Sambodhi 2000 Vol 23

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 10

Vol. XXIII, 2000
VEDIC SOURCES OF THE "VEDIC MATHEMATICS
Gokhale, C.I.E. in 1905 in connection with the National Education Movement and the Sourth African issue. Due to his deepest attraction towards the study and practice of the science of sciences - the holy ancient Indian spiritual science or Adhyatma-Vidyā, he proceeded, in 1908, to Sringeri Math in Mysore to lay himself at the feet of the renowned late Jagadguru Shankaracharya Maharaj Shri Satchidananda Shivabhinava Nrisimha Bharati Swami. In 1908 or so he had to assume the post of the first Principal of the newly started National College at Rajmahendri under a pressing and clamant call of duty from the nationalist leaders. But after three years, in 1911, he went back to Shri Satchidananda Shivabhainava Nrisimha Bharati Swami at Sringeri.
The next eight years he spent in the profoundest study of the most advanced Vedanta Philosophy and practice of the Brahma-sadhana. In 1919 he was initiated into the holy order of Samnyāsa at Varanasi by H. H. Jagadguru Shankaracharya Shri Trivikrama Tirthaji Maharaja of Sharadapeetha and was given the new name, Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha. And in 1921, he was installed on the pontifical throne of Sharda Peetha Shankaracharya, and in 1925 he shifted to Puri when he was installed as Jagadguru Shankaracharya of the Govardhan Math, while Shri Swarupanandaji was installed on the Shardapeetha Gadi. In 1953, he founded at Nagpur an institution named Shri Vishwa Punarnirmana Sangha (World Reconstruction Association), with Shri Chimanlal Trivedi as the General Secretary and the Administrative Board consisted of his disciples, devotees and admirers.S Thus, it seems he discovered the VM Sutras during his stay at Shringeri, between 1911 and 1919, and at the age of his 34th or 35th year and for next few years he was busy working on these Sūtras, and he seems to have definitely written, in school notebooks, all of his sixteenth volumes treating each of his sixteen Sutras in one independent volume, most probably well before 1953.
From Shri P. M. Trivedi, who is related to both Shri Chimanlal Trivedi and Smt. Manjulaben Trivedi, informed me that originally he himself and the latter two belonged to Kapadwanj (District Kheda, Gujarat), and perhaps they turned into devotees of BKTM, when as the Jagadguru Shankaracharya he visited Kapadwanj for the monsoon months of the year 1937 or so. During