Some of the greatest discoveries of Aryabhata in the field of Mathematics
If I’m about to ask you, what is the best way to understand the language of our universe, what will be your answer?
Is it Physics?
If it’s yes, you are somewhere close to the right answer. But if your answer is Mathematics, you nailed it.
Of course, Physics is based on Mathematics but the essence of understanding this universe lies in understanding Mathematics.
This is the story of our great scholar Aryabhata who invented the number 0 giving birth to the whole set of numerology systems. In ancient India, Aryabhata 1 was born at Kusumapura in 476, India which was a small town near Patliputra, present-day Patna. At that period of time, the kingdom was ruled by the Gupta Dynasty.
From his early childhood of Aryabhata, he used to look up at the sky and wonder about the vastness of space and the mystery covering it. With his great intellect, Aryabhata used the number zero as a placeholder in his mathematical algorithms to find the square roots and cube roots in his Sanskrit treaties. The number ‘zero’ was invented by Aryabhatta with the name called ‘Shunya.’
Apart from his invention of the number ‘0’ which gave birth to the field of Mathematics, Aryabhata’s work can be divided into 3 main sections which are Ganita (Mathematics), Kala kriya (Time Calculations), and Gola (Circle).
In the Ganita subject, Aryabhata named the first 10 decimal places using the decimal system and invented some key algorithms to obtain the square and cubic roots. As per the geometric measurements of Aryabhata, he found the actual value of pi to be 3.1416 which is very close to the value of pi that we know today which is 3.14159. This helped him develop the properties of two interesting circles and right-angled triangles.
In Kala Kriya’s subject, Aryabhata provided detailed descriptions of astronomy which included the epicyclic and eccentric models of the planetary system, planetary longitude corrections for the different terrestrial objects in space, and various units of time.
In the Gola subject, Aryabhata applied plane trigonometry to spherical geometry to project the points and lines of the surface of a particular sphere to the appropriate plane. The topics in Ganita subject included the lunar and solar eclipses, the luminosity of the moon and other planets to reflected sunlight.
The best classical work of Aryabhata can be found in the book named ‘Surya-Siddhantha’ in which Aryabhata has written about some of the advanced astrological concepts and astronomical theories, which are purely based on mathematics and logic. For instance, we can understand the rules to describe the motions of different planets and calculate the orbits of different celestial bodies in outer space.
Along with the scientific achievements in the western world, the ancient texts written by the great sages and scholars of India provide invaluable insights about various fields of study to modern society with the help of which we can progress forward, for the betterment of mankind.