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3 - Characterizing a Sanskrit Mathematical Commentary

An Exploration of Pṛthūdaka’s Vāsanābhāṣya on Progressions

from Commentators at Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

By
Agathe Keller
Edited by
Karine Chemla  and
Glenn W. Most
Karine Chemla
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Glenn W. Most
Affiliation:
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
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Summary

Exploring what could have been the particularity of Sanskrit mathematical commentaries in the larger landscape of the scholarly commentaries of South Asia, this chapter explores how Prthūdaka (ca. 850) carries out ‘explanations’ on two mathematical verses of Brahmagupta's Theoretical Astronomical Treatise of the True Brahma [School] (Brahmasphuṭasiddhānta-628) concerning progressions. As the commentator explores in many different ways the scope of the rule, a multiplicity of meanings is drawn out, among which one may find the interpretation of a progression as a pile of areas of rectangles within a ‘proof’, or the reading of one procedure as being an algebraical consequence of a previous one. It is within examples and their variations that such mathematical explorations are made, and these may very well be the textual particularity of mathematical commentaries in South Asia.

Keywords

explanationupapannavasanacommentaryPrthūdakaBrahmaguptabhāṣyasequencesreddhialgebraical proofgeometrical representation of arithmetical sequences
Type
Chapter
Information
Mathematical Commentaries in the Ancient World
A Global Perspective
 , pp. 96 - 140
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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