Bijganit Purvarddh

Author(s): Bapudev Shastri
Publisher: Medical Hall Press

Page 4

TRANSLATION OF THE PREFACE.
The science of computation comprehends three branches:
1st. That which treats of numbers.--As the result at which we arrive in each case by the employment of numbers does not in general apply to other cases in which the numbers employed are different, this branch (viz. Arithmetic) is called in Hindi VYAKTA-GANITA, i. e. the computation of particulars. This department of mathematics was originally cultivated in India, whence it spread into other countries. This proposition is strongly supported by the circumstance that the Europeans acknowledge that they owe their knowledge of figures to the Arabs, by whom the science is called The Indian.'
2d.--That which treats of lines.-lu this branch of inquiry our investigations and conclusions are general; but it does not answer all the purposes of computation. The fundamental principles of this branch were at a very early date known in India, whence a knowledge of this science spread into Egypt and other countries. For a minute detail of the circumstances conuected with this, the reader is referred to the preface to my KSHETTRAMITI (a treatise on Geometry in Sanskrit).
This department of Mathematics was termed REKHÁ-GANIT by Pandita Jagannatha of the court of Jayasinha, but I prefer the term KSHETTRA-MITI.
3d.--That which treats of the relations of abstract quantities by means of letters and symbols. As the letters do not, like numbers, disappear when any operation is performed on them, and the result therefore must hold good whatever numbers are substi tuted for the letters the results arrived at by this method of