Dr. Subhash Kak has started a new column in Rediff. In his first article, India’s schoolbook histories he writes about the Kerala school of Mathematics
The astronomers Aryabhata and Bhaskara may be familiar to some from the eponymous spacecrafts of the Indian Space Organization. Aryabhata (500 AD) took the earth to spin on its axis and he described the planet periods with reference to the sun. He also took the solar system to be several hundred million miles across. In all of these things he was ahead of the rest of the world by more than a thousand years. Bhaskara (12th century) was a brilliant mathematician. The last two names belong to the amazing Kerala school of mathematics and astronomy.
There is more
bq. Three British historians have recently suggested that Kerala mathematics may have provided key ideas for the scientific revolution in Europe. The need for clocks to keep accurate time on ships became of critical importance after the colonisation of America. There were significant financial rewards for new navigation techniques. These historians argue that information was sought from India due to the prestige of the eleventh century Arabic translations of Indian navigational methods. They suggest that Jesuit missionaries were the intermediaries in the diffusion of Kerala mathematical ideas into Europe.
DP Agrawal has a paper on The Kerala School, European Mathematics and Navigation
Amazing, and I did not know that Aryabhata was from Kerala. The time of Aryabhata, 500AD is also the same time that is attributed to Adi Shankara, who was also from Kerala. Interesting times, those might have been
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