Ganitasara Sangraha of Mahavira

Author(s): Rangacharya
Publisher: Rangacharya

Page 29

INTRODUCTION.
xxi
Chinese and Japanese mathematical works'inado more or less familiar to the West; and the more important Aral treatine's Are now quite satisfactorily known. Various editions of Bhaskara have appeared in India, and in general the great treatises of the Orient have begun to be subjected to critical study. It would be strange, therefore, if we wero not in a position to woigh up, with more certainty than before, the claims of the linelu algebra. Certainly the persovering work of Professor Rangacarya has made this more possible than ever before.
As to the relation between the East and the Went, we should now be in a position to say rather definitely that there is no evidence of any considerable influence of Creek algebra upon that of India. The two subjects were radically different. It is true thut Diophantus lived about two centuries before the first Aryabhata, that the path of traile were open from the Wrist to the East, and that the itinerant scholar undoubtedly carried learning from place to place. But the spirit of Diophantus, showing itself in a dawning symbolism and in a peculiar type of ognation, is not soon at all in the works of the Ent. 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 cuntrary, the Hindu works have it stylo and a range of topics peculiarly their own. Their probleme lack the cold, clear, geometric precision of the West; they are clothed in that portio language which distinguishes the last, and they relato lo subjects that find no place in the scientific boks of the Greeks. With perhaps the singlo 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 resombles, even in a slight degree, the work of Alenin's Indian contenporary, the author of this treatise.
It therefore focmis only fuir to say that, although some knowlcdge of the scientific work of any one nation would, even in those remote times, naturally bave been carried to other pooples by somo wandering savant, we have nothing in tho writings of the Hindu algebraists to show any direct influence of the Wost upon their problems or their theories.