Basic Mathematics

Author(s): L C Jain
Publisher: Rajasthan Prakrit Bharti Sansthan Jaipur

Page 38

CHAPTER 3.
A GLIMPSE OF MATHEMATICS IN
THE TILOYA PANNTTI
The Tiloyapannattı belongs to the Karaṇānuyoga group of Prakrit texts to which belong the Jambūdiva samgaho, Loka vibhāga, Trilokasāra as also the upānga group texts, viz., Süryaprajñapti,* Candraprajñapti, and Jambūdvipa prajñapti. The contents of the texts are more or less the same as per their denomination.
The date of the text has been roughly estimated to be +5th century and its author is Yativrşabha who also compiled the cūrnisâtras of the Kasāyapāhuda sutta which is a text on karma system theory belonging to c. + 1st century. Except the description of the fourteen sequences (detailed in the Trilokasāra), this texts gives a systematic treatment of basic mathematics47 applied to the karma mathematical theory. However, the text giving the introduction of traditional synopsis of the eternal cosmos, is not a mathematical text. It is full of propositional verses, relating results and formulas off and on. Scribes seem to have added material to it, perhaps upto +-10th century. Alongwith the decimal place value notations there are certain symbols, and symbolic expressions for quantities ranging from numerate and innumerate to infinite, in syncopated form. Measure and mensuration have been correlated through long process of calculations from the ultimate unit to an observable unit. There are a few common features in the Dhavala Commentary of Virasenācārya (c. +8th century) comparable with those in the Tiloyapanpatti of Yativșşabha.
* Thibaut, G., in, "Astronomie, Astrologie und Mathematik" published in “Grundriss dev Indo-Arishen Philologic und Altertumskunde" (Encyclopoedia of Indo-Aryan Research), vol. III, No. 9, p. 20, says that SP resembles strikingly with cosmological conceptions of Chau-pei, a Chinese Work. 47. Cf. Jain, L. C., Tiloyapannatti kā Ganita, Sholapur, 1958. Cf. also
“The Mathematics in the first four Mahadhikāras of the Triloka prajñapti” by Sarasvati, T. A., The Jour. of G. J. R. I., Allahabad, vol. (xviii), Nov., 1961-Aug. 1962, pp. 27-51, for mathematical details.
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