Vedic Mathematics: Development of Mathematics during Vedic Period

India has a long tradition of mathematics, in this article let’s learn about the development of Mathematics in India during the Vedic Period.

Need for Mathematics

You must be familiar with the proverb “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Well when we try to understand the development of mathematics or any other science, we should always keep this proverb in mind. Whenever a scientific development happens in history, it does not happen by itself, but happens because there was a grave need for it. This is also true for Vedic Mathematics, it came into existence because there was a grave need of mathematics in performing the religious rituals in those times and so our ancestors adapted mathematics.

There is a very long period in the early Vedic period where we did not have writing and most of the knowledge was transferred orally. The script of Indus valley civilization is not yet been decoded. Therefore it is very difficult to really pinpoint the origins of mathematical concept and how our ancestors learned about these mathematical concepts. Also since all this information was transmitted orally, the information had to be coded in the mnemonic form so that it was easy to remember and pass on to next generation. Thus came the sutras (literally meaning thread), which were short sentences, which packed a lot of information and were easy to remember.

Shulba-sutra

Eventually as writing came along, these sutras were written down and all the information that we know about Vedic mathematics is through these sutras. By 1000BC we start to see the texts, which talk about ancient Indian mathematics. The major text on Vedic mathematics from the Vedic period is the Shulba Sutra, which was composed between 800–200BC. Shulba Sutra provides us a window to all the knowledge that our ancient sages had about mathematics. It shows us that the sages of Vedic period had knowledge about how to

Now as I mentioned earlier, all this knowledge was gathered not for the sake of knowledge but was developed because there was a specific need for it. We know that during performing Yajna and religious rituals was a major aspect of life during Vedic times. And all these rituals required the construction of very accurate fire altars called Mahavedi. In the interest of time I will not go into the details of the Mahavedi and how it was constructed that will be a topic for a separate video, for this video keep in mind that it was very important to build these fire altars in the right shape and of accurate area. To construct such accurate fire altars vedic sages needed knowledge of mathematics and this was the reason why Vedic mathematics came into existence.

Origins of the knowledge

The natural question that comes to our mind now is, how did they learn about it. As mentioned previously there is no written record on this and whatever we know right now is only speculation. People have compared Vedic geometry with Greek geometry and seen many similarities. Both of them were used to create fire altars with the difference being that Greek’s were interested more in the volume of the altar while Indians were more interested in the area of the altar. Both of these cultures solved their problems by making use of the Pythagorean theorem (which most people should know was not invented by Pythagoras and was know in India and other places of the world long before Pythagoras was born). Considering these similarities between Greek and Vedic mathematics, it is generally theorized that the origins of this knowledge belongs to a common culture, which predates both these cultures.

Misrepresentation of Vedic Mathematics

Since the publication of the book “Vedic Mathematics” by Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha, there is a lot of hype associated with the term Vedic mathematics. Although named Vedic mathematics that book is not a true representation of the mathematics during Vedic Period in India. We should note that the original Vedas do not talk much about mathematics. If you really want to learn more about the knowledge of mathematics during Vedic period then your best reference will be Shulba Sutra.

Originally published at https://stoicsadhu.com on April 26, 2019.