Ganitasara Sangraha of Mahavira

Author(s): Rangacharya
Publisher: Rangacharya

Page 27

INTRODUCTION.
Chinese and Japanese mathematical works' mado' more or less familiar to the West; and the more important drab treatises are now quite satisfactorily known. Various editions of Bhaskara have appeared in India ; and in general the great trontises of the Orient have begun to be subjeoted to oritical study. It would be strange, therefore, if we were not in a position to woigh up, with more certainty than before, the claims of the Hindu algebra. Certainly the persovering work of Professor Rangiicàrya has made this more possible than evor before.
As to the relation het ween the East and the West, we should now be in a position to say rather definitely that thero is vo evidence of any considerable influence of Greuk algebra upon that of India. The two subjects wero radically different. It is true that Diophantus lived about two conturice before the first Aryabhata, that the paths of trade were open from the Weat to the East, and that the itinerant scholar undoubtedly carriod learning from place to place. But the spirit of Diophautus, showing itself in a dawning symbolism and in a prculiar ty po of equation, is not soon at all in the works of the East. None of his problems, not a trace of his symbolism, and not a bit of his phraseology appear in the works of any Indian writer on algebra. On the contrary, the Hindu works havo u style and a range of topios peculiarly their own. Their probleme lack the cold, clour, geometric precision of the Wost; thoy itro clothod in that poetio language which distiuguishes the East, and thoy relate to subjeots that find no place in the sciuntific books of the Grecka. With perhaps the single exception of Metrodorus, it is only when we come to the puzzle problems doubtfully attributed to Alouin that we find anything in the West which resom bler, even in a slight degree, the work of Alouin's Iudian contemporary, the anthor of this treatise.
It therefore secms only fuir to say that, although some knowlodge of the scientific work of any one nation would, even in those romote timen, naturally bave been carried to other peoples by some wandering savant, we have nothing in the writings of the Hindu algebraists to show any direct influence of the West upon their problems or their theories.