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MAHAVIRA: A GREAT JAIN MATHEMATICIAN OF CLASSICAL INDIA (9TH CENTURY A.D.)
Nagendra Kr. Singh
The name of Mahavira belongs to the list of the great mathematical writers of classical India. As with other famous ancient names, we know very little about him as a man.
All that can be said with any certainty is that he was a Jain by faith, that he lived during the reign of King Amoghāvārṣa Nirpatunga (which puts him in the ninth century), and that his original works were written in Kannada. They were also translated into Telugu.
1 The work Mahavira's masterpiece is the Ganita-sara-saṁgraha begins with the author's respects to the other great Mahavira, the twenty-fourth tirthankara:
"Salutation to Mahavira, the Lord of the Jaina, the protector whose four infinite attributes, worthy to be esteemed in all the three worlds, are unsurpassable.'
"I bow to that highly glorious Lord of the Jains, by whom, as forming the shining lamp of the knowledge of numbers, the whole of the universe has been made to shine."
The treatise itself consists of nine chapters. It begins with an introduction that defines the mathematical terms to be used in the book, and goes on to consider the basic arithmetical operations, fractions, determination of areas and volumes, etc. Mahavira was one of the first Indian mathematicians to introduce the lowest common He also discussed the multiple method for the addition of fractions. summation of series, and gave a fairly approximate formula for the volume of a sphere.
Algebra was not mere symbolic operation. It was always tied up with practical problems Here, for example, is one that leads to an algebraic equation with radicals:
One-fourth of a herd of camels was seen in the forest; twice the square root (of the number in the herd) had gone to mountain slopes; and three times five camels were found to remain on the bank of a river. How many camels were there in the
original herd ? (We leave
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