Would it be asking too much of the state or national govt to declare Madhava's (1340-1425) house as a heritage site of greatest importance to Indian Knowledge Systems and build a museum to showcase contributions to Science & Tech? #calculus
newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/…
2/ Madhava's discoveries of infinite series, links to geometry, trig, algebra & functional approx laid foundations of calculus. 200 years later, aided by church transmissions, European mathematicians ramped up, with Newton proposing "fluxions" later becoming what we call calculus
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One can well imagine the Acharya teaching his shishyas outside this house. Thanks to lost works and untranslated material, we are yet to discover the full extent of their discoveries.
Pic shows Madhava's ingenious infinite series that converges in the limit exactly to pi.
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Madhava's student Parameshvara (1380-1460) discovered a functional approx series that would 200 years later be fully expressed as "Taylor Series".
Kim Plofker of Pingree's parampara challenges this because the 4th term of series has a "4" in the denominator instead of a "6".
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Nilakanta Somayaji (1444-1544) also of Madhava's illustrious school, proposed partial heliocentric model: major planets go around the Sun; Sun and Moon go around Earth. This model was adopted by Tycho Brahe (1546-1601).
There is much to celebrate in a museum to this school.
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Jyeshtadeva (1500-1575), alumni of Madhava's school wrote Yuktibhasa which is a primary source for the many discoveries of this school.
ozy.com/true-and-stori…
7/ Achyutha Pisharadi (1550-1621) alumni of the school wrote several treatises on math and astronomy. His Yogic student, Narayana Bhattathiri (1560- 1666) famously transferred his guru's ailments to self, composed "Narayaneeyam" sung at Guruvayoor temple (apt prayer for covid).
8/ Why is all this important? Kerala School represents culmination of a long timeline of mathematical scholarship starting with numbers, powers of 10 in the Rg Veda with countless ancient and medieval mathematicians, thru' the greats - Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Bhaskara I,II.
9/ Geometry of Sulba Sutras to zero, decimals, iterative sol of Algebra int equations of Aryabhata, trig, func approx, inf series paved the way for all modern math. Taylor series is at the heart of EVERY engineering advancement. Narrative on impact of Indian math is missing...
10/ Eurocentric scholars try to show Babylon/Greek transmission to India and independent dev of calculus in Europe. Indian scholars should continue to clear the narrative with deep incisive works, showing thousands of years of development in ancient India, & transmission to world
11/ Some hint a benign dying out of scholarly tradition in India, fall into ignorance and take-up of Euro-math in colonial/modern times.
My talks show destruction of scholarly tradition with Islam, European colonizers, and today's Nehruvian Marxists over a 1000+ year period.
12/ Kerala school of math ended soon after Bhattathiri (1632). This was a time when Portuguese were ravaging the Malabar coast, with wars and destruction. They were soon followed up destruction by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, followed up by the British. Science didn't have a chance
13/ For the briefest of sampling of Indian Knowledge Systems, see my talk:
14/ See also the brilliant write-up and references by Prof. @subhash_kak here:
medium.com/@subhashkak/a-…
15/ Whether one looks across Time and Geography in the north, south, east or west of Bharatavarsha, there have been contributors to this enormous corpus of scientific works that pervasively impacts us today.
The story of Indian Science *IS* the Story of the Indian Civilization.
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