Ganitasara Sangraha of Mahavira

Author(s): Rangacharya
Publisher: Rangacharya

Page 28

GANITASARASANGRAHA.
It is a pleasure to know that such a man has at last appeared and that, thanks to his profound scholarship and great perseverance, we are now receiving new light upon the subject of Oriental mathematics, no known in another part of India and at a time about midway between that of Aryabhata and Bhaskara, and two centuries later than Brahmagupta. The learned scholar, Professor M. Rangācārya of Madras, somo years ago became interested in the work of Mahavirăcārya, and bas now completed its translation, thus making the mathematical world his perpetual debtor; and I csteem it a high honour to be requested to write an introduction to so noteworthy a work.
Mahäviräcārya appears to have lived in the court of an old much of Rastrakūta monarch, who ruled probably over much of what is now the kingdom of Mysore and other Kanarese tracts, and whose name is given as Amõghavarşa Nrpatunga. He is known to have ascended the throne in the first half of the ninth contury A.D., so that we may roughly fix the date of the treatise in question is about 850.
The work itself consists, as will be seen, of nine chapters, like the Bija-yanits of Bhaskara; it has one more chapter than the Kut. talu of Brahma-gupta. There is, however, no significance in this nuinber, for the chapters are not at all parallel, although certain of the topics of Brahmagupta's Ganita and Bhāskara’s Lilavati aro included in the Ganita-sära-sangraha.
In cousidering the work, the ruador naturally repoats to him. self tho great questions that aro so often raised :--How much of this lindu treatment is original ? What evidences are there here of Greek influence? What relation was there between the great mathematical centres of India ? What is the distinctive feature, if any, of the Hindu algebraic theory?
Such questions are not new. Davis and Strachey, Colebrooke and Taylor, all raised similar ones a century ago, and they are by no means satisfactorily answered even yet. Nevertheless , we are making good progress towards their satisfactory solution in the not too distant future. The past century has seen several