3

in the pol it i cal, social and cuI tu ral fields and the earliest

known structural temples in Kerala rose in the first quarter

th
of the 9 centu ry (A. D. 823) . Even t hough the temples were

constructed according to v:"!!!"stu principles that was prevalent

in India, a unique style of architecture was evolved in

Kerala and attained perfection during the late medieval and

early modern periods century A.D. to century) .

Stella Kramrisch(38) calls them purely Kerala shapes with

their high sloping roofs and angular silhouet tes, in temples,

mosques, palaces and churches. There had been an effusion

of mathematical, astronomical and architectural

investigations during this period. As a result of this, a

large number of treatises were formulated in these

disciplines. We concentrate our investigations on Indian

mathematics related to architecture to this period only, with

special reference to Kerala.

V@ovaroha and other works of Sa~gamagrama Madhava

(GOlavid) (1340-1425), DrggaJ;li ta of Parame~wara (1360-1455),

Tantrasaugraha of Nilakar;t tha S~may~j i (1443-1545), Yukt ibhaliSa

or GaoitanyayasaQgraha of Jy~~tadeva (appr.1500-1610) etc,

are some of the contributions of mathematicians and

astronomers of Kerala during this period.

(Rationale in Malayalam language) which is composed in

Malayalam language deals with several branches under

mathematics and astronomy and even ci tes examples from

traditional architecture of Kerala for the verification of

some of the mathematical results(66)

 4

Further, several treatises on architecture were

formulated during this period. Tantrasamuccaya of Cenn~s

N!r~yanan Namboothir ippad (A. D .1428), Si lpara tna of trikumara

(16 th centu ry) , Vastuv idya (Anm. ) , Manu ~yalayacandr i ka of

th
Thirumangalath Neelakant;.han (16 century) etc, are some of

the we1lknown architectural texts of Kerala. These are

compilations of vastu principles composed in Sanskr i t verses.

The first two. texts deals with temple architecture and the

other two explains the details of domestic archi tecture of

Kerala. Here we mainly consider the two texts

Tantrasamuccaya and Manu~yalayacandrika. There are many

versions of Manu~yalayacandrika and most of them contain

about 245 verses arranged in seven chapters. But the one

which was published by the Kochi Ma1ayalabh~9a Pari~kara~a

Committee in 1125 M.E(56)contains only 173 verses without any

chapterwise classification. This may be considered as the

"\
earliest of all the commentaries on Manu~yalayacandrika.

One of the contributions of Indian mathematics to

architecture is the method of representation of numbers.

In v3stu texts, the system of representation of numbers is

a combination of Sanskrit names for numbers and the word

numerals (BhutasaQkhya system) with place value. The

Sanskrit names for the first nine numbers are eka, dvi, tri,

catur, pafica, ~at, sapta, a~ta and nava respectively. In word

numeral system, numbers are expressed by means of words as

in the place value notation which was developed and perfected