Jainism Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad

Page 93

Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
93
Jainism, mathematics and Cosmology
God did not have to create each and everything. All He had to do was to make laws and everything followed by itself.
Philosophy, culture and mathematics are intimately related to each other and each of them builds upon the concepts of the other as is well reflected in ancient Indian thought. Jain scriptures mention that the counting system and script (called Brahmi lipi) were evolved in ancient times by their first Tirthankar Rishabh Dev. The roots of ancient arithmetic and geometry are documented in the history of Babylonia (going back to 5700 BC), Egypt (4000 BC), Sumeru (2500 BC), and Greece (600 BC) where calendar, weights and measures etc evolved. But formulation of numbers (0 to 9) as we use today and the decimal system was conceived in India. These developments gave a powerful tool to ancient Indian mathematicians in developing several new concepts and in attaining high level of precision in calculations. The discovery of Zero, attributed to the Indian mathematician Pingal (about 200 BC) and decimal system, more than anything else, has laid the foundation of modern physics, astronomy, cosmology and computers. Some scholars believe that the discovery of zero owes much to the concept of Sunyavid, an important tenet of Buddhism and Hinduism. Jains were the first to conceive infinity and to recognize that there are many kinds of infinities. Indian mathematicians, specially Jains applied the mathematical concepts of zero, infinity etc not only to cosmology, astronomy and geography but also to philosophy and culture (e.g. see Ganit Sr Sangrah by Mahvir-ch-rya, 9th century A.D.). For example, infinity was much used in the spiritual domain as some faculties of pure soul are infinite knowledge, infinite potency (infinite In 'n, infinite Virya) etc discussed in Chapter 2).
In the ancient times, the concepts of decimal (and the power of 10) systems made it easy to handle large numbers and enabled the mathematicians to comprehend the vastness of the universe. In many cases they obtained realistic ideas such as in the case of dimensions and age of the universe and other large structures like galaxies. However, in the light of the recent progress in sciences and observational techniques, it appears that several ancient deductions related to geography, solar system and planets