PROJECT- ANCIENT INDIAN

MATHEMATICS
BY- HEET TEJAS KOTAK
Roll Number – 12
Class- XII
Guidance Tejas Sir

Bird’s Eye View-

The following project file includes the information about
India’s rich foundation in research and development of
Mathematics.
It also shows the works of various great mathematicians
with the era of their research(or development).
 Introduction
• "Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian subcontinent from 1200 BCE until
the end of the 18th century. In the classical period of Indian mathematics (400
CE to 1200 CE), important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata,
Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II, and Varāhamihira. The decimal number system in
use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics. Indian mathematicians
made early contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a number,
negative numbers, arithmetic, and algebra. In addition, tr igonometry was
further advanced in India, and, in particular, the modern definitions of sine and
cosine were developed there. These mathematical concepts were transmitted to
the Middle East, China, and Europe and led to further developments that now
form the foundations of many areas of mathematics."

• "Ancient and medieval Indian mathematical works, all composed in Sanskrit,

usually consisted of a section of sutras in which a set of rules or problems were
stated with great economy in verse in order to aid memorization by a student.
This was followed by a second section consisting of a prose commentary
(sometimes multiple commentaries by different scholars) that explained the
problem in more detail and provided justification for the solution. In the prose
section, the form (and therefore its memorization) was not considered so
important as the ideas involved. All mathematical works were orally
transmitted until approximately 500 BCE; thereafter, they were transmitted
both orally and in manuscript form . The oldest extant mathematical do cument
produced on the Indian subcontinent is the birch bark Bakhshali Manuscript,
discovered in 1881 in the village of Bakhshali, near Peshawar (modern day
Pakistan) and is likely from the 7th century CE"

Ancient Indian Manuscript representing the number system which is

believed to be older than the Greek and Arabic Carved texts.
 Indian NUMERALS

• One of the important sources of information which we have about Indian numerals
comes from al-Biruni. During the 1020s al-Biruni made several visits to India. Before
he went there al-Biruni already knew of Indian astronomy and mathematics from
Arabic translations of some Sanskrit texts. In India he made a detailed study of Hindu
philosophy and he also studied several branches of Indian science and mathematics.
Al-Biruni wrote 27 works on India and on different areas of the Indian sciences. In
particular his account of Indian astronomy and mathematics is a valuable contribution
to the study of the history of Indian science. Referring to the Indian numerals in a
famous book written about 1030 he wrote: - “Whilst we use letters for calculation
according to their numerical value, the Indians do not use letters at all for arithmetic.
And just as the shape of the letters that they use for writing is different in different
regions of their country, so the numerical symbols vary.”

• It is reasonable to ask where the various symbols for numerals which al-Biruni saw
originated. Historians trace them all back to the Brahmi numerals which came into
being around the middle of the third century BC. Now these Brahmi numerals were
not just symbols for the numbers between 1 and 9. The situation is much more
complicated for it was not a place-value system so there were symbols for many
more numbers. Also there were no special symbols for 2 and 3, both numbers being
constructed from 1.

• Here is the Brahmi one, two, three.

• There were separate Brahmi symbols for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 but there were also symbols
for 10, 100, 1000, … as well as 20, 30, 40, … , 90 and 200, 300, 400, …, 900.

• The Brahmi numerals have been found in inscriptions in caves and on coins in regions
near Poona, Bombay, and Uttar Pradesh. Dating these numerals tells us that they were
in use over quite a long time span up to the 4th century AD. Of course different
inscriptions differ somewhat in the style of the symbols.

• Here is one style of the Brahmi

numerals.

• We should now look both forward and backward from the appearance of the Brahmi
numerals. Moving forward leads to many different forms of numerals but we shall
choose to examine only the path which has led to our present day symbols. First,
 however, we look at a number of different theories concerning the origin of the
Brahmi numerals.

• There is no problem in understanding the symbols for 1, 2, and 3. However the

symbols for 4, … , 9 appear to us to have no obvious link to the numbers they
represent. There have been quite a number of theories put forward by historians over
many years as to the origin of these numerals.

• The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten
symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India.
The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is
no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed
arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. the importance of this invention is
more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest
men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.

OLD Indian MATHEMATICS

 Old Indian mathematics
In India, mathematics has its roots in Vedic literature, nearly 4000 years old.
(Between 1500 BCE and 600 BCE). Various concepts of mathematics were given by Indian
mathematicians, which were set forth for the first time, the concept of zero, the techniques
of algebra and algorithm, square root, and cube root. Various examples of mathematics
from ancient India are applied even today.

Geometry(Hindu Temples)
Indian mathematicians had their contribution even in the area of Geometry. There was an
area of mathematical applications called Rekha Ganita (Line Computation). The Sulva Sutras,
which mean ‘Rule of the Chord,’ give geometrical methods of constructing altars and temples.
The temple layouts were called Mandalas. Some of the important works in this field are by
Apastamba, Baudhayana, Hiranyakesin, Manava, Varaha, and Vadhula.
 Trigonometry
• Some of the early and very significant developments of trigonometry were in India.
Influential works from the 4th–5th century AD, known as the Siddhantas (of which
there were five, the most important of which is the Surya Siddhanta) first defined the
sine as the modern relationship between half an angle and half a chord, while also
defining the cosine, versine, and inverse sine. Soon afterwards, another Indian
mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata (476–550 AD), collected and expanded
upon the developments of the Siddhantas in an important work called the
Aryabhatiya. The Siddhantas and the Aryabhatiya contain the earliest surviving
tables of sine values and versine (1 − cosine) values, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°,
to an accuracy of 4 decimal places. They used the words jya for sine, kojya for cosine,
utkrama-jya for versine, and otkram jya for inverse sine. The words jya and kojya
eventually became sine and cosine respectively after a mistranslation.

• In the 7th century, Bhaskara I produced a formula for calculating the sine of an acute
angle without the use of a table. He also gave the following approximation formula
for sin(x), which had a relative error of less than 1.9%:

• Later in the 7th century, Brahmagupta redeveloped the formula

(also derived earlier, as mentioned above) and the Brahmagupta interpolation

formula for computing sine values.[11]
• Another later Indian author on trigonometry was Bhaskara II in the 12th
century. Bhaskara II developed spherical trigonometry, and discovered many
trigonometric results.
• The Indian text the Yuktibhāṣā contains proof for the expansion of
the sine and cosine functions and the derivation and proof of the power
series for inverse tangent, discovered by Madhava. The Yuktibhāṣā also contains
rules for finding the sines and the cosines of the sum and difference of two angle.
 Infinite Series
• Kerala mathematicians produced rules for second-order interpolation to calculate
intermediate sine values. The Kerala mathematician Madhava may have discovered
the sine and cosine series about three hundred years before Newton. In this sense, we
may consider Madhava to have been the founder of mathematical analysis. Madhava
(circa 1340 – 1425 C.E.) was the first to take the decisive step from the finite
procedures of ancient Indian mathematics to treat their limit-passage to infinity.

• His contributions include infinite-series expansions of circular and trigonometric

functions and finite-series approximations. Later writers refer to his power series for
p and for sine and cosine functions reverentially.

Fibonacci Numbers
• The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers where a number is found by
adding up the two numbers before it. Starting with 0 and 1, the sequence
goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so forth. Virahanka, Gopala, and
Hemachandra first described it as an outgrowth of earlier writings by Pingala.

• The picture on the next page shows manuscript of the findings of same.
 Length and Weights
• Rulers are believed to have been used by the Indus Valley Civilization before 1500
BCE. Made of ivory, the rulers found during excavation reveal the amazing accuracy
of decimal subdivisions on it.

• The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in measuring length,
mass, and time. They were among the first to develop a uniform weights and
measures system. A comparison of available objects indicates large-scale variation
across the Indus territories. Their smallest division, marked on an ivory scale found in
Lothal in Gujarat, was approximately 1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded
on a scale of the Bronze Age

• India’s history of measurement systems begins in early Indus Valley Civilisation, with
the earliest surviving samples dated to the 5th millennium BCE. Since early times the
adoption of standard weights and measures has been reflected in the country’s
architectural, folk, and metallurgical artifacts. A complex system of weights and
measures was adopted by the Maurya empire (322–185 BCE), which also formulated
regulations for the usage of this system. Later, the Mughal Empire (1526–1857) used
standard measures to determine land holdings and collect the land tax as a part of
Mughal land reforms.

• A total of 558 weights were excavated from Mohenjodaro, Harappa, and Chanhu-
Daro, not including defective weights. They did not find statistically significant
differences between weights excavated from five different layers, each measuring
about 1.5 m in depth. This was evidence that strong control existed for at least 500
years. The 13.7-g weight seems to be one of the units used in the Indus valley. The
notation was based on the binary and decimal systems. 83% of the weights excavated
from the above three cities were cubic, and 68% were made of chert.
Acknowledgement-
The Project has helped me to know about India’s rich history towards research of maths. I
have tried exploring pristine information like trigonometry and Indian Numerals which
many are unaware of. This has raised the respect for ancient Mathematics as well as
Hindu Scriptures, Manuscripts, etc. all of which are scientific and full of mathematics
specifying each discovery in field of maths. This astonishes me as complicated thing like
Trigonometry were found 1000s of years ago in Hindu Scriptures, they were just
reformulated by others to serve it to us. All over the project endowed me with a lot of
knowledge.