Baudhayana Part - 2 + Darwin Evolution

Hi there,

Posting after a more than a month! Life is getting pretty busy these days, due to a hectic college schedule... In the meantime, I take pleasure in informing that this blog now has 6 followers and has just crossed 3000 unique visits. Thanks a lot for your support !

Check out the other contributions by Baudhayana in this post, apart from a note on the widely publicised 200th birth anniversary and 150th Anniversary of the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin celebrated recently.

From what I have learnt about him, Baudhayana was basically a priest who designed "Yagnas" (fire-altars). While formulating the design, he wrote down his observations that have become important geometrical laws.

In fact, the word "Geometry" itself is derived from ancient Indian "Giamity", and Trignometry is similarly derived from "Trikonamity". Of course, we have studied that these words have Greek and Latin roots, which, as usual, seems to be wrong.

Moving on, Baudhayana devised an interesting method to determine the square root of numbers, which is given by the following Sutra:

samasya dvikaraNI. pramANaM tritIyena vardhayet
tachchaturthAnAtma chatusastriMshenena savisheShaH.

The method can be explained by the following example, which yields an amazingly close solution:

Another of Baudhayana's findings is the procedure to circle a square (i.e.) find a circle whose area is the same as the given square:

Draw half its diagonal about the centre towards the East-West line; then describe a circle together with a third part of that which lies outside the square.

Explanation:

• Draw the half-diagonal of the square, which is larger than the half-side by .
• Then draw a circle with radius , or , which equals .
• Now , so this turns out to be  which is about a².

Apart from stating the "Pythagorean" theorem, Baudhayana also found some "Pythagorean" triplets like (5.12,13), etc.

All the above discoveries were made when Baudhayana was devising different Yagnas (fire-altars). Though only this information is available, one can only imagine what else he would have discovered but the references to which are not available to modern-man...

Moving on, the month of February this year marked the twin-celebrations of Charles Darwin's 200th birth anniversary and the 150th anniversary of his "Theory of Evolution". As we al know, Darwin is recognised all over the world for ahving developed the concept of Evolution, about how man has grown from the animal he was earlier. 

But if only Darwin had come to India instead of going to Galapagos, he would have discovered that his "theory" has already been stated in our Vedas in a different form - Lord Vishnu's Dasavathars. Starting from the 1st Avatar (Matsya - fish - aquatic), Lord Vishnu tranforms step-by-step into an Amphibian (Kurma - Tortoise), then into a Mammal (Varaha - Boar), half-man half-animal (Narasimha), Pygmy (Vamana), and then into a man. Indians have known this theory for ages, while the world came to know it only in 1859. Jai Hind !

- Nikhil Mundra

www.gandhistamps.com

www.nikhilloids.blogspot.com

2nd March 2009

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