I believe mathematics will always have the upper hand.


This would have been fine if Aryabhatta was engaged in constructing pure mathematical theory. But he wasn't. Have you actually read his Aryabhatia in the original Sanskrit, particularly the last seventy-five verses? That will tell you quite clearly what his mathematics was oriented towards.

Of course Aryabhatta was a man of many talents. And in most cases he was right.


It is interesting that you bring him up. For a brief while, India produced many great men - both scientists and thinkers. I mean of course scientists like CV Raman, JC Bose, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, and Ramanujan, but also thinkers like Vivekananda. Indians in those days had enough humility to realise that Indian civilisation was not the be-all, end-all of this world. They understood that our culture had many shortcomings, and that there was much they could learn from the west. For a while, they set our country on the path to greatness. Unfortunately, we have today acquired this tremendous arrogance that everything that is worth knowing was known by our ancestors, and we need look no further than them for anything. Which is why we must rely on people like JC Bose as examples of Indian accomplishment, for where is his modern day Indian counterpart?

What is the point of distorting history because of an inferiority complex? Anyway, I blame the Westerners for this. They imposed their economic system, educational system, in some cases religious system on us. What we gained as a so-called "modern" nation has cost us in certain other respects, as this thread clearly demonstrates. The Chinese, Jews, etc. do not question the extent of the accomplishments made by their ancestors in the same way as a certain segment of Indians.

[aravindhan]

"It turns out that decimal form of the transcendental number: Pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433832792 etc was hidden or codified in these following syllables, by chanting: "Gopi Bhagyamaduv rata Shringishodadi Sandiga Kala Jeevitarava Tava Galaddhalara Sangara" (Observing the top line, "go" = 3, "pi" = 1, "bha = 4, "ya" = 1, "ma" = 5, "dhu" = 9, "ra" =2, "ta" = 6 etc giving the first 8 figures of Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter). "
The verse is quite cleverly written - if you know Sanskrit, you'll see it can also be read as being in praise of Shankara. However, as I have said earlier in this thread, it is not a Vedic text.

The earliest source in which the "gopi bhagya" verse occurs is the book on Vedic Mathematics by Jagadguru Bharati Krishna Tirtha, the late Shankaracharya of Puri, published in the 1960s. The book cites it as a verse with spiritual and numeric content, but does not claim that it is an ancient verse. In point of fact, the verse is not found in any known Sanskrit text.

Nor is it even likely that the verse is an old one. To anyone possessing a passing familiarity with ancient Indian texts, it is painfully obvious that the system it uses is not an ancient one, and bears no resemblence to any of the systems for encoding numbers which were actually used in ancient India.

Let's look briefly at how numbers were encoded in ancient India. The Sulbasutras - which are the oldest extant mathematical texts - usually simply specify numbers by name, and provide formulae for calculating numbers which cannot be easily specified by name. The verse from the Baudhayana Sulbasutra which gives the formula for calculating the square root of two is a good example of the system actually used in that time: pramANam tRtIyEna vardhayEttacca caturthEnAtmacatustrim shonena savisheSHaH. There is not a single verse from the vedic or post-vedic periods which uses the system of the "gopi bhagya" verse.

A second system, called "bhuta samkhya", came into use in the classical period. This represented numbers by using words that were associated with those numbers in philosophy. So "zero" was represented by "ambara akasa" (the aether) or "shunya" (the void) or "randhra" (a hole). "One" was represented by "sashi" (the moon) or "bhumi" (the earth), or "go" (cow), and so on, with a variety of other options for each of these. This system was not purely place-value based, in the sense that each word did not just represent one numeral: for example, "bha" (star) represented 27. This system was being still used by authors as late as Madhava (who probably lived in the 14th century AD). For example, Madhava's famous verse which gives a value of pi accurate to 11 decimal places actually ran thus:

vibudanEtra gaja ahi hutasana
trigunavEdabha vArana bAhavaH
nava nikharvamitE vRtivistarE
paradhimanam idam jagadur budhah

Summarised, this says that the circumference of a circle is 2827433388233 when its diameter is 900000000000. One can then use these to calculate the value of pi (which works out to 3.141592653592222.... on this formula).

Note that this verse, too, gives a formula rather than the number itself, which was not uncommon in ancient Indian mathematics. Note also that one must read the number starting at the end and working to the beginning - if one were to decode the number in the verse starting from "vibudha" (gods, and thus 33) and ending with "bAhava" (arms, and thus 2), one would get 33, 2, 8, 8, 3, 3, 3, 4, 27, 8, 2, i.e., 3328833342782, not 2827433388233. This, too, is typical of the way numbers were encoded in older Indian mathematical texts. The order in the "gopi bhagya" verse is quite anachronistic, and strongly suggests a modern origin.

A third system used in older mathematical texts is the one presented by Aryabhatta in his Dasagitika. This system assigns the numerical values from 1 to 25 to the twenty-five varga letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. The seven avarga letters are given the respective values 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100. Each of the vowels has a value as a multiplier: 1, 100, 100^2, 00^3, and so on. This system, too, bears no resemblance to the system used in this verse. It is far less flexible, much more difficult to use, and produces horribly complicated and usually meaningless and unpronouncable jumbles of letters to represent numbers. For example, in each yuga, the moon completes a number of revolutions. Aryabhatta encodes this number as "cayagiyiNGusuchRlR". Not only is this utterly devoid of meaning and impossible to pronounce, it is also more complicated to unravel than the "gopi bhagya" verse. To decode this, we have to calculate "ca" as 6, "ya" as 30, "gi" 300 (g=3, i=100), "yi" as 3,000 (y=30, i=100), "NGu" as 50,000 (NG is 5, u is 10000), "su" as 7,00,000 ("s" is 70, u is 10000), "chR" as 70,00,000 (ch=7, R=10,00,000), and lR as 5,00,00,000 (l=50, R=10,00,000), thus giving us 5,77,53,336. Clearly, this system is a lot less advanced than the one used by the "gopi bhagya" verse. In point of fact, there is not a single verse from the time of Aryabhatta or his immediate disciples which uses the system used in the "gopi bhagya" verse.

A system approaching that of the "gopi bhagya" verse finally appears in mediaeval India, in the writings of the Kerala school of astrologers. This is the so-called "katapayadi" system (literally, "ka, ta, pa, etc."). There are no texts older than the 9th or 10th century AD which use this system, and the fact that Aryabhatta felt compelled to present a much clumsier, less flexible system suggests very strongly that this system didn't exist then. The katapayadi system assigns the precise values to the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet that the "gopi bhagya" verse does, and it is therefore clearly influenced by katapayadi. But the two systems are not the same. Katapayadi, like bhuta samkhya and Aryabhatta's system, begins with the unit place and works its way upwards, thus requiring numbers to be read starting at the end in modern terms, not at the beginning like the "gopi bhagya" verse. A good example is the 16th century verse which presents an approximation of the calculation required to derive the sine:
vidvAm tunnabalaH kavIshanicayaH sarvArthashIlasthiroH nirviddhAnganarendraru
Unless you read the number encoded by each word from right to left, you get a meaningless sequence of numbers. This, again, is a universal rule in all katapayadi texts - there is not a single textual mnemonic prior to modern times which encodes numbers beginning with the highest place and ending with the lowest place as the "gopi bhagya" verse does.

The reason I have gone to these lengths to debunk the claims of antiquity for this one verse is because the verse is symptomatic of our uncritical acceptance of anything and everything as examples of ancient "Vedic" wisdom, even when every single piece of evidence screams to the contrary. This is no distortion of history - all I have said above can be very easily refuted by citing the "ancient Vedic text" in which the verse occurs, but the fact that no such text exists does not seem to make an iota of difference to people who desperately want to believe in it. I simply cannot understand why so many modern Indians are so ashamed of India that they cannot accept the society and culture that really existed in ancient times for what it was, a mix of good and bad as all cultures are, and instead feel the need to invent a false version of which they can then be proud.


What is the value of experimentation then? I do not question its accuracy. However I believe mathematics will always have the upper hand.
The value of experimentation is that it tells us when our mathematical models are wrong. Without experimentation, we would not have realised that Newtonian physics is an incorrect model, which is only accurate in certain special cases. Or that the same is true of Euclidean geometry. On the other hand, with a more rigorous culture of experimentation, Aryabhatta would have realised that not all his formulae were correct.

And thank you for these kind words:

The text exists but your inferiority complex (the same inferiority complex that believes in AIT) refuses to recognize it.

[SRS]

[quote=SRS] "It turns out that decimal form of the transcendental number: Pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433832792 etc was hidden or codified in these following syllables, by chanting: "Gopi Bhagyamaduv rata Shringishodadi Sandiga Kala Jeevitarava Tava Galaddhalara Sangara" (Observing the top line, "go" = 3, "pi" = 1, "bha = 4, "ya" = 1, "ma" = 5, "dhu" = 9, "ra" =2, "ta" = 6 etc giving the first 8 figures of Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter). "


The verse is quite cleverly written - if you know Sanskrit, you'll see it can also be read as being in praise of Shankara. However, as I have said earlier in this thread, it is not a Vedic text.

It is an ancient Vedic Hymn, written for Lord Krishna, rediscovered by Bharati Krsna Tithaji, originally dedicated to Shankara. The whole world has accepted this as a fact, except a minor segment of South Indians who feel inclined to reject anything with Vedic origins.


The value of experimentation is that it tells us when our mathematical models are wrong. Without experimentation, we would not have realised that Newtonian physics is an incorrect model, which is only accurate in certain special cases. Or that the same is true of Euclidean geometry. On the other hand, with a more rigorous culture of experimentation, Aryabhatta would have realised that not all his formulae were correct.

Experimentation does not tell us the mathematical model is wrong, unless we are talking engineering design or some such thing. Experimentation attempts to extract what is merely feasible to observation by the human senses, as I have said before. What mathematics does is describe preexisting symmetries in nature. How can these symmetries be wrong? What is "wrong" is that the human mind cannot percieve beyond three dimensions. So for example, it cannot visualize four, five, six, etc. dimensions. With the correct mathematics in hand, however, one can still work within these domains and produce accurate results. As history shows, this is not an instantaneous process. Newton and Euclid were not wrong. However one need not experiment to realize they are wrong. Earlier I alluded to the notion of hyperspaces. No experiment is needed to verify that the hyperspace exists. The hyperspace is not just a mathematical model, but a description of the Universe as it is. One can arrive at such results metaphysically. To prove that the universe is not flat, all one need do is pick a shape such as a sphere. A ray of light would curve back upoun itself, thus proving the Universe is not flat (and simultaneously negating Euclid's parallel postulate) . This is very elementary, but that is the point: one need not do any experimentation to comprehend the curvature of space.

[devapriya]

[tscii:2ec3dffe4d]Date : 2006-01-26
Who remembers ancient India’s scientific wealth?
By Md. Vazeeruddin - Syndicate Features



Sessions of Indian Science Congress are held with monotonous regularity at fixed periodicity. Eminent persons use them to think aloud on what breakthroughs India needs to achieve. For instance, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just told such a session that India should aim at a second Green Revolution. That was a laudable sentiment. But is it not the duty of the notables to use such sessions to tell the masses what ancient India had achieved in the field of science?

Is Indian heritage only spiritual and cultural, and not scientific? On the contrary, it is at least as scientific as it is spiritual or cultural. It is, however, true that any claim that India’s scientific heritage is as great as its spiritual and cultural heritage may baffle many Indians because we have for decades, if not centuries, believed that science is the West’s contribution to humanity while India made the world aware of, and prize, cultural and moral values.

That is the reason why we talk day in and day out of our spiritual and cultural heritage but seldom, if ever, of our scientific heritage. Do we have any? Not many know the true answer. In the book “Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham”, edited by Mikulas Teich and Robert Young, Dr Rahman, “speaking for India”, convincingly exploded the myth that science and technology were essentially European.

The Director of the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies called for co-ordination among various agencies for the allocation of funds for the promotion of research into the history and philosophy of science in India.

Inaugurating in Delhi a meeting of experts on “approach and logistics of supporting research into history and philosophy in India”, Dr Ashok Jain said that critical studies in the historical and philosophical contexts of science and technology were vital for the sustenance of an innovative tradition. Research in this area is not only of cultural and academic significance but is responsible also for bringing to life the “foundational aspect of science” which is vital for the development of theoretical science.

Unfortunately, a meeting, jointly organized by the Institute and the National Commission on History and Philosophy of Science, went more or less unnoticed by the public; understandably because the view is gaining ever-increasing acceptance that interest in the history of science is a sign of failing powers. Mercifully, however, medical practitioners who are usually enthralled by the history of medicine do not hold this low opinion. The possible reason is that physicians and surgeons, like all who are executants rather than theorists, are great hero-worshippers, and hero-worship is a great incentive to the study of historical records.

What, anyway, is the Indian science whose history needs to be known? Take, for instance, zinc. Europe learnt to produce it in 1746, but it was distilled in India more than 2,000 years ago through the use of a highly sophisticated pyro-technology. Distillation of this metal in India was brought to light through a series of nearly intact structural remains of ancient Indian zinc distillation furnaces at Zawar near Udaipur in Rajasthan. In late 17th century zinc was imported in small quantities from the East and used in the production of brass. After all, before the advent of present-day high-pressure technology, zinc had inevitably to be produced as a vapour because of the vast difficulties in its distillation process at Bristol in Britain in 1747. The discoveries at Zawar nevertheless prove that Indians knew the process some 2,000 years ago.

Or consider astronomy. According to Dr B.G.Sidhartha, Director of the B.M. Birla Planetarium at Hyderabad, Rig Vedic authors had already discovered the spherecity of the Earth and established the heliocentric (Sun-cantered) theory much before Copernicus. The Rig Veda, according to him, is the oldest textbook on modern astronomy. As such, its seers were scientists in the modern sense. Yet they deliberately concealed this knowledge in hymns, probably because the subject was the preserve of priests. In the hymns themselves, however, can be found through new interpretations the information that light is composed of seven colours, a discovery attributed by modern science to Newton. Thus, when Indra lets loose his seven rivers, it means the splitting of sunlight. Therefore, the rainbow is called “Indradhanush” in the Atharveda.

Three ancient astronomers, the “Ribhus”, were the first to establish that the Earth was round and that Mercury and Venus revolved round the Sun. But these sacred texts came down from father to son and thus lost their form and structure till they were lost by about 1400 B.C.

The computer is the reigning fad today and, therefore, India’s scientific achievements of the past, some argue, pale into insignificance. But were our ancient scientists totally ignorant of what has developed into the computer? Aryabhata, the ancient Indian mathematician, it is true, had no computer, but some of the techniques that he developed were precisely the ones used in solving problems with today’s computer. What is more, computer designers in the West are now studying the works of ancient Indian mathematicians to learn a thing or two about writing software. Aryabhata’s algorithm, called “kuttaka” and meant to solve linear intermediate equations, has been found by the West to be extremely efficient computationally. Similarly, the method of Brahmagouta, Jayadeva and Bhaskara-II (rediscovered in Europe 1000 years later) was “optimum in minimizing the number of steps for solving a problem”.

Dr Rick Briggs, an American computer engineer, in a paper published in the 1985 issue of “Artificial Intelligence”, said that ancient Indians had developed a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit “in a manner that is identical not only in essence but also in form with the current work of artificial intelligence”. According to him, “Sanskrit grammarians had already found a way of solving what is perhaps the most important problem in computer science—natural language understanding and machine translation”.

Now take physics. Dr Erwin Schrodinger, in an essay, “Seek For The Road”, written in 1925, said that science, like Vedantic philosophy, used analogy to comprehend phenomena, as logic had its own limitations and left the scientist in the lurch after taking him up to a certain point. Dr Schrodinger, who won the Nobel Prize for his wave equation that placed the revolutionary quantum concept (as opposed to the Newtonian mechanistic interpretation) on a firm scientific basis, found support for Vedanta in the new physics with its element of indeterminism and idea of “collapse of the wave function”, mathematical entity to describe nature for no discernible physical reason.

The most important link between science and the Sastras is an uncompromising logical attitude to everything. According to Prof. T.S.Shankara, who took up “sanyas” and became Swami Parmananda Bharati after teaching physics for 15 years in the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Chennai, some basic concepts of modern-day physics are found in the Sastras. For example, the concept of relativity is to be found in them. Basic ideas of relative velocity (velocity not being absolute but only relative) are extensively referred to by Shankaracharya, quoting the Vedas. The Brahmashastras contain a profound discussion on the same subject. According to Swamiji, “if only some of our students had known this, one of them could have developed Einstein’s theory of relativity much before it was done. Pithy statements in the Sastras can help our scientists make significant contributions”.

Or consider what the eminent nuclear physicist D.S.Kothari has to say. In a prestigious lecture on “Science and Values” delivered at the Indian National Science Academy on the concluding day of its golden jubilee celebrations, he claimed that the view of the universe provided by physics proclaimed the moral insight of philosophy. “Plank’s constant, which explains movement of electrons at various levels of energy, does lead to the moral conclusion that in practicing truth lies immortality as stated in the Rig Veda,” he explained. “Plank’s constant has a message that either we hang together or will be destroyed together,” he said, and referred to the Rig Vedic invocation to the Sun that stressed the wisdom of practicing truth. How can we lament lack of national pride in Indians without first acquainting them with the country’s phenomenal scientific achievements in the dim distant past?

- Syndicate Features -

A Newspaper Published by World Institute for Asian Studies


[/tscii:2ec3dffe4d]

[gaddeswarup]

There is some discussion of the possibilities of using Samskrit in computer science in:
http://www.codecomments.com/archive282-2004-6-211229.html

I always wondered whether the ancient indian mathematicians thought abut Russell's Paradox, which seems to come at an elementary level and in some ways there are similar expressions in language. Russell's Paradox is discussed in:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/

I remember reading that 'the law of excluded middle' was not allowed in some ancient Indian systems of logic.
swarup

[stranger]

Unfortunately you backwards can't read properly...




* I'm not very sure what you mean by a "backward", but do feel free to point me to instances in any of my posts which demonstrate a failure to properly comprehend what you've written.



By no definition you can EVER put Aravindhan in the class of "Backward", bone-head!.



* none of which I will dignify with a response.

* I find this attitude wearisome in the extreme.

* I suppose no amount of rules or moderation can change the basic nature of this forum's discussions at its lowest level, and I am absolutely sick and tired of trying to work with it.

I know what you mean by sick and tired here, at least! :)

It usually happens when you argue with someone really sick! :roll:

[kannannn]

Whoa! A whole two pages filled in the weekend. And some people are none the wiser!



Who exactly are these hindu mathematicians, indian? FYI I dug up a link from the previous posts where a group of leading mathematicians in India have argued against the so called 'vedic mathematics'. can you name any prominent Indian mathematician who can vouch for these so-called mathematics?
http://www.tifr.res.in/~vahia/dani-vmsm.pdf

Good Link Kannan. I have a question. Did u read the article. It just opposes a Vedic mathematics book published by Shankaracharya of Puri.
But I am very thankful to you.

Because Page 5 of the paper clearly depicts what SRS has been trying to say from Page1. The Shulba Sutras the Verses associated with the Proof of Pi and Pythogoras theorem written by Baudyayana in 800 BC. Thanks to you.
As a result i am going to purchase that book by Sen and Bag. and then try to publish the exact verses here for our fellow brethren.

indianxxxx, The purpose I provided the link was to expose the so called 'vedic mathematics', the kind SRS rattles on about, as can be seen by the verse he quotes from the Shankaracharya of Puri's book. The link I gave exactly refutes this point. However, I would take the dating of the sutras with a pinch of salt. But the point is (which you have again failed to see) you pursue vedic mathematics more with of a sense of nationalistic vanity than with scholarly dispassion. Is this not 'conjectural inference' (as your friend devapriya put it in some other thread)?

And BTW I'll provide some more links to the protests by leading scientists against vedic mathematics and vedic astrology ( :lol: that is a joke for which Joshi will be remembered for ever)

[SRS]

Great post, devapriya. Again I will point out, not just Indians, but many ancient peoples had advanced technologies. Which by inference implies they possessed advanced scientific knowledge. One can speculate on and on as to why they did not leave this knowledge in a physical form to posterity. Seeing as how destructive modern man is, however, perhaps they made the right decision in retrospect.

[stranger]

[tscii:777e95e2aa]
Dr Rick Briggs, an American computer engineer, in a paper published in the 1985 issue of “Artificial Intelligence”, said that ancient Indians had developed a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit “in a manner that is identical not only in essence but also in form with the current work of artificial intelligence”. According to him, “Sanskrit grammarians had already found a way of solving what is perhaps the most important problem in computer science—natural language understanding and machine translation”.

Devapriya:

Did you guys invent NMR, IR, X-ray diffraction also in the Vedic times itself???

Could you give me few references for those too?

I wish you could make at least at least today, one piece of each instrument in India itself using your own ingeneous technology.

Why dont you work on making first 1200 MHz instrument using the ideas you gained from Vedas??? :lol:[/tscii:777e95e2aa]

When are you guys coming back to the real world and see where we REALLY stand in sci and technology??

Is there anything called vedic-transform NMR used by someone ? :roll:

BTW, I doubt very much you understand anything at all said in the article you are posting.

Anybody can "copy-paste" right :?:

[mahadevan]

hey stranger even demat and remat was extensively used in vedic india, have you not seen vitalacharya's movies. NMR is just an experimental tool, the vedics do not need that. It is required only if you insist on proving something, vedic science is beyond that, if 100 years later poor scientists invent something even that can be infered from the vedas, but the real catch is, we can infer that only after someone elucidates it. Is it not a prerequisite for Reverse engineering ?
It just reminds me of an article in a christian right wing website, the author found the phrase 'Osama Danger' in the hebrew version of bible..... Blind belivers,Blind belivers Blind belivers.
All said and done, you have you appreciate their dedication to cook up something ! if only they can channelize that energy on real science the world would be a much better place.

[kannannn]

Stranger and Mahadevan, bang on target. But I would not be surprised if someone comes up with a twisted interpretation of some vedic hymns and proclaims that we indeed were the world leaders in NMR. After all, I had a friend who said that 'pushpaka vimana' shows that vedic indians invented powered flight. Maybe, they are in some far away galaxy now, with a smug feeling of having invented inter-galactic flight.

[stranger]

But I would not be surprised if someone comes up with a twisted interpretation of some vedic hymns and proclaims that we indeed were the world leaders in NMR.

I want to see Devapriya beating Bruker and Varian using his novel technology called Vedic transform NMR! :lol:



When Vasco da Gama reached India, he immediately launched a campaign of terror to avenge Cabral's men who had been killed by Muslim rioters in Calicut. Vasco da Gama's first act was to capture a passenger ship carrying Muslim families home to Calicut from a pilgrimage to Mecca. After looting the ship, Vasco da Gama set fire to it, deliberately burning to death hundreds of women and children.
He next sent an ultimatum to the Zamorin of Calicut, ordering him to kill all the Muslims in his city, or face retaliation. When the Zamorin offered to negotiate a compromise, Vasco da Gama began capturing Hindu fishermen from Calicut, and chopping off their hands, feet, and heads. He then bombarded the city, aiming to kill as many civilians as possible.
By his aggressive actions, Vasco da Gama demonstrated that Portuguese ships, with their superior cannon, were able to dominate their competitors, the traditional Arab merchant ships of the Indian Ocean. Muslim merchant ships were frightened away from Calicut, disrupting the city's trade.
Although Vasco da Gama returned to Portugal in 1503, other Portuguese commanders in India imitated his tactics of seaborne terror, with devastating results for the economy of Calicut. In 1513 the Zamorin of Calicut negotiated a trade agreement with the Portuguese.
Portugal established an empire in India, and Vasco da Gama became viceroy of the Indian colonies. He was enormously rich when he died in Cochin, India, on Dec. 24, 1524.

Not more than 2000 people came in a Ship and looted India.

If these guys had gun-powder and knew how to make use of explosives why did not they do any effort to get rid of these looters???

What were they doing with gun-powder???

Sending them to Sivakasi for deepaavali fire-crackers??? :lol:

[SRS]

Attempts have been made to discredit Aryabhatiya in this thread. For the record, Aryabhatiya was not "wrong." Here are some of his discoveries, according to Wikepedia:

His book, "?ryabhat?ya", presented astronomical and mathematical theories in which the Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun (in other words, it was heliocentric).He believes that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight and he believes that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. He correctly explains the causes of eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. His value for the length of the year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is remarkably close to the true value which is about 365 days 6 hours. This book is divided into four chapters: (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required for computations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere, rules relating to problems of trigonometry and the computation of eclipses. In this book, the day was reckoned from one sunrise to the next, whereas in his "?ryabhata-siddh?nta" he took the day from one midnight to another. There was also difference in some astronomical parameters.
He was the first to explain how the Lunar Eclipse and the Solar Eclipse happened.
Aryabhata also gave close approximation for Pi. In the Aryabhatiya, he wrote: "Add four to one hundred, multiply by eight and then add sixty-two thousand. The result is approximately the circumference of a circle of diameter twenty thousand. By this rule the relation of the circumference to diameter is given." In other words, ? ? 62832/20000 = 3.1416, correct to four rounded-off decimal places.
Aryabhata was the first astronomer to make an attempt at measuring the Earth's circumference since Erastosthenes (circa 200 BC). Aryabhata accurately calculated the Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation remained the most accurate for over a thousand years.
He also propounded the Heliocentric theory of gravitation, thus predating Copernicus by almost one thousand years.
8th century Arabic translation of Aryabhata's Magnum Opus, the ?ryabhat?ya was translated into Latin in the 13th century. Through this translation, European mathematicians got to know methods for calculating the areas of triangles, volumes of spheres as well as square and cube root. Earlier Arabic translations of the ?ryabhat?ya were available in the Middle East by the 8th century, before the Crusades took place, so it's also likely that Aryabhata's work had an influence on European astronomy.
Aryabhata's methods of astronomical calculations have been in continuous use for practical purposes of fixing the Pancanga (Hindu calendar).
[edit]
Mathematics

One of the books of Aryabhatiya is on mathematics. Aryabhata describes the kuttaka algorithm to solve indeterminate equations. In recent times, this algorithm has also been called the Aryabhata algorithm.
He also created a novel alphabetic code to represent numbers that is now called the Aryabhata cipher.
[edit]
Overview

Accurately computed pi
Explained solar eclipses
Expounded a heliocentric model of the solar system and accurately computed the length of earth's revolution around the sun.
[edit]

[SRS]

Not only did Aryabhatta influence Indian mathematics, but he also had an impact on the development of Western mathematics (and astronomy as well). Unfortunately, some of our Dravidian friends will try to deny that, but even the Westerners acknowledge this basic fact.

[gaddeswarup]

Not only did Aryabhatta influence Indian mathematics, but he also had an impact on the development of Western mathematics (and astronomy as well). Unfortunately, some of our Dravidian friends will try to deny that, but even the Westerners acknowledge this basic fact.

As far as I know, most Indians as well as foreigners who know of some of Aryabhatta's work admire it. The problem comes when there are attempts to push some of the defects under carpet ( there are mistakes in the works of western mathematicians too). There is an artcle in EPW (September, 2003) entitled "Axiomitization and Computational Positivism" by Roddam Narasimha, FRS. Narasimha's theory is that the Indian astromers were not partcularly interested in theories but predictions. They seem to have been remarkably successful in this ; the accuracies of some of the predictions of Aryabhatta and others have not been surpassed until the 18th century. He calls this computational positivism. When I wrote to him saying that Aryabhatta and Bhaskara could have easily verified their farmulae by a few crude experiments, there has been no response.
The last bit is from an earlier thread :
http://forumhub.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=3215&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
where the topic was discussed at some length. I think that Sri Aravindhan has added more information in this thread. The trouble is that if we want to bridges, we cannot use all of Aryabhatta's work uncritically. Regards,
swarup

[SRS]

Not only did Aryabhatta influence Indian mathematics, but he also had an impact on the development of Western mathematics (and astronomy as well). Unfortunately, some of our Dravidian friends will try to deny that, but even the Westerners acknowledge this basic fact.

As far as I know, most Indians as well as foreigners who know of some of Aryabhatta's work admire it. The problem comes when there are attempts to push some of the defects under carpet ( there are mistakes in the works of western mathematicians too). There is an artcle in EPW (September, 2003) entitled "Axiomitization and Computational Positivism" by Roddam Narasimha, FRS. Narasimha's theory is that the Indian astromers were not partcularly interested in theories but predictions. They seem to have been remarkably successful in this ; the accuracies of some of the predictions of Aryabhatta and others have not been surpassed until the 18th century. He calls this computational positivism. When I wrote to him saying that Aryabhatta and Bhaskara could have easily verified their farmulae by a few crude experiments, there has been no response.
The last bit is from an earlier thread :
http://forumhub.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=3215&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
where the topic was discussed at some length. I think that Sri Aravindhan has added more information in this thread. The trouble is that if we want to bridges, we cannot use all of Aryabhatta's work uncritically. Regards,
swarup

No one is saying Arayahatta was 100% correct on all accounts. In fact, no one cares that Arayabhatta may have been wrong on a few trivial points, except our Dravidian friends here. In typical fashion, they choose to dwell on these few points. Hiding what under the carpet? The list of Aryabhatta's achievements is long and respected (except of course by our Dravidian friends). Because he did not "experimentally" verify every astronomical calculation is not a reason to dismiss his work. As I have said before, mathematical discovery must come before the scientific application. This is why the ancient Indians were such excellent astronomers: l they were also excellent mathematicians. This is what sees in Ramanujan, in fact. That the Indian mind was already comprehending advanced mathematics. Ramanujan the Brahmin! Who will deny that he was influenced by Vedas?

[1&amp;only]

How does a Zero becomes a Hero? When it is given to world by Arabs then a zero turns to hero.

How does a Hero becomes a zero? When it insists on vedic supremacy.

You need it explained? Don't hesitate to ask me!