The Logic of Non-Western Science: Mathematical Discoveries in Medieval India

Author(s): David Pingree

Source: Daedalus, Vol. 132, No. 4, On Science (Fall, 2003), pp. 45-53
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027880
Accessed: 01-11-2016 22:28 UTC

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David Pingree
The logic of non-Western science:
mathematical discoveries in medieval India
v>/ne of the most significant things one
learns from the study of the exact sci
ences as practiced in a number of an
cient and medieval societies is that,
while science has always traveled from
one culture to another, each culture be
fore the modern period approached the
sciences it received in its own unique
way and transformed them into forms
compatible with its own modes of
thought. Science is a product of culture ;
it is not a single, unified entity. There
fore, a historian of premodern scientific
texts - whether they be written in Akka
dian, Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek,
Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, or any
other linguistic bearer of a distinct cul
ture - must avoid the temptation to con
David Pingree, a Fellow of the American Acade
my since 1971, is University Professor in the de
partment of the history of mathematics at Brown
University. He teaches about the transmission of
science between cultures, and his publications in
clude many editions of astronomical, astrological,
and magical works in Akkadian, Arabic, Greek,
Latin, and Sanskrit. Most recently he has written
'Arabic Astronomy in Sanskrit" (with T. Kusuba,
2002), 'Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia" (with
H. Hunger, 1999), and "Babylonian Planetary
Omens" (with E. Reiner, 1998).
? 2oo3 by the American Academy of Arts
& Sciences
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ceive of these sciences as more or less
clumsy attempts to express modern sci
entific ideas. They must be understood
and appreciated as what their practition
ers believed them to be. The historian is
interested in the truthfulness of his own
understanding of the various sciences,
not in the truth or falsehood of the sci
ence itself.
In order to illustrate the individuality
of the sciences as practiced in the older
non-Western societies, and their differ
ences from early modern Western sci
ence (for contemporary science is, in
general, interested in explaining quite
different phenomena than those that
attracted the attention of earlier scien
tists), I propose to describe briefly some
of the characteristics of the medieval
Indian sastra of jyotisa. This discipline
concerned matters included in such
Western areas of inquiry as astronomy,
mathematics, divination, and astrology.
In fact, the jyotis?s, the Indian experts in
jyotisa, produced more literature in these
areas - and made more mathematical
discoveries - than scholars in any other
culture prior to the advent of printing. In
order to explain how they managed to
make such discoveries - and why their
discoveries remain largely unknown -1
will also need to describe briefly the gen
eral social and economic position of the
jyotis?s.
D dalus Fall 2003 45
David ??stra ('teaching') is the word in San
Pingree
on skrit closest in meaning to the Greek
science '?mcrcrj|ir|' and the Latin 'scientia.' The
teachings are often attributed to gods
or considered to have been composed by
divine rsis; but since there were many of
both kinds of superhuman beings, there
were many competing varieties of each
sastra. Sometimes, however, a school
within a sastra was founded by a human ;
scientists were free to modify their
sastras as they saw fit. No one was con
strained to follow a system taught by a
god.
fyotih is a Sanskrit word meaning
'light,' and then 'star' ; so XhdXjyotihs?stra
means 'teaching about the stars.' This
s?stra was conventionally divided into
three sub teachings : ganita( mathematical
astronomy and mathematics itself), sam
hit? (divination, including by means of
celestial omens), and hora (astrology). A
number of jyotis?s (students of the stars)
followed all three branches, a larger
number just two (usually samhita and
hora), and the largest number just one
(hor?).
The principal writings in jyotihs?stra,
as in all Indian sastras, were normally in
verse, though the numerous commen
taries on them were almost always in
prose. The verse form with its metrical
demands, while it aided memorization,
led to greater obscurity of expression
than prose composition would have en
tailed. The demands of the poetic meter
meant that there could be no stable tech
nical vocabulary ; many words with dif
ferent metrical patterns had to be de
vised to express the same mathematical
procedure or geometrical concept, and
mathematical formulae had frequently
to be left partially incomplete. More
over, numbers had to be expressible in
metrical forms (the two major systems
used for numbers, the bh?tasankhy? and
the katapayddi, will be explained and ex
46 D dalus Fall 2003
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emplified below), and the consequent
ambiguity of these expressions encour
aged the natural inclination of Sanskrit
pandits to test playfully their readers'
acumen. It takes some practice to
achieve sureness in discerning the
technical meanings of such texts.
But in this opaque style the jyotisis pro
duced an abundant literature. It is esti
mated that about three million manu
scripts on these subjects in Sanskrit
and in other Indian languages still exist.
Regrettably, only a relatively small num
ber of these has been subjected to mod
ern analysis, and virtually the whole en
semble is rapidly decaying. And because
there is only a small number of scholars
trained to read and understand these
texts, most of them will have disap
peared before anyone will be able to
describe correctly their contents.
In order to make my argument clearer,
I will restrict my remarks to the first
branch of jyotihs?stra -ganita. Geometry,
and its branch trigonometry, was the
mathematics Indian astronomers used
most frequently. In fact, the Indian as
tronomers in the third or fourth century,
using a pre-Ptolemaic Greek table of
chords,1 produced tables of sines and
versines, from which it was trivial to de
rive cosines. This new system of trigo
nometry, produced in India, was trans
mitted to the Arabs in the late eighth
century and by them, in an expanded
form, to the Latin West and the Byzan
tine East in the twelfth century. But, de
spite this sort of practical innovation,
the Indians practiced geometry without
the type of proofs taught by Euclid, in
i For a description of the table of chords, cy
clic quadrilaterals, two-point iteration, fixed
point iteration, and several other mathematical
terms mentioned in this essay, please see Vic
tor J. Katz, A History of Mathematics : An Intro
duction (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).

which all solutions to geometrical prob
lems are derived from a small body of
arbitrary axioms. The Indians provided
demonstrations that showed that their
solutions were consistent with certain
assumptions (such as the equivalence
of the angles in a pair of similar triangles
or the Pythagorean theorem) and whose
validity they based on the measurement
of several examples. In their less rigor
ous approach they were quite willing to
be satisfied with approximations, such
as the substitution of a sine wave for al
most any curve connecting two points.
Some of their approximations, like those
devised by ?ryabhata in about 500 for
the volumes of a sphere and a pyramid,
were simply wrong. But many were sur
prisingly useful.
Not having a set of axioms from which
to derive abstract geometrical relation
ships, the Indians in general restricted
their geometry to the solution of practi
cal problems. However, Brahmagupta
in 628 presented formulae for solving a
dozen problems involving cyclic quadri
laterals that were not solved in the West
before the Renaissance. He provides no
rationales and does not even bother to
inform his readers that these solutions
only work if the quadrilaterals are cir
cumscribed by a circle (his commenta
tor, Prth?dakasv?min, writing in about
864, follows him on both counts). In this
case, and clearly in many others, there
was no written or oral tradition that pre
served the author's reasoning for later
generations of students. Such disdain
for revealing the methodology by which
mathematics could advance made it dif
ficult for all but the most talented stu
dents to create new mathematics. It is
amazing to see, given this situation,
how many Indian mathematicians did
advance their field.
I will at this point mention as exam
ples only the solution of indeterminate
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Mathematical
equations of the first degree, described
discoveries
already by ?ryabhata ; the partial solu in medieval
tion of indeterminate equations of the India
second degree, due to Brahmagupta;
and the cyclic solution of the latter type
of indeterminate equations, achieved by
Jayadeva and described by Udayadiv?
kara in 1073 (the cyclic solution was
rediscovered in the West by Bell and Fer
m?t in the seventeenth century). Inter
polation into tables using second-order
differences was introduced by Brah
magupta in his Khandakh?dyaka of 665.
The use of two-point iteration occurs
first in the Pancasiddh?ntik? composed by
Var?hamihira in the middle of the sixth
century, and fixed-point iteration in
the commentary on the Mahabh?skar?ya
written by Govindasv?min in the middle
of the ninth century. The study of com
binatorics, including the so-called Pas
cal's triangle, began in India near the
beginning of the current era in theChan
dahs?tras, a work on prosody composed
by Pingala, and culminated in chapter
13 of the Ganitakaumud? completed by
N?r?yana Pandita in 1350. The four
teenth and final chapter of N?r?yana's
work is an exhaustive mathematical
treatment of magic squares, whose study
in India can be traced back to the Brhat
samhit? of Var?hamihira.
In short, it is clear that Indian mathe
maticians were not at all hindered in
solving significant problems of many
sorts by what might appear to a non
Indian to be formidable obstacles in the
conception and expression of mathe
matical ideas.
Nor were they hindered by the restric
tions of 'caste,' by the lack of societal
support, or by the general absence of
monetary rewards. It is true that the
overwhelming majority of the Indian
mathematicians whose works we know
were Br?hmanas, but there are excep
tions (e.g., among Jainas, non-Brah
D dalus Fall 2003 47
David m?nical scribes, and craftsmen). Indian
Pingree
on society was far from open, but it was not
science absolutely rigid; and talented mathe
maticians, whatever their origins, were
not ignored by their colleagues. Howev
er, astrologers (who frequently were not
Br?hmanas) and the makers of calendars
were the only jyotis?s normally valued by
the societies in which they lived. The at
traction of the former group is easily
understood, and their enormous popu
larity continues today. The calendar
makers were important because their job
was to indicate the times at which rituals
could or must be performed. The Indian
calendar is itself intricate ; for instance,
the day begins at local sunrise and is
numbered after the tithi that is then cur
rent, with the tithis being bounded by
the moments, beginning from the last
previous true conjunction of the Sun
and the Moon, at which the elongation
between the two luminaries had in
creased by twelve degrees. Essentially,
each village needed its own calendar to
determine the times for performing pub
lic and private religious rites of all kinds
in its locality.
By contrast, those who worked in the
various forms of ganita usually enjoyed
no public patronage - even though they
provided the mathematics used by archi
tects, musicians, poets, surveyors, and
merchants, as well as the astronomical
theories and tables employed by astro
logers and calendar-makers. Sometimes
a lucky mathematical astronomer was
supported by a Maharaja whom he
served as a royal astrologer and in whose
name his work would have been pub
lished. For example, the popular R?jamr
g?nka is attributed, along with dozens of
other works in many sastras, to Bhojade
va, the Maharaja of Dh?r? in the first
half of the eleventh century. Other jyoti
s?s substituted the names of divinities or
ancient holy men for their own as au
thors of their treatises. Authorship often
brought no rewards ; one's ideas were
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often more widely accepted if they were
presented as those of a divine being, a
category that in many men's minds in
cluded kings.
One way in which ajyotis? could make
a living was by teaching mathematics,
astronomy, or astrology to others. Most
frequently this instruction took place
in the family home, and, because of the
caste system, the male members of a
jyotisVs family were all expected to fol
low the same profession. A senior jyotis?,
therefore, would train his sons and often
his nephews in their ancestral craft. For
this the family maintained a library of
appropriate texts that included the com
positions of family members, which
were copied as desired by the younger
members. In this way a text might be
preserved within a family over many
generations without ever being seen
by persons outside the family. In some
cases, however, an expert became well
enough known that aspirants came from
far and wide to his house to study. In
such cases these students would carry
off copies of the manuscripts in the
teacher's collection to other family
libraries in other locales.
The teaching of jyotihs?stra also oc
curred in some Hindu, Jaina, and Bud
dhist monasteries, as well as in local
schools. In these situations certain stan
dard texts were normally taught, and the
status of these texts can be established
by the number of copies that still exist,
by their geographical distribution, and
by the number of commentaries that
were written on them.
Thus, mganita the principal texts used
in teaching mathematics in schools were
clearly the L?lavat? on arithmetic and the
B?jaganita on algebra, both written by
Bh?skara in around 1150, and, among
Jainas, the Ganitas?rasangraha composed
in about 850 by their coreligionist, Ma
hav?ra. In astronomy there came to be
five paksas (schools) : the Br?hmapaksa,
whose principal text was the Siddh?nta
siromani of the Bh?skara mentioned
above ; the Aryapaksa, based on the?rya
bhat?ya written by ?ryabhata in about
500; the ?rdhar?trikapaksa, whose princi
pal text was the Khandakh?dyaka com
pleted by Brahmagupta in 665 ; the
Saurapaksa, based on the S?ryasiddh?nta
composed by an unknown author in
about 800 ; and the Ganesapaksa, whose
principal text was the Grahal?ghava au
thored by Ganesa in 1520. Each region
of India favored one of these paksas,
though the principal texts of all of them
enjoyed national circulation. The com
mentaries on these often contain the
most innovative advances in mathemat
ics and mathematical astronomy found
in Sanskrit literature. By far the most
popular authority, however, was Bh?s
kara ; a special college for the study of his
numerous works was established in 1222
by the grandson of his younger brother.
No other Indian jyotisi was ever so hon
ored.
Occasionally, indeed, an informal
school inspired by one man's work
would spring up. The most noteworthy,
composed of followers of M?dhava of
Sangamagr?ma in Kerala in the extreme
south of India, lasted for over four hun
dred years without any formal structure
- simply a long succession of enthusiasts
who enjoyed and sometimes expanded
on the marvelous discoveries of M?dha
va.
Mathematical
He began by considering an octant
discoveriesof
a circle inscribed in a square, and, after
in medieval
some calculation, gave the ruleIndia (I trans
late quite literally two verses) :
Multiply the diameter (of the circle) by 4
and divide by 1. Then apply to this sepa
rately with negative and positive signs
alternately the product of the diameter
and 4 divided by the odd numbers 3, 5,
and so on... .The result is the accurate
circumference ; it is extremely accurate
if the division is carried out many times.
This describes the infinite series :
4D_4D4D_4D4D
1 3 5 7 9 "**
That in turn is equivalent to the
series for ;rthat we attribute to
4 3 5 7 9
M?dhava expressed the resu
formula in a verse employin
bh?tasankhy? system, in wh
are represented by words de
objects that conventionally
world in fixed quantities :
vibudhanetragaj?hihut?sana
abhav?ranab?havah I
navanikharvamite vrtivistar
paridhim?nam idam jagadur b
A literal translation is :

Gods [33], eyes [2], elephant

IVl?dhava (c. 1360 -1420), an Empr?n
[ 8 ], fires [ 3 ], three [ 3 ], qual
tiri Br?hmana, apparently lived all his[4], naksatras [27], elephants
[2]
life on his family's estate, Ila??ipalli, in - the wise say that this is
of the circumference when th
Sangamagr?ma (Irinj?lakhuda) near
Cochin. His most momentous achieve
of a circle is nine hundred bi
ment was the creation of methods to
The bh?tasankhy? numbers
compute accurate values for trigonomet
reverse order, so that the fo
ric functions by generating infinite se
2827433388233
ries. In order to demonstrate the charac
900000000000
ter of his solutions and expressions of
them, I will translate a few of his verses
(= 3.14159265359, which is cor
and quote some Sanskrit.
eleventh decimal place).

D dalus Fall 2003 49

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David
Pingree
Another extraordinary verse written by e 54007 _/ 0 \2 54009
on M?dhava employs the katapay?di system 5400/ Bf>7\ \5400 Rs9\
science in which the numbers 1, 2,3,4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
' e y540011
9, and o are represented by the consonants .5400J ?1011!
that are immediately followed by a vowel ;
this allows the mathematician to create a and this formula is a simple transforma
verse with both a transparent meaning tion of the first six terms in the infinite
due to the words and an unrelated nu power series for sin 6 found indepen
merical meaning due to the consonants dently by Newton in 1660 :
in those words. M?dhava's verse is :
sin 6 =
vidv?ms tunnabalah kav?sanicayah sar 03 +
0- ^ O5
- O?
+ e9 011
v?rthas?lasthiro R23\ R4S\ R67\ R
nirviddh?nganarendrarun
Not surprisingly, M?d
The verbal meaning is : "The ruler whose ered the infinite power
army has been struck down gathers to cosine and the tangent t
gether the best of advisors and remains attribute to Gregory.
firm in his conduct in all matters ; then
he shatters the (rival) king whose army Xhe European mathem
has not been destroyed." seventeenth century der
The numerical meaning is five sexa trigonometrical series
gesimal numbers : tion of the calculus ; M?

o;o,44 1400 relied on a clever

o;33,6 geometry, algebra, and
i6;5,4i mathematical possibilit
273)57,47 go through his whole ar
222o;39,40. has fortunately been pr
of his successors; but I
These five numbers equal, with R = some of his techniques
3437144,48 (where jR is the radius) : He invented an algebr
540011 formula that keeps pus
#1011! quantity to successive te
alternately positive and
54009
R89\ series must be expanded
rid of this unknown qu
54007 because of the multipli
R67\ terms increase, the pow
54005 vidual factors also incr
R4S\ factors in the octant is
integers beginning with
54003
R23>\
with 3438 - the number
radius of the circle that
gent of 45o, the angle of
These numbers are to be employed in
the formula : means that there are 34
that must be summed to
54003 _ / 6 y 54005 infinite series of the tr
sin6 = e-[j&?f J?23! I54OOJ R*5\ function.

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 Mathematical
It had long been known in India that angle 0 is equal to 0 minus discoveries
the sum of
the sum of a series of integers beginning the sums of the second differences
in medieval
of
with i and ending with n is : India
sines of the preceding tabulated angles
M?dhava discovered, by some very
h( ~ + l), that is, y-f + H. Since n clever geometry, that the sum of the
here equals 3438, M?dhava decided that sums of the second differences approx
n - 2 , which equals ~~y~, is negligible mately equals ^yy and that the versine
0 is approximately equal to yy Sinc
with respect to 34^8 . Therefore, an sin2 6 = R2- cos2 6 and vers 6 = R- cosO,
approximation to the sum of the
n2 M?dhava could correct the approxim
series of n integers is y. Similarly, the tion to the versine by the approximat
to the sum of the sums of the second d
sums of the squares of a series of n inte
ferences of tabulated sines ; then he
gers beginning with 1 was known to be
could correct the approximation to th
f[2o + i)2-(rc + i)] Tr . , ,;.
ZL?-1-?. If n is large, this sum of the sums of the second differ
? ?. ! , . rc(n + l)2 . ences by the corrected approximatio
is approximately equal to_ since to the versine ; and he could continue
- {n + 1) 3
?5? is negligible. But, with n = 3438, building up the two parallel series by
applying alternating corrections to
3438 *334392is little different from1^. them. He finally arrives at two infinit
Therefore, as an approximation, the sum power series, equivalent, if R = i, to :
of the series of the squares of 3438 inte a a 0\ 0s 67 , 09
gers beginning with 1 is y. Finally, it
sw0 = 0-y + ? - ? + ? ...,
was known that the sum of the cubes of and
a series of n numbers beginning with 1 a , 0? 04 & e8
cosV-l- 2I +?-6I+ ?....
is : (|)2(h + 1 )2 or *2(* + 1)2 . If n is 3438,
there is little difference between
Subsequent members of the 'school' of
M?dhava did remarkable work as well,
34382f4392
4 4 and4
^. Therefore, the
in both geometry (including trigonome
expression y is a close approximation
try) and astronomy. This is not the occa
to the sum of the cubes of a series of n
sion to recite their accomplishments,
numbers beginning but Iwith 1. here
should remark From these
that, among
three examples M?dhava guessed
these members, Indian astronomers at the
general rule that the sum of n numbers
attempted especially to use observations
in an arithmeticaltoseries
correct astronomical
beginningmodels and their
with
1 all raised to the parameters.
same power, p, is ap
i 1 nP+1
proximately equal to -?-. This began with M?dhava's principal
It had also been realized inpupil,
Indiaa Namp?tiri
since Br?hmana named
Paramesvara, whose family's illam was
the fifth century - from examining the
Vatasreni
sine table in which the radius of the in Asvatthagr?ma,
cir a village
about thirty-five miles northeast of
cle, R, is?Jtf?(which was Sangamagr?ma.
approximat He observed eighteen
ed by 3438) and in which therelunarare
and24 solar eclipses between 1393
sines in a quadrant of 90o, soand 1432 the
that in an attempt to correct tradi
length of each arc whose sine tional Indian eclipse theory. One pupil
is tabulat
ed is 225' - that the sine of of
anyParamesvara's
tabulatedson, D?modara, was
D dalus Fall 2003 51

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David
N?lakantha - another Namp?tiri Br?h
Pingree mana who was born in 1444 in the Kelal
on
science l?r illam located at Kundapura, which is
about fifty miles northwest of Asvattha
gr?ma.
N?lakantha made a number of obser
vations of planetary and lunar positions
and of eclipses between 1467 and 1517.
N?lakantha presented several different
sets of planetary parameters and sig
nificantly different planetary models,
which, however, remained geocentric.
He never indicates how he arrived at
these new parameters and models, but
he appears to have based them at least in
large part on his own observations. For
he proclaims in his fyotirm?mamsa - con
trary to the frequent assertion made by
Indian astronomers that the fundamen
tal siddh?ntas expressing the eternal rules
of jyotihs?stra are those alleged to have
been composed by deities such as S?rya
- that astronomers must continually
make observations so that the computed
phenomena may agree as closely as pos
sible with contemporary observations.
N?lakantha says that this may be a con
tinuous necessity because models and
parameters are not fixed, because longer
periods of observation lead to more ac
curate models and parameters, and be
cause improved techniques of observing
and interpreting results may lead to su
perior solutions. This affirmation is al
most unique in the history of Indian jyo
tisa ;jyotis?s generally seem to have mere
ly corrected the parameters of one paksa
to make them closely corresponded to
those of another.
The discoveries of the successive gen
erations of M?dhava's 'school' contin
ued to be studied in Kerala within a
small geographical area centered on San
gamagr?ma. The manuscripts of the
school's Sanskrit and Malay?lam treatis
es, all copied in the Malay?lam script,
never traveled to another region of In
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dia; the furthest they got was Katattan?t
in northern Kerala, about one hundred
miles north of Sangamagr?ma, where
the R?jakum?ra Sa?kara Varman repeat
ed M?dhava's trigonometrical series in a
work entitled Sadratnam?l? in 1823. This
was soon picked up by a British civil ser
vant, Charles M. Whish, who published
an article entitled "On the Hindu Quad
rature of the Circle and the Infinite Se
ries of the Proportion of the Circumfer
ence to the Diameter in the Four Sastras,
the Tantra Sangraham, Yocti Bh?sh?,
Carana Paddhati and Sadratnam?la" in
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society in
1830.2 While Whish was convinced that
the Indians (he did not know of M?dha
va) had discovered calculus - a conclu
sion that is not true even though they
successfully found the infinite series for
trigonometrical functions whose deriva
tion was closely linked with the discov
ery of calculus in Europe in the seven
teenth century - other Europeans
scoffed at the notion that the Indians
could have achieved such a startling suc
cess. The proper assessment of M?dha
va's work began only with K. Mukunda
Marar and C. T. Rajagopal's "On the
Hindu Quadrature of the Circle," pub
lished in the Journal of the Bombay Branch
of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1944.
vJo while the discoveries of Newton,
Leibniz, and Gregory revolutionized
European mathematics immediately
upon their publication, those of M?dha
va, Paramesvara, and Nflakantha, made
between the late fourteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, became known to a
handful of scholars outside of Kerala in
2 Note that the Tantrasa?graha was written by
the N?lakantha whom we have already men
tioned, the Yuktibh?sa by his colleague and fel
low pupil of D?modara, Jyesthadeva, and the
Karanapaddhati by a resident of the Putumana
illam in Sivapura in 1723.
 Mathematical
India, Europe, America, and Japan only discoveries
in the latter half of the twentieth centu in medieval
ry. This was not due to the inability of India
Indian^oi/szs to understand the mathe
matics, but to the social, economic, and
intellectual milieux in which they
worked. The isolation of brilliant minds
was not uncommon in premodern India.
The exploration of the millions of sur
viving Sanskrit and vernacular manu
scripts copied in a dozen different
scripts would probably reveal a number
of other M?dhavas whose work deserves
the attention of historians and philoso
phers of science. Unfortunately, few
scholars have been trained to undertake
the task, and the majority of the manu
scripts will have crumbled in just anoth
er century or two, before those few can
rescue them from oblivion.

D dalus Fall 2003 53

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