Mathematical Ideas in Ancient Indian Poetry

Modern mathematics owes a big debt to India’s contributions to the subject. Of particular importance is the decimal, place value number system that appeared in India during the Vedic period or soon after, circa 1300 BC to 300 AD, and made its way to Europe during the Middle Ages. That period of time in India also produced a heady mixture of poetic works: poems, songs, grand epics, biographies and books of instruction in verse covering millions of pages. Mathematical ideas are interwoven into the metaphysical, religious and aesthetic fabric of many of these works. This article brings a selection of poems from that time period that provides a taste of ancient India’s mathematical preoccupations in their cultural and esthetic context. They also highlight India’s mathematical accomplishments of the period, and uncover instances where seeds of future mathematical concepts made their first appearance. The concluding remarks touch lightly on current Indian-inspired uses of mathematical poetry as a pedagogical tool. The Vedas and Supplementary Texts: Calendrical Calculations and Geometry The most ancient Indian literary works are the four Vedas. Controversially dated around 1300 BC, the oldest of the four, the Rig Veda, is a collection of 1028 hymns written in classical Sanskrit. Mathematical ideas involving astronomy and time reckoning appear in a number of the hymns, particularly those describing the creation of the world. Contrary to other cultures, in Indian creation myths the world has no absolute beginning―a new world emerges from an already existing one. The creation is a sacrificial act in which the old gods sacrifice a primordial man, Purusha. The world, the seasons, the celestial bodies which start time reckoning of this universe’s time cycle, and the new gods themselves, are made out of various parts of Purusha’s body. Below is a fragment from a creation hymn from Rig Veda [21]. Note the precise mathematical measurements, including a very early mention of fractions: From: Rig Veda (Book 10, Hymn 90): Purusha A thousand heads hath Puruhsa, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On every side pervading earth he fills a space ten fingers wide. .............. All creatures are one-fourth of him, three-fourth eternal life in heaven. With three-fourths Purusha went up: one fourth of him again was here. ................. Forth from his navel came mid-air; the sky was fashioned from his head; Earth from his feet, and from his ear the regions. Thus they formed the worlds. An important task of ancient mathematics was to develop accurate ways of counting time. The ancient Indian calendar was a lunisolar calendar with intercalated months in five year cycles. In addition, each region implemented a number of changes based on local astronomical and religious customs making calendrical calculations very complicated. Reckoning of sacred time, the time that returns unchanged year after year at each religious holiday, was interwoven into the construction of sacrificial altars. In addition to the four Vedas, the Vedic literature includes a large number of supplementary texts. One of these texts, the Satapatha Brahmana (c. 600-500 BC) [22], contains verses of instruction for the construction of sacrificial altars to the fire god, Agni. Mathematically, two interesting features stand out: the interweaving of the notion of sacred time reckoning into altar construction and the precise and extensive plane geometry necessary for the constructions of the altars themselves. A public fire altar was built in the shape of a falcon consisting of bricks of various geometric shapes. The fire altar was identified with a fixed unit of time―the year. Elements in the construction of the altar corresponded to calendrical elements of the year. Mircia Eliade explained the process as follows: “...with the building of each fire altar... the year is built too,...time is regenerated by being created anew” [4]. In the poem fragment below, the altar is the year with 360 enclosing bricks corresponding to nights, 360 Yagushmatî bricks identified with days, and 36 bricks that are “over” corresponding to the intercalary month. “Spacefiller” refers to ruler of the world. From: Satapatha Brahmana (X Kanda, 5 Adhyaya, 4 Brahmana) But, indeed, that Fire-altar also is the Year,― the nights are its enclosing-stones, and there are three hundred and sixty of these, because there are three hundred and sixty nights in the year; and the days are its Yagushmatî bricks, for there are three hundred and sixty of these, and three hundred and sixty days in the year; and those thirty-six bricks which are over are the thirteenth month, the body of the year and the altar, the half-months and months,― there being twenty-four half-months, and twelve months. And what there is between day and night that is the Sûdadohas; and what food there is in the days and nights is the earthfillings, the oblations, and the fire-logs; and what is called “days and nights” that constitutes the space-filling brick:―thus this comes to make up the whole Agni, and the whole Agni comes to be the space-filler and, verily, whosoever knows this, thus comes to be that whole Agni who is the space-filler. Satapatha Brahmana’s instructions for the construction of fire altars referred not only to the number of bricks that went into each construction, but also to the proportions among various parts of the falcon shaped altar. To achieve specified area proportions, it was necessary to convert some geometric shapes into others without changing the areas involved. This was done by a cut-and-paste plane geometry technique that involved precise measurements and sophisticated geometric considerations. For example, particular cases of the result known to us as Pythagoras Theorem were employed. The second stanza of the fragment below explains how to crop two pieces from the top of both sides of a rectangle and “glue” them to the bottom of the sides in order to get a trapeze of the same area. This constructs the falcon’s tail and the first step in the construction of each wing. In the next step, not reproduced here, each wing was given a “bent,” that is, each wing changed shape from a trapeze into two “glued” parallelograms. From: Satapatha Brahmana (X Kanda, 2 Adhyaya, 1 Brahmana) Pragâpati was desirous of going up to the world of heaven; but Pragâpati, indeed, is all the sacrificial animals― man, horse, bull, ram, and he-goat:―by means of these forms he could not do so. He saw this bird-like body, the fire-altar, and constructed it. He attempted to fly up, without contracting and expanding the wings, but could not do so. By contracting and expanding the wings he did fly up: whence even to this day birds can only fly up when they contract their wings and spread their feathers. ...................................... He contracts the right wing inside on both sides by just four finger-breadths, and expands it outside on both sides by four finger-breadths; he thus expands it by just as much as he contracts it; and thus, indeed, he neither exceeds its proper size nor does he make it too small. In the same way in regard to the tail, and in the same way in regard to the left wing. The Grand Epics: Mathematical Games, Probability and Statistics The 5 th to 4 th century BC saw the beginning of the writing of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the Mahâbhârata and the Rámáyana. Written in verse, both books include narratives of grand proportions along with philosophical and devotional material, and offer tantalizing glimpses of mathematical interests in lush and exotic settings. The Mahâbhârata in its longest version consists of 200,000 lines of verse. Among the principal narratives of the Mahâbhârata is the story of King Nala and his wife Damayanti. The story begins when King Nala looses everything, including his kingdom, in a dice game. He abandons his faithful and loving wife, Damayanti, for her own good. After a series of misadventures, Damayanti is reunited with her parents and her two children. Meanwhile Nala, under the assumed name Vâhuka, obtains a position as cook and charioteer of the King of the Forest, Rituparna. Damayanti devises an ingenious plan for bringing Rituparna, and therefore his driver, Nala, to her father’s castle. A “mathematical incident” occurs on the way, after which Nala arrives free of the passion for gambling and they live happily ever after. Below are three verse fragments, with commentary, describing the “mathematical incident” as rendered in English by Sir Edwin Arnold (1832 1904)[20]: From: Mahâbhârata: Nala and Damayanti A little onward Rituparna saw Within the wood a tall Myrobolan Heavy with fruit; hereat, eager he cried:― “Now, Vâhuka, my skill thou mayest behold In the Arithmetic. All arts no man knows; Each hath his wisdom, but in one man’s wit Is perfect gift of one thing, and not more. From yonder tree how many leaves and fruits, Think’st thou, lie fall’n there upon the earth? Just one above a thousand of the leaves, And one above a hundred of the fruits; And on those two limbs hang, of dancing leaves, Five crores exact; and shouldst thou pluck yon boughs, Together with their shoots, on those twain boughs Swing twice a thousand nuts and ninety-five!” A “crore” is equal to 10, 000,000. In this stanza Rituparna tells Nala the number of fruits (nuts) and leaves on the ground, the number of leaves on “two limbs,” and the number of nuts on “twain boughs.” All this, without apparently doing any counting. Statistics is the modern mathematical discipline that investigates procedures of inference of the sum total by examining small samples. This is the first known mention of statistical inference in literature. Intrigued, Nala stops the carriage to check the prediction by counting fruits and leaves. The numbers match and the following dialog occurs: To Rituparna spake: “Lo, as thou saidst So many fruits there be upon this bough! Exceeding marvelous is this thy gift, I burn to know such learning, how it comes.” Answered the Raja, for his journey fain:― “My mind is quick with numbers, skilled to count; I have the science.” “Give it me, dear Lord!” Vâhuka cried: “teach me, I pray, this lore, And take from me my skill in horse-taming.” Quoth Rituparna― impatient to proceed Yet of such skill desirous: “Be it so! As thou hast prayed, receive my secret art, Exchanging with me here thy mastery