Hindu mathematics

Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian subcontinent from 1200 BCE until the end of the 18th century. In the classical period of Indian mathematics (400 CE to 1200 CE), important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II, and Varāhamihira. The decimal number system in use today: "The measure of the genius of Indian civilisation, to which we owe our modern (number) system, is all the greater in that it was the only one in all history to have achieved this triumph. Some cultures succeeded, earlier than the Indian, in discovering one or at best two of the characteristics of this intellectual feat. But none of them managed to bring together into a complete and coherent system the necessary and sufficient conditions for a number-system with the same potential as our own." was first recorded in Indian mathematics. Indian mathematicians made early contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a number,: "...our decimal system, which (by the agency of the Arabs) is derived from Hindu mathematics, where its use is attested already from the first centuries of our era. It must be noted moreover that the conception of zero as a number and not as a simple symbol of separation) and its introduction into calculations, also count amongst the original contribution of the Hindus." negative numbers,: Modern arithmetic was known during medieval times as "Modus Indorum" or method of the Indians. Leonardo of Pisa wrote that compared to method of the Indians all other methods is a mistake. This method of the Indians is none other than our very simple arithmetic of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Rules for these four simple procedures was first written down by Brahmagupta during 7th century AD. "On this point, the Hindus are already conscious of the interpretation that negative numbers must have in certain cases (a debt in a commercial problem, for instance). In the following centuries, as there is a diffusion into the West (by intermediary of the Arabs) of the methods and results of Greek and Hindu mathematics, one becomes more used to the handling of these numbers, and one begins to have other "representation" for them which are geometric or dynamic." arithmetic, and algebra. In addition, trigonometry
was further advanced in India, and, in particular, the modern definitions of sine and cosine were developed there. These mathematical concepts were transmitted to the Middle East, China, and Europe"algebra" 2007.
''Britannica Concise Encyclopedia''
. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (AD), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra." and led to further developments that now form the foundations of many areas of mathematics.

Ancient and medieval Indian mathematical works, all composed in Sanskrit, usually consisted of a section of '' sutras'' in which a set of rules or problems were stated with great economy in verse in order to aid memorization by a student. This was followed by a second section consisting of a prose commentary (sometimes multiple commentaries by different scholars) that explained the problem in more detail and provided justification for the solution. In the prose section, the form (and therefore its memorization) was not considered so important as the ideas involved. All mathematical works were orally transmitted until approximately 500 BCE; thereafter, they were transmitted both orally and in manuscript form. The oldest extant mathematical ''document'' produced on the Indian subcontinent is the birch bark Bakhshali Manuscript, discovered in 1881 in the village of Bakhshali, near Peshawar (modern day Pakistan) and is likely from the 7th century CE.

A later landmark in Indian mathematics was the development of the series expansions for trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, and arc tangent) by mathematicians of the Kerala school in the 15th century CE. Their remarkable work, completed two centuries before the invention of calculus in Europe, provided what is now considered the first example of a power series (apart from geometric series). However, they did not formulate a systematic theory of differentiation and integration, nor is there any ''direct'' evidence of their results being transmitted outside Kerala.

Prehistory

Excavations at Harappa, Mohenjo-daro have uncovered evidence of the use of "practical mathematics". The people of the Indus Valley Civilization manufactured bricks whose dimensions were in the proportion 4:2:1, considered favourable for the stability of a brick structure. They used a standardised system of weights based on the ratios: 1/20, 1/10, 1/5, 1/2, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500, with the unit weight equaling approximately 28 grams (and approximately equal to the English ounce or Greek uncia). They mass-produced weights in regular geometrical shapes, which included hexahedra, barrels, cones, and cylinders, thereby demonstrating knowledge of basic geometry.

The inhabitants of Indus civilisation also tried to standardise measurement of length to a high degree of accuracy. They designed a ruler—the ''Mohenjo-daro ruler''—whose unit of length (approximately 1.32 inches or 3.4 centimetres) was divided into ten equal parts. Bricks manufactured in ancient Mohenjo-daro often had dimensions that were integral multiples of this unit of length.

Hollow cylindrical objects made of shell and found at Lothal (2200 BCE) and Dholavira are demonstrated to have the ability to measure angles in a plane, as well as to determine the position of stars for navigation.

Vedic period

Samhitas and Brahmanas

The religious texts of the Vedic Period provide evidence for the use of large numbers. By the time of the '' '' (1200–900 BCE), numbers as high as were being included in the texts. For example, the ''mantra'' (sacred recitation) at the end of the ''annahoma'' ("food-oblation rite") performed during the ''aśvamedha'', and uttered just before-, during-, and just after sunrise, invokes powers of ten from a hundred to a trillion:

The solution to partial fraction was known to the Rigvedic People as states in the purush Sukta (RV 10.90.4):

The Satapatha Brahmana ( 7th century BCE) contains rules for ritual geometric constructions that are similar to the Sulba Sutras.

Śulba Sūtras

The '' Śulba Sūtras'' (literally, "Aphorisms of the Chords" in Vedic Sanskrit) (c. 700–400 BCE) list rules for the construction of sacrificial fire altars. Most mathematical problems considered in the ''Śulba Sūtras'' spring from "a single theological requirement," that of constructing fire altars which have different shapes but occupy the same area. The altars were required to be constructed of five layers of burnt brick, with the further condition that each layer consist of 200 bricks and that no two adjacent layers have congruent arrangements of bricks.

According to , the ''Śulba Sūtras'' contain "the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorean Theorem in the world, although it had already been known to the Old Babylonians."

The diagonal rope (') of an oblong (rectangle) produces both which the flank (''pārśvamāni'') and the horizontal (') produce separately."

Since the statement is a ''sūtra'', it is necessarily compressed and what the ropes ''produce'' is not elaborated on, but the context clearly implies the square areas constructed on their lengths, and would have been explained so by the teacher to the student.

They contain lists of Pythagorean triples, which are particular cases of Diophantine equations.: "The arithmetic content of the ''Śulva Sūtras'' consists of rules for finding Pythagorean triples such as , , , and . It is not certain what practical use these arithmetic rules had. The best conjecture is that they were part of religious ritual. A Hindu home was required to have three fires burning at three different altars. The three altars were to be of different shapes, but all three were to have the same area. These conditions led to certain "Diophantine" problems, a particular case of which is the generation of Pythagorean triples, so as to make one square integer equal to the sum of two others." They also contain statements (that with hindsight we know to be approximate) about squaring the circle and "circling the square.": "The requirement of three altars of equal areas but different shapes would explain the interest in transformation of areas. Among other transformation of area problems the Hindus considered in particular the problem of squaring the circle. The ''Bodhayana Sutra'' states the converse problem of constructing a circle equal to a given square. The following approximate construction is given as the solution.... this result is only approximate. The authors, however, made no distinction between the two results. In terms that we can appreciate, this construction gives a value for of 18 (3 − 2), which is about 3.088."

Baudhayana (c. 8th century BCE) composed the ''Baudhayana Sulba Sutra'', the best-known ''Sulba Sutra'', which contains examples of simple Pythagorean triples, such as: , , , , and , as well as a statement of the Pythagorean theorem for the sides of a square: "The rope which is stretched across the diagonal of a square produces an area double the size of the original square." It also contains the general statement of the Pythagorean theorem (for the sides of a rectangle): "The rope stretched along the length of the diagonal of a rectangle makes an area which the vertical and horizontal sides make together." Baudhayana gives an expression for the square root of two:
::$\sqrt \approx 1 + \frac + \frac - \frac = 1.4142156 \ldots$
The expression is accurate up to five decimal places, the true value being 1.41421356... This expression is similar in structure to the expression found on a Mesopotamian tablet from the Old Babylonian period (1900–1600 BCE):
::$\sqrt \approx 1 + \frac + \frac + \frac = 1.41421297 \ldots$
which expresses in the sexagesimal system, and which is also accurate up to 5 decimal places.

According to mathematician S. G. Dani, the Babylonian cuneiform tablet Plimpton 322 written c. 1850 BCE "contains fifteen Pythagorean triples with quite large entries, including (13500, 12709, 18541) which is a primitive triple, indicating, in particular, that there was sophisticated understanding on the topic" in Mesopotamia in 1850 BCE. "Since these tablets predate the Sulbasutras period by several centuries, taking into account the contextual appearance of some of the triples, it is reasonable to expect that similar understanding would have been there in India." Dani goes on to say:

In all, three ''Sulba Sutras'' were composed. The remaining two, the ''Manava Sulba Sutra'' composed by Manava (fl. 750–650 BCE) and the ''Apastamba Sulba Sutra'', composed by Apastamba (c. 600 BCE), contained results similar to the ''Baudhayana Sulba Sutra''.

;Vyakarana

An important landmark of the Vedic period was the work of Sanskrit grammarian, (c. 520–460 BCE). His grammar includes early use of Boolean logic, of the null operator, and of context free grammars, and includes a precursor of the Backus–Naur form (used in the description programming languages).

Pingala (300 BCE – 200 BCE)

Among the scholars of the post-Vedic period who contributed to mathematics, the most notable is Pingala (') ( fl. 300–200 BCE), a music theorist who authored the Chhandas Shastra (', also Chhandas Sutra '), a Sanskrit treatise on prosody. There is evidence that in his work on the enumeration of syllabic combinations, Pingala stumbled upon both Pascal's triangle and binomial coefficients, although he did not have knowledge of the binomial theorem itself. Pingala's work also contains the basic ideas of Fibonacci numbers (called ''maatraameru''). Although the ''Chandah sutra'' hasn't survived in its entirety, a 10th-century commentary on it by Halāyudha has. Halāyudha, who refers to the Pascal triangle as ''Meru-prastāra'' (literally "the staircase to Mount Meru"), has this to say:

The text also indicates that Pingala was aware of the combinatorial identity:

::$+ + + \cdots + + = 2^n$

;Kātyāyana
Kātyāyana (c. 3rd century BCE) is notable for being the last of the Vedic mathematicians. He wrote the ''Katyayana Sulba Sutra'', which presented much geometry, including the general Pythagorean theorem and a computation of the square root of 2 correct to five decimal places.

Jain mathematics (400 BCE – 200 CE)

Although Jainism as a religion and philosophy predates its most famous exponent, the great Mahaviraswami (6th century BCE), most Jain texts on mathematical topics were composed after the 6th century BCE. Jain mathematicians are important historically as crucial links between the mathematics of the Vedic period and that of the "classical period."

A significant historical contribution of Jain mathematicians lay in their freeing Indian mathematics from its religious and ritualistic constraints. In particular, their fascination with the enumeration of very large numbers and infinities led them to classify numbers into three classes: enumerable, innumerable and infinite. Not content with a simple notion of infinity, their texts define five different types of infinity: the infinite in one direction, the infinite in two directions, the infinite in area, the infinite everywhere, and the infinite perpetually. In addition, Jain mathematicians devised notations for simple powers (and exponents) of numbers like squares and cubes, which enabled them to define simple algebraic equations (''beejganita samikaran''). Jain mathematicians were apparently also the first to use the word ''shunya'' (literally ''void'' in Sanskrit) to refer to zero. More than a millennium later, their appellation became the English word "zero" after a tortuous journey of translations and transliterations from India to Europe. (See Zero: Etymology.)

In addition to ''Surya Prajnapti'', important Jain works on mathematics included the ''Sthananga Sutra'' (c. 300 BCE – 200 CE); the ''Anuyogadwara Sutra'' (c. 200 BCE – 100 CE), which includes the earliest known description of factorials in Indian mathematics; and the ''Satkhandagama'' (c. 2nd century CE). Important Jain mathematicians included Bhadrabahu (d. 298 BCE), the author of two astronomical works, the ''Bhadrabahavi-Samhita'' and a commentary on the ''Surya Prajinapti''; Yativrisham Acharya (c. 176 BCE), who authored a mathematical text called ''Tiloyapannati''; and Umasvati (c. 150 BCE), who, although better known for his influential writings on Jain philosophy and metaphysics, composed a mathematical work called '' Tattwarthadhigama-Sutra Bhashya''.

Oral tradition

Mathematicians of ancient and early medieval India were almost all Sanskrit pandits (' "learned man"), who were trained in Sanskrit language and literature, and possessed "a common stock of knowledge in grammar ( '), exegesis ( ') and logic ( ''nyāya'')." Memorisation of "what is heard" (''śruti'' in Sanskrit) through recitation played a major role in the transmission of sacred texts in ancient India. Memorisation and recitation was also used to transmit philosophical and literary works, as well as treatises on ritual and grammar. Modern scholars of ancient India have noted the "truly remarkable achievements of the Indian pandits who have preserved enormously bulky texts orally for millennia."

Styles of memorisation

Prodigious energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity. For example, memorisation of the sacred ''Vedas'' included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text. The texts were subsequently "proof-read" by comparing the different recited versions. Forms of recitation included the ' (literally "mesh recitation") in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated in the original order. The recitation thus proceeded as:

word1word2, word2word1, word1word2; word2word3, word3word2, word2word3; ...

In another form of recitation, ' (literally "flag recitation") a sequence of ''N'' words were recited (and memorised) by pairing the first two and last two words and then proceeding as:

word₁word₂, word_{''N'' − 1}word_''N''; word₂word₃, word_{''N'' − 2}word_{''N'' − 1}; ..; word_{''N'' − 1}word_''N'', word₁word₂;

The most complex form of recitation, ' (literally "dense recitation"), according to , took the form:

word1word2, word2word1, word1word2word3, word3word2word1, word1word2word3; word2word3, word3word2, word2word3word4, word4word3word2, word2word3word4; ...

That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the '' '' (c. 1500 BCE), as a single text, without any variant readings. Similar methods were used for memorising mathematical texts, whose transmission remained exclusively oral until the end of the Vedic period (c. 500 BCE).

The ''Sutra'' genre

Mathematical activity in ancient India began as a part of a "methodological reflexion" on the sacred Vedas, which took the form of works called ', or, "Ancillaries of the Veda" (7th–4th century BCE). The need to conserve the sound of sacred text by use of ' (phonetics) and ''chhandas'' (metrics); to conserve its meaning by use of ' (grammar) and ''nirukta'' (etymology); and to correctly perform the rites at the correct time by the use of ''kalpa'' (ritual) and ' (astrology), gave rise to the six disciplines of the '. Mathematics arose as a part of the last two disciplines, ritual and astronomy (which also included astrology).
Since the ' immediately preceded the use of writing in ancient India, they formed the last of the exclusively oral literature. They were expressed in a highly compressed mnemonic form, the ''sūtra'' (literally, "thread"):

Extreme brevity was achieved through multiple means, which included using ellipsis "beyond the tolerance of natural language," using technical names instead of longer descriptive names, abridging lists by only mentioning the first and last entries, and using markers and variables. The ''sūtras'' create the impression that communication through the text was "only a part of the whole instruction. The rest of the instruction must have been transmitted by the so-called ''Guru-shishya parampara'', 'uninterrupted succession from teacher (''guru'') to the student (''śisya''),' and it was not open to the general public" and perhaps even kept secret. The brevity achieved in a ''sūtra'' is demonstrated in the following example from the Baudhāyana ''Śulba Sūtra'' (700 BCE).

The domestic fire-altar in the Vedic period was required by ritual to have a square base and be constituted of five layers of bricks with 21 bricks in each layer. One method of constructing the altar was to divide one side of the square into three equal parts using a cord or rope, to next divide the transverse (or perpendicular) side into seven equal parts, and thereby sub-divide the square into 21 congruent rectangles. The bricks were then designed to be of the shape of the constituent rectangle and the layer was created. To form the next layer, the same formula was used, but the bricks were arranged transversely. The process was then repeated three more times (with alternating directions) in order to complete the construction. In the Baudhāyana ''Śulba Sūtra'', this procedure is described in the following words:

According to , the officiant constructing the altar has only a few tools and materials at his disposal: a cord (Sanskrit, ''rajju'', f.), two pegs (Sanskrit, ''śanku'', m.), and clay to make the bricks (Sanskrit, ', f.). Concision is achieved in the ''sūtra'', by not explicitly mentioning what the adjective "transverse" qualifies; however, from the feminine form of the (Sanskrit) adjective used, it is easily inferred to qualify "cord." Similarly, in the second stanza, "bricks" are not explicitly mentioned, but inferred again by the feminine plural form of "North-pointing." Finally, the first stanza, never explicitly says that the first layer of bricks are oriented in the east–west direction, but that too is implied by the explicit mention of "North-pointing" in the ''second'' stanza; for, if the orientation was meant to be the same in the two layers, it would either not be mentioned at all or be only mentioned in the first stanza. All these inferences are made by the officiant as he recalls the formula from his memory.

The written tradition: prose commentary

With the increasing complexity of mathematics and other exact sciences, both writing and computation were required. Consequently, many mathematical works began to be written down in manuscripts that were then copied and re-copied from generation to generation.

The earliest mathematical prose commentary was that on the work, '' '' (written 499 CE), a work on astronomy and mathematics. The mathematical portion of the ' was composed of 33 ''sūtras'' (in verse form) consisting of mathematical statements or rules, but without any proofs. However, according to , "this does not necessarily mean that their authors did not prove them. It was probably a matter of style of exposition." From the time of Bhaskara I (600 CE onwards), prose commentaries increasingly began to include some derivations (''upapatti''). Bhaskara I's commentary on the ', had the following structure:

*Rule ('sūtra') in verse by
*Commentary by Bhāskara I, consisting of:
**Elucidation of rule (derivations were still rare then, but became more common later)
**Example (''uddeśaka'') usually in verse.
**Setting (''nyāsa/sthāpanā'') of the numerical data.
**Working (''karana'') of the solution.
**Verification (', literally "to make conviction") of the answer. These became rare by the 13th century, derivations or proofs being favoured by then.

Typically, for any mathematical topic, students in ancient India first memorised the ''sūtras'', which, as explained earlier, were "deliberately inadequate" in explanatory details (in order to pithily convey the bare-bone mathematical rules). The students then worked through the topics of the prose commentary by writing (and drawing diagrams) on chalk- and dust-boards (''i.e.'' boards covered with dust). The latter activity, a staple of mathematical work, was to later prompt mathematician-astronomer, Brahmagupta ( fl. 7th century CE), to characterise astronomical computations as "dust work" (Sanskrit: ''dhulikarman'').

Numerals and the decimal number system

It is well known that the decimal place-value system ''in use today'' was first recorded in India, then transmitted to the Islamic world, and eventually to Europe. The Syrian bishop Severus Sebokht wrote in the mid-7th century CE about the "nine signs" of the Indians for expressing numbers. However, how, when, and where the first decimal place value system was invented is not so clear.

The earliest extant script used in India was the script used in the Gandhara culture of the north-west. It is thought to be of Aramaic origin and it was in use from the 4th century BCE to the 4th century CE. Almost contemporaneously, another script, the Brāhmī script, appeared on much of the sub-continent, and would later become the foundation of many scripts of South Asia and South-east Asia. Both scripts had numeral symbols and numeral systems, which were initially ''not'' based on a place-value system.

The earliest surviving evidence of decimal place value numerals in India and southeast Asia is from the middle of the first millennium CE. A copper plate from Gujarat, India mentions the date 595 CE, written in a decimal place value notation, although there is some doubt as to the authenticity of the plate. Decimal numerals recording the years 683 CE have also been found in stone inscriptions in Indonesia and Cambodia, where Indian cultural influence was substantial.

There are older textual sources, although the extant manuscript copies of these texts are from much later dates. Probably the earliest such source is the work of the Buddhist philosopher Vasumitra dated likely to the 1st century CE. Discussing the counting pits of merchants, Vasumitra remarks, "When he sameclay counting-piece is in the place of units, it is denoted as one, when in hundreds, one hundred." Although such references seem to imply that his readers had knowledge of a decimal place value representation, the "brevity of their allusions and the ambiguity of their dates, however, do not solidly establish the chronology of the development of this concept."

A third decimal representation was employed in a verse composition technique, later labelled '' Bhuta-sankhya'' (literally, "object numbers") used by early Sanskrit authors of technical books. Since many early technical works were composed in verse, numbers were often represented by objects in the natural or religious world that correspondence to them; this allowed a many-to-one correspondence for each number and made verse composition easier. According to , the number 4, for example, could be represented by the word "Veda" (since there were four of these religious texts), the number 32 by the word "teeth" (since a full set consists of 32), and the number 1 by "moon" (since there is only one moon). So, Veda/teeth/moon would correspond to the decimal numeral 1324, as the convention for numbers was to enumerate their digits from right to left. The earliest reference employing object numbers is a c. 269 CE Sanskrit text, ''Yavanajātaka'' (literally "Greek horoscopy") of Sphujidhvaja, a versification of an earlier (c. 150 CE) Indian prose adaptation of a lost work of Hellenistic astrology. Such use seems to make the case that by the mid-3rd century CE, the decimal place value system was familiar, at least to readers of astronomical and astrological texts in India.

It has been hypothesized that the Indian decimal place value system was based on the symbols used on Chinese counting boards from as early as the middle of the first millennium BCE. According to ,

These counting boards, like the Indian counting pits, ..., had a decimal place value structure ... Indians may well have learned of these decimal place value "rod numerals" from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims or other travelers, or they may have developed the concept independently from their earlier non-place-value system; no documentary evidence survives to confirm either conclusion."

Bakhshali Manuscript

The oldest extant mathematical manuscript in India is the '' Bakhshali Manuscript'', a birch bark manuscript written in "Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit" in the ''Śāradā'' script, which was used in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent between the 8th and 12th centuries CE. The manuscript was discovered in 1881 by a farmer while digging in a stone enclosure in the village of Bakhshali, near Peshawar (then in British India and now in Pakistan). Of unknown authorship and now preserved in the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford, the manuscript has been dated recently as 224 AD- 383 AD.

The surviving manuscript has seventy leaves, some of which are in fragments. Its mathematical content consists of rules and examples, written in verse, together with prose commentaries, which include solutions to the examples. The topics treated include arithmetic (fractions, square roots, profit and loss, simple interest, the rule of three, and '' regula falsi'') and algebra (simultaneous linear equations and quadratic equations), and arithmetic progressions. In addition, there is a handful of geometric problems (including problems about volumes of irregular solids). The Bakhshali manuscript also "employs a decimal place value system with a dot for zero." Many of its problems are of a category known as 'equalisation problems' that lead to systems of linear equations. One example from Fragment III-5-3v is the following:

The prose commentary accompanying the example solves the problem by converting it to three (under-determined) equations in four unknowns and assuming that the prices are all integers.

In 2017, three samples from the manuscript were shown by radiocarbon dating to come from three different centuries: from 224 to 383 AD, 680-779 AD, and 885-993 AD. It is not known how fragments from different centuries came to be packaged together.

Classical period (400–1600)

This period is often known as the golden age of Indian Mathematics. This period saw mathematicians such as Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara I, Mahavira, Bhaskara II, Madhava of Sangamagrama and Nilakantha Somayaji give broader and clearer shape to many branches of mathematics. Their contributions would spread to Asia, the Middle East, and eventually to Europe. Unlike Vedic mathematics, their works included both astronomical and mathematical contributions. In fact, mathematics of that period was included in the 'astral science' (''jyotiḥśāstra'') and consisted of three sub-disciplines: mathematical sciences (''gaṇita'' or ''tantra''), horoscope astrology (''horā'' or ''jātaka'') and divination (saṃhitā). This tripartite division is seen in Varāhamihira's 6th century compilation—''Pancasiddhantika'' (literally ''panca'', "five," ''siddhānta'', "conclusion of deliberation", dated 575 CE)—of five earlier works, Surya Siddhanta, Romaka Siddhanta, Paulisa Siddhanta, Vasishtha Siddhanta and Paitamaha Siddhanta, which were adaptations of still earlier works of Mesopotamian, Greek, Egyptian, Roman and Indian astronomy. As explained earlier, the main texts were composed in Sanskrit verse, and were followed by prose commentaries.

Fifth and sixth centuries

;Surya Siddhanta

Though its authorship is unknown, the '' Surya Siddhanta'' (c. 400) contains the roots of modern trigonometry. Because it contains many words of foreign origin, some authors consider that it was written under the influence of Mesopotamia and Greece.

This ancient text uses the following as trigonometric functions for the first time:
*Sine ('' Jya'').
*Cosine ('' Kojya'').
* Inverse sine (''Otkram jya'').

It also contains the earliest uses of:
*Tangent.
* Secant.

Later Indian mathematicians such as Aryabhata made references to this text, while later Arabic and Latin translations were very influential in Europe and the Middle East.

;Chhedi calendar

This Chhedi calendar (594) contains an early use of the modern place-value Hindu–Arabic numeral system now used universally.

;Aryabhata I

Aryabhata (476–550) wrote the ''Aryabhatiya.'' He described the important fundamental principles of mathematics in 332 shlokas. The treatise contained:
*Quadratic equations
*Trigonometry
*The value of π, correct to 4 decimal places.

Aryabhata also wrote the ''Arya Siddhanta'', which is now lost. Aryabhata's contributions include:

Trigonometry:

(See also : Aryabhata's sine table)

*Introduced the trigonometric functions.
*Defined the sine ('' jya'') as the modern relationship between half an angle and half a chord.
*Defined the cosine ('' kojya'').
*Defined the versine

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