Scribd
Upload
53K views2 pages

Brief History On Aryabhatta

Aryabhata was a famous mathematician and astronomer from India who lived around 499 CE. He was likely born in the region between the Narmada and Godavari rivers in central India. He went to Kusumapura (modern-day Patna) for advanced studies, where he may have headed the university of Nalanda. His major work, Aryabhatiya, covered topics in mathematics including algebra, trigonometry, and astronomy. It has survived to modern times and was influential within Indian mathematics.

Uploaded by

ramaknta
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
53K views2 pages

Brief History On Aryabhatta

Aryabhata was a famous mathematician and astronomer from India who lived around 499 CE. He was likely born in the region between the Narmada and Godavari rivers in central India. He went to Kusumapura (modern-day Patna) for advanced studies, where he may have headed the university of Nalanda. His major work, Aryabhatiya, covered topics in mathematics including algebra, trigonometry, and astronomy. It has survived to modern times and was influential within Indian mathematics.

Uploaded by

ramaknta
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Brief History on Aryabhatta

Aryabhata mentions in the Aryabhatiya that it was composed 3,600 years


into the Kali Yuga, when he was 23 years
old. This corresponds to 499 CE, and implies
that he was born in 476 CE.

Aryabhata provides no information about his


place of birth. The only information comes
from Bhāskara I, who describes Aryabhata
asāśmakīya, "one belonging to
the aśmaka country." While aśmaka was
originally situated in the northwest of India,
it is widely attested that, during the Buddha's
time, a branch of the Aśmaka people settled in the region between
the Narmada and Godavari rivers, in the South Gujarat–North Maharashtra
region of central India. Aryabhata is believed to have been born
there. However, early Buddhist texts describe Ashmaka as being further
south, in dakshinapath or the Deccan, while other texts describe the
Ashmakas as having fought Alexander, which would put them further north.

Work

It is fairly certain that, at some point, he went to Kusumapura for advanced


studies and that he lived there for some time. Both Hindu and Buddhist
tradition, as well as Bhāskara I (CE 629), identify Kusumapura
as Pāṭaliputra, modern Patna. A verse mentions that Aryabhata was the head
of an institution (kulapa) at Kusumapura, and, because the university
of Nalanda was in Pataliputra at the time and had an astronomical
observatory, it is speculated that Aryabhata might have been the head of the
Nalanda university as well. Aryabhata is also reputed to have set up an
observatory at the Sun temple in Taregana, Bihar.

Other hypotheses

1
It was suggested that Aryabhata may have been from Kerala, but K. V.
Sarma, an authority on Kerala's astronomical tradition, disagreed and pointed
out several errors in this hypothesis.

Aryabhata mentions "Lanka" on several occasions in the Aryabhatiya, but


his "Lanka" is an abstraction, standing for a point on the equator at the same
longitude as his Ujjayini.

Works

Aryabhata is the author of several treatises on mathematics and astronomy,


some of which are lost. His major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of
mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred to in the Indian
mathematical literature and has survived to modern times. The mathematical
part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry,
and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic
equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of sines.

The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is known


through the writings of Aryabhata's contemporary, Varahamihira, and later
mathematicians and commentators, including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I.
This work appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta and uses the
midnight-day reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. It also
contained a description of several astronomical instruments:
the gnomon (shanku-yantra), a shadow instrument (chhAyA-yantra),
possibly angle-measuring devices, semicircular and circular (dhanur-
yantra / chakra-yantra), a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-shaped
device called the chhatra-yantra, and water clocks of at least two types,
bow-shaped and cylindrical.

You might also like