The Imperishable Seed- How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and Why This History Was Erased

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Sometime in 2016, I was attending a German language class in Berlin, and the discussion happened to center around numbers. The teacher kept referring to the numbers we use today as Arabic numbers to distinguish them from Roman numbers. When I pointed out to him that these are actually Indian numbers, he was surprised. I in my turn was surprised that he was surprised, since it reflected a general ignorance about a basic fact even among well-educated people in the West. Later I was to learn that my German teacher was no exception-the belief that 'Arabic numbers' come from Arabia is common among most Europeans. A similar incident, this time in an academic setting, occurred a few years later when I was attending a one-semester course on the history of mathematics at a university in Berlin. Considerable time was spent on Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics in the first few weeks, while the rest of the course was devoted to the mathematics of Greece and Europe. The professor vaguely mentioned about 'Indian mathematicians' once in the introductory lecture, and that was that. Once again I noticed how prominent India was by its absence-it was as if the Hindu civilization and its mathematics never existed. The omission was surprising, since the course specifically dealt with the history of mathematics.

Strange though it may sound, the situation is no better among Indians themselves, although most Indians are at least vaguely aware that numbers and the concept of zero come from India. However, that is where the knowledge stops, and most Indians remain woefully.

Ignorant about the Hindu civilization's rich mathematical heritage. The situation was not much different with me, and it was only in 201 that I seriously started reading about the history of mathematical India. I was astounded at how ignorant I had been all this time, and was equally astounded at the prevalent notion that all mathematics comes from Greece and Europe. I was to learn that even calculus that most prized possession of European mathematics-first made it appearance in Kerala four centuries before its appearance in Europe But what really turned all my notions upside-down was when I read Prof. C. K. Raju's thoroughly researched articles on how knowledge the calculus was transmitted to Europe via Jesuit missionaries stationed in Kerala. It was clear that something major was amiss in how de history of mathematics is understood and presented today.

Based on all the reading I had done, sometime in early 20141 wrote a series of articles on my blog on the history of His mathematics. The idea of expanding the information so collected started taking shape in late 2015. Since there were already so excellent books on the history of Hindu mathematics, it was important for me to offer something new that was missing in these books. One immediate problem I noticed was that most of these books made reference to the philosophy and knowledge structure of the Hindu civilization-the very same aspects that made the development of mathematics possible in the first place. In most books on the history of mathematics, Indian Mathematics, if it is discussed at all considered as a phenomenon independent from the knowledge structure from which it arose, and is exclusively discussed in term Western terminology and a Western framework.

**Contents and Sample Pages**