Sambodhi 2000 Vol 23

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

Page 12

Vol. XXIII, 2000
VEDIC SOURCES OF THE 'VEDIC MATHEMATICS
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socities by BKTM about the Vedic Mathematics as discovered by him, some people who had grasped a smattering of the new Sūtras had already started to dazzle audiances as prodigies claiming occult powers without acknowledging indebtedness to the Sutras of Jagadguruji, and he pleased earnestly with Gurudeva and persuaded him to arrange for the publication of the Sutras in his own name. It was finally in 1957, when he decided to undertake a tour of the U.S.A., that he re-wrote from memory the present volume, viz., the VM (1965 Edn.), giving an introductory account of the sixteen formulae reconstructed by him; he wrote down the volume in his old age within one month and a half with his failing health and weak eyesight.
The type-script of the VM was left over by BKTM in U.S.A. in 1958 for publication. It was through the good offices of Justice. N. H. Bhagavati, the then Vice Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University, and Dr. Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, the veteran classical musician, that the Banaras Hindu University published the VM in the Nepal Endowment Hindu Vishvavidyalaya Sanskrit Granthamala (Vol. 10), in 1965, after about five years since the demise of BKTM in 1960.
Thus, it seems to be a solid fact that BKTM did write down his sixteen volumes on the sixteen Sutras of the Vedic Mathematics, that he deposited his manuscript with his devotee Shri Manilal Desai of Dakor in Gujarat, that after the death of Shri Manilal, the material came in possession of his son Laxminarayan Desai, and the latter sold it to some German scholar for Rs. 80,000/-, and that, at least subconsciously, BKTM was under the impression that he was writing the book overall again, in a series of a number of volumes, although what he could write was a single volume published as the VM.10
On the Vedic Sources of the VM Sūtras : In his talk and demonstration given to a small group of student
naticians at the Calofornia Institute of Technology, Pasedena, California on 19th February, 1958, BKTM has been recorded to have said "that I also speak summarily about mathematics which I have been able to get from the Sutras of the Atharvaveda."'11 Giving some further details, he said : "one particular portion I am referring to, a particular portion of the Atharva-Veda is called the gañita sutras. The gañita sūtras are also called the Sulba Sutras 'the easy mathematical formulae', that's the meaning of the expression. And