While searching for old Sanskrit literature on the net I found many useful websites which have kept many old Sanskrit books in PDF format for free download and I greedily downloaded many books for collecting useful material for our Sanskritdeepika site.
I could not believe that one old Sanskrit book रेखागणितम् was a translation made by Pandit Jagannath from Arabic book. The book mentions contradictory statements which confuse the origin of knowledge about geometry. There is a long route of translations from Sanskrit -Greek-Arabic and back to Sanskrit
The Rekhaganita or the Science of Geometry is a Sanskrit version of Euclid's Elements of Geometry by Samrat Jagannatha सम्राट जगन्नाथ under the orders of Jayasinha, King of Jaypur जयपुरचा राजा जयसिंह. The author of the Arabic works seems to be Nasiruddin Mohammed Ben Hussein Al Thussi, a Persian Astronomer, who died A. D. 1276. Jagannatha thus seems to have translated both the astronomical and the geometrical works of the same Arabic author Nasir.
But Jagannatha has written in opening Mangalacharan,
अपूर्वं विहितं शास्त्रं यत्र कोणावबोधनात् ।
क्षेत्रेषु जायते सम्यन्ब्धुत्पत्तिगणिते यता ।।
शिल्पशास्त्रमिदम प्रोक्तं ब्रह्मणा विश्र्वकर्मणे ।
पारम्पयवर्क्षामदेतदागतं धरणीतले ।।
सद्विच्छितं महाराजजयसिंहाज्ञया पुन: ।
प्रकाशितं मया सम्यग् गणकानन्दहेतवे ।।
The only possible solution seems to be that knowing as the author must have done that the science of Geometry (शिल्पशास्त्र) was first cultivated in India and thence imported to Greece and other countries, and that it was in his time completely lost, he gave it a divine origin to inspire his people with greater respect for it. This incidentally lands us into the question,
Suffice it to say that a nation to which the world owes the ingenious invention of numerical symbols and the decimal notation, a nation which made great advances in Algebra and Arithmetic, and a nation which made independent astronomical observations, arrived at a fairly accurate calculation of the solar year of 360 days with an intercalary month every three years, was acquainted with the phases of the moon, and had made observations of a few of the fixed stars ( Vide Imperial Gazetteor of India"' Vol. VI, pp. 1046 by W. W. Hunter. )
The S'ulva SAtras शुल्व सूत्रानि, are, however, probably far earlier than that date, for they form an integral portion of the S'rauta Satras and their geometry is a part of the Brahmanial theology, having taken its rise in India from practical motives as much as the science of grammar. The prose parts of the Yajurvedas यजुर्वेद and the Brihmanaa constantly speak of the arrangement of the sacrificial ground and the construction of altars according to very strict rules, the slightest deviation from which might cause the greatest disaster.
The geometrical pro-position, the discovery of which the Greeks ascribed to Pythagoras, was known to the old Acharya's आचार्य, in its essence at least('Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1875,' p. 232.)
The rise of the Mohammedan power in the 7th c. and the rapid and desolating consequences which followed further hastened the extinction of the Greek sciences. The time now came when those who devoted themselves to science were everywhere branded as magicians and exposed to popular fury. In India also, more stress was given on religious practices and other branches were overlooked. This also might have led to origin of different religious cults and abuse to Material Science. advocated by Charvak चार्वाक, Kanad महर्षि कणाद
I feel that Indians relied more on vocal storage of of our ancient knowledge and restricted it to only Brahmanas. Very less attempts were made to produce written script except few documents inscribed on leaves.
We are now learning that knowledge from Europe. Is it not our duty to create, preserve and document that knowledge which is present in Sanskrit language?
I think that main focus of learning Sanskrit should be to discover that abundant knowledge and utilise it for future research in all fields. Dnyandeep has decided to give exposure to such ignored knowledge branches through its websites Sanskritdeepika.org and Vidnyan.net. All pages of Rekhaganit can be read on संदर्भ साहित्य रेखागणितम् . See some pages from Rekhaganit ( Pythogoras theorum description)
I could not believe that one old Sanskrit book रेखागणितम् was a translation made by Pandit Jagannath from Arabic book. The book mentions contradictory statements which confuse the origin of knowledge about geometry. There is a long route of translations from Sanskrit -Greek-Arabic and back to Sanskrit
The Rekhaganita or the Science of Geometry is a Sanskrit version of Euclid's Elements of Geometry by Samrat Jagannatha सम्राट जगन्नाथ under the orders of Jayasinha, King of Jaypur जयपुरचा राजा जयसिंह. The author of the Arabic works seems to be Nasiruddin Mohammed Ben Hussein Al Thussi, a Persian Astronomer, who died A. D. 1276. Jagannatha thus seems to have translated both the astronomical and the geometrical works of the same Arabic author Nasir.
But Jagannatha has written in opening Mangalacharan,
अपूर्वं विहितं शास्त्रं यत्र कोणावबोधनात् ।
क्षेत्रेषु जायते सम्यन्ब्धुत्पत्तिगणिते यता ।।
शिल्पशास्त्रमिदम प्रोक्तं ब्रह्मणा विश्र्वकर्मणे ।
पारम्पयवर्क्षामदेतदागतं धरणीतले ।।
सद्विच्छितं महाराजजयसिंहाज्ञया पुन: ।
प्रकाशितं मया सम्यग् गणकानन्दहेतवे ।।
The only possible solution seems to be that knowing as the author must have done that the science of Geometry (शिल्पशास्त्र) was first cultivated in India and thence imported to Greece and other countries, and that it was in his time completely lost, he gave it a divine origin to inspire his people with greater respect for it. This incidentally lands us into the question,
Origin of Geometry in India or Greece ?
Suffice it to say that a nation to which the world owes the ingenious invention of numerical symbols and the decimal notation, a nation which made great advances in Algebra and Arithmetic, and a nation which made independent astronomical observations, arrived at a fairly accurate calculation of the solar year of 360 days with an intercalary month every three years, was acquainted with the phases of the moon, and had made observations of a few of the fixed stars ( Vide Imperial Gazetteor of India"' Vol. VI, pp. 1046 by W. W. Hunter. )
The S'ulva SAtras शुल्व सूत्रानि, are, however, probably far earlier than that date, for they form an integral portion of the S'rauta Satras and their geometry is a part of the Brahmanial theology, having taken its rise in India from practical motives as much as the science of grammar. The prose parts of the Yajurvedas यजुर्वेद and the Brihmanaa constantly speak of the arrangement of the sacrificial ground and the construction of altars according to very strict rules, the slightest deviation from which might cause the greatest disaster.
The geometrical pro-position, the discovery of which the Greeks ascribed to Pythagoras, was known to the old Acharya's आचार्य, in its essence at least('Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1875,' p. 232.)
The rise of the Mohammedan power in the 7th c. and the rapid and desolating consequences which followed further hastened the extinction of the Greek sciences. The time now came when those who devoted themselves to science were everywhere branded as magicians and exposed to popular fury. In India also, more stress was given on religious practices and other branches were overlooked. This also might have led to origin of different religious cults and abuse to Material Science. advocated by Charvak चार्वाक, Kanad महर्षि कणाद
I feel that Indians relied more on vocal storage of of our ancient knowledge and restricted it to only Brahmanas. Very less attempts were made to produce written script except few documents inscribed on leaves.
We are now learning that knowledge from Europe. Is it not our duty to create, preserve and document that knowledge which is present in Sanskrit language?
I think that main focus of learning Sanskrit should be to discover that abundant knowledge and utilise it for future research in all fields. Dnyandeep has decided to give exposure to such ignored knowledge branches through its websites Sanskritdeepika.org and Vidnyan.net. All pages of Rekhaganit can be read on संदर्भ साहित्य रेखागणितम् . See some pages from Rekhaganit ( Pythogoras theorum description)
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