Home | Rel-Dictionary | Literature

Back to Literature-Sanskrit

Aaryabhat's intellectual brilliance remapped the boundaries of mathematics and astronomy. In 499 AD, at the age of 23, he wrote a text on astronomy and an unparallel treatise on mathematics called "Aaryabhateeyam". In this book he writes that it was written in 3,630 years into the Kali Yug. This correspondences to 499 BC. His work covers Arithmetic, Algebra, plane Trigonometry, and spherical Trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of sines.

Aaryabhat himself may not have given it this  name to his work. This name, "Aaryabhateeya", must have been given by later commentators. His disciple Bhaaskar I calls it Ashmak Tantra (or the treatise from the Ashmak - Ashmak means stone). It is also occasionally referred to as Aarya Shatasht (literally, Aaryabhat's 108), because there are 108 verses in this text. It is written in the very terse style, typical of Sootra literature, in which each line is an aid to memory for a complex system. Thus, the explication of meaning is due to commentators. The text consists of the 108 verses and 13 introductory verses, and is divided into four Paad or chapters:

(1) Geetikaa Pad: (13 verses): large units of time - Kalp, Manvantar, and Yug, which present a cosmology different from earlier texts such as Lagadh's Vedaang Jyotish (c. 1st century BC). There is also a table of sines (Jyaa), given in a single verse. The duration of the planetary revolutions during a Mahaa-Yug is given as 4.32 million years.
(2) Ganit Pad: (33 verses): covering mensuration (Kshetra Vyavahaar), arithmetic and geometric progressions, gnomon / shadows (Shanku Chhaayaa), simple, quadratic, simultaneous, and indeterminate equations.
(3) Kaalkriyaa Pad (25 verses): different units of time and a method for determining the positions of planets for a given day, calculations concerning the intercalary month (Adhik Maas), Kshaya Tithi, and a seven-day week with names for the days of week.
(4) Gol Pad (50 verses): Geometric / trigonometric aspects of the celestial sphere, features of the ecliptic, celestial equator, node, shape of the Earth, cause of day and night, rising of zodiacal signs on horizon, etc. In addition, some versions cite a few colophons added at the end, extolling the virtues of the work, etc.

The Aaryabhateeya presented a number of innovations in mathematics and astronomy in verse form, which were influential for many centuries. The extreme brevity of the text was elaborated in commentaries by his disciple Bhaaskar I (Bhaashya, c. 600 AD) and by Neelakanth Somayaji in his Aaryabhateeya Bhaashya, (1465 AD). He was not only the first to find the radius of the Earth but was the only one in ancient time including the Greeks and the Romans to find the volume of the Earth.

(2) Aarya Siddhaant
Aaryabhat's another work is Aarya Siddhaant, a work on astronomy Aaryabhat's one work, Aarya Siddhaant, is known through the contemporaries, Varaah Mihir and later ones - Brahmgupt and Bhaaskar I. This work is based on Soorya Siddhaant (see below), and uses the midnight-day reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aaryabhateeya. It also contains a description of several astronomical instruments: the gnomon (Shanku Yantra), a shadow instrument (Chhaayaa Yantra), possibly angle-measuring devices, semicircular and circular (Dhanur Yantra / Chakra Yantra), a cylindrical stick Yasti Yantra, an umbrella-shaped device called the Chhatra Yantra, and water clocks of at least two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.

(3) Al Nanf
A third text, which may have survived in the Arabic translation, is Al ntf or Al-nanf. It claims that it is a translation by Aaryabhat, but the Sanskrit name of this work is not known. Probably dating from the 9th century, it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of India - Aboo Rayhaan al-Baroonee

Other Important Contributions
He formulated the process of calculating the motion of planets and the time of eclipses.

Aaryabhat was the first to proclaim that the earth is round, it rotates on its axis, orbits the Sun and is suspended in space - 1000 years before Copernicus published his heliocentric theory.

He is also acknowledged for calculating p (Pi) to four decimal places: 3.1416 and the sine table in Trigonometry. Centuries later, in 825 AD, the Arab mathematician, Mohammed Ibna Musa credited the value of Pi to the Indians, "This value has been given by the Hindu."

And above all, his most spectacular contribution was the concept of Zero, see Shoonya, without which modern computer technology would have been non-existent. Aaryabhat was a colossus in the field of mathematics.

Home | Rel-Dictionary | Literature

Back to Literature-Sanskrit