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Re: Dictionary traces math concepts to Vedas
Posted:
Sep 4, 2012 3:26 PM
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Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:
>
> Dictionary traces maths concepts to Vedas
>
> By Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey, TNN
> The Times of India
> August 30, 2012
>
> Kolkata: For eight years, a few mathematics and Sanskrit
> scholars of the Calcutta University have been working on
> a mammoth project. They have been trying to establish a
> tall claim that at least 5,000 basic and advanced modern
> mathematical concepts have their roots in Sanskrit and
> most of these have Vedic antecedents.
>
> At the end of this painstaking research, the first kosa
> or dictionary of Sanskrit to English mathematical terms
> is ready and there are four more to follow. This central
> government project is being touted as the first of its
> kind in the world as never before have the Indian
> etymology of so many modern technical terms been so
> radically established.
>
> The project was given to these scholars by the Rashtriya
> Sanskrit Sansthan, a wing of the ministry of human
> resources development, through the city-based Sanskrit
> Sahitya Parishat. The chief investigators of the project
> are retired faculty members of Jadavpur and Calcutta
> universities, Manabendu Banerjee and Pradip Kumar
> Majumdar, respectively.
>
> While the world gives credit to India for invention of
> the concept of 'zero', not much else in modern maths is
> attributed to this country. "Also, while it is generally
> believed that it was the fifth century AD mathematician
> Aryabhatta who invented zero, we have been able to
> establish in our project that zero or ananta was a
> concept as old as the Rig Veda. Similarly, eka or number
> one also has roots in this Veda," explained Majumdar.
>
> All branches of mathematics are well represented in the
> Vedas, Aranyakas, Brahminical literature, Upanishads,
> Panini's Ashtadhyayi and Yaska's Nirukto, the dictionary
> explains. It goes on to prove that most solutions that
> can be arrived through algebra, geometry and trigonometry
> have Sanskrit roots. Thus, what the world knows as
> Pythagoras' theorem existed in the Sulbasutras provided
> in the manuscripts of Boudhayan, Apostombo, Manaba and
> Katyayan. A large number of formulae developed thousands
> of years ago, which lead to the same assumption as modern
> theorems, have been provided in the dictionary, with
> their places of occurrence in Indian punthis.
>
> "Take the case of Euclid's concepts, on which modern
> geometry is based. You will find that all of today's
> geometric shapes and angles were present in the way the
> yajnabedis or the holy sacrificial fires were erected.
> Each design had a typical astronomical or cosmic meaning
> to it and a specific purpose for which the yajna was to
> be conducted," explained Banerjee, who is also the former
> vice-president of Asiatic Society. The dictionary is
> replete with the designs of these yajnabedis and go on to
> explain their modern geometrical equivalents. The
> additional benefit is that the ancient custom and belief
> system surrounding these bedis have also been explained
> in the dictionary. It says that the origin of most of
> these designs can be found in Vedanga Jyotish of 12th
> century BC.
>
> Similarly, what the world associates with trigonometry
> today can be found in the ancient Indian texts. Take one
> of the most common formulae in Trigonometry - sin 2A = 2
> sin A cos A. The dictionary explains that you can find
> such formulae that are used to measure area or height in
> the manuscripts of not one but several scholars of
> ancient India. The term jyotpotti (trigonometry) and the
> integral formulae therein can be traced back to
> Aryabhatta in his Siddhantasiromani, in the 12th century
> manuscripts of Bhaskaracharya II, in the 7th century
> Brahmasputasiddhanta of Brahma Gupta and in the 16th
> century Siddhantatattobibek of Kamalakar, the dictionary
> says.
>
> More at:
>
> http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-30/kolkata/33498839_1_dictionary-concepts-rashtriya-sanskrit-sansthan
Forwarded post:
Highly Exciting. Let this be done with all out efforts.
Let this be done please.
- Subrata Mukhopadhyay, Kharagpur
End of forwarded post.
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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