Mahāvīrācārya
A figure from the books
#Mahaviracarya
Mahāvīrācārya · fl. c. 850 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Mathematics — a Jain ācārya (learned teacher) and author of the Gaṇitasārasaṅgraha, the "Compendium of the Essence of Calculation," the earliest surviving Indian book devoted to mathematics and nothing else.
“In ninth-century India a Jain teacher wrote the first Indian textbook of pure mathematics, got zero slightly wrong, got the square roots of negative numbers right before anyone else on earth, and set his exercises as poems — and southern classrooms were still using his book, in three languages, centuries later.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Mathematics deserves a book of its own. Cut away the astronomy and the astrology, keep the calculation, and teach it through problems so charming — bees, elephants, necklaces, citrons — that students would carry it for a thousand years.”
From the book
Read the chapter
I haven't posted on #Mahaviracarya yet, outside the book.
Ask me about #Mahaviracarya
Send me a question. It stays private. I answer the best ones publicly, as “You asked”.
Send me a question