The Indic Mathematical Tradition 6000 BCE To ?

[Bharatvarsh2]

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQyNDk4ODQ4.html



Story of Maths: Genius of the East episode 2



Some of the episode also on youtube:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE1UFKCzQ04



Bharat is covered from 19 to 38 minutes, surprisingly he also covers Madhava of Kerala whose contributions have been brought to light relatively recently.

[acharya]

Article on Indian mathematics by a Brit . He talks about giving credit where it is due.



http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Proj...index.html



Conclusions



http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Proj.../Ch10.html

I wish to conclude initially by simply saying that the work of Indian mathematicians has been severely neglected by western historians, although the situation is improving somewhat. What I primarily wished to tackle was to answer two questions, firstly, why have Indian works been neglected, that is, what appears to have been the motivations and aims of scholars who have contributed to the Eurocentric view of mathematical history. This leads to the secondary question, why should this neglect be considered a great injustice.

To summarise, the main reasons for the neglect of Indian mathematics seem to be religious, cultural and psychological. Primarily it is because of an ideological choice. R Rashed mentions a concept of modernism vs. tradition. Furthermore Indian mathematics is criticised because it lacks rigour and is only interested in practical aims (which we know to be incorrect). Ultimately it is fundamentally important for historians to be neutral, (that includes Indian historians who may go too far the 'other way') and this has not always been the case, and indeed seems to still persist in some quarters.

In terms of consequences of the Eurocentric stance, it has undoubtedly resulted in a cultural divide and 'angered' non-Europeans scholars. There is an unhealthy air of European superiority, which is potentially quite politically dangerous, and scientifically unproductive. In order to maximise our knowledge of mathematics we must recognise many more nations as being able to provide valuable input, this statement is also relevant to past works. Eurocentrism has led to an historical 'imbalance', which basically means scholars are not presenting an accurate version of the history of the subject, which I view as unacceptable. [size="6"]Furthermore, it is vital to point out that European colonisation of India most certainly had an extremely negative effect on the progress of indigenous Indian science[/size]

[Husky]

rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2010/02/on-indian-mathematics.html

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

on Indian Mathematics

feb 16th, 2010



---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: S. Kalyanaraman

Date: Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 12:05 PM

Subject: Mumford on Indian Mathematics

To:





A very interesting overview of Indian Mathematics by the eminent mathematician David Mumford in his review of the book, Kim Plofker, Mathematics in India Princedton 2008. This has appeared in the March 2010 issue of Notices of AMS.

( ams.org/notices/201003/rtx100300385p.pdf )



docstoc.com/docs/25442539/Mumford---Review-of-Mathematics-in-India (Fullo text)



Excerpt:



"Did you know that Vedic priests were using the so-called Pythagorean theorem to construct their fire altars in 800 BCE?; that the differential equation for the sine function, infinite difference form, was described by Indian mathematician-astronomers in the fifth century CE?; and that 'Gregory's' series PI/4 = 1 -1/3+1/3-… was proven using the power series for arctangent and, with ingenious summation methods, used to accurately compute PI in southwest India in the fourteenth century? If any of this surprises you, Plofker's book is for you. Her book fills a huge gap: a detailed, eminently readable, scholarly survey of the full scope of Indian mathematics and astronomy (the two were inseparable in India) from their Vedic beginnings to roughly 1800."



kalyan





Posted by nizhal yoddha at 2/16/2010 06:55:00 AM

Reactions:



2 comments:

Les Infidèles! Koepfen, koepfen! Brennen! Brennen!

[Husky]

Not on The Indic Mathematical Tradition, but couldn't work out where else to put this.

Newton was a selfish dick who constantly insulted his rivals. His famous quote “If I have achieved anything, it is only through standing on the shoulders of giants” was written in a letter to a scientific rival who was of short stature / a midget. I.e. it was a not so thinly veiled insult to the guy telling him he thought his work was shit.



So much for the modesty it is thought to portray.

[Husky]

^ The 'great' Newton. Should be made famous for that 'wonderful' character of his.





The following links are for archival purposes.





1. rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2014/02/quick-notes-calculus-crown-parallel.html

Restoring India’s calculus crown ([color="#0000FF"]telegraphindia.com/1140225/jsp/nation/story_18018921.jsp[/color]):



Madhava's work effectively laid the foundations for the later development of calculus and analysis, and either he or his disciples developed an early form of integration for simple functions. Some historians have suggested that Madhava's work, through the writings of the Kerala School, may have been transmitted to Europe ([color="#0000FF"]storyofmathematics.com/indian_madhava.html[/color]) via Jesuit missionaries and traders who were active around the ancient port of Cochin (Kochi) at the time, and may have had an influence on later European developments in calculus. PDF link to the book. [color="#0000FF"]jornalggn.com.br/sites/default/files/documentos/joseph-george-gheverghese-2011-the-crest-of-the-peacock-non-european-roots-of-mathematics-3rd-ed.pdf[/color]

2. [color="#0000FF"]rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2014/02/indian-contribution-to-world-mathematics.html[/color]

(also links to telegraphindia.com/1140225/jsp/nation/story_18018921.jsp)



The full article's at the link, but several things in the article by George Gheverghese Joseph stood out:

a. The most important bit:

Later, when I became interested in the work of the legendary Srinivas Ramanujan and had gone to Cambridge in this connection, I met an eminent Newton scholar, Tom Whiteside. He asked me if I had come across the Kerala school of mathematics. I said no. He then referred me to a footnote by him of an earlier Indian researcher who had with his collaborators written extensively on the work done in Kerala on the infinite series. Whiteside suggested that I explore it further and that’s how I discovered the work of Madhava and his disciples.

So the real persons who had pioneered the work of revealing this hidden part of the history of maths turns out to be ... "earlier Indian researchers". Who were no doubt Hindus, since non-Hindu Indians (including Joseph, as he admitted) did not even know about Madhava and his students.



I note no one wants to name the original researchers though, including Joseph, and only Joseph is becoming famous for "revealing" the matter.



b. There's a picture at the R2004 link labelled

A digital image of Madhava drawn up by the Madhava Ganitha Kendram, a voluntary association working to revive his works, with inputs provided by descendants of the mathematician-astronomer

People should look at that image for the weird way modern Indians perceive themselves and their ancestors.



A comment on the article notes:

Sujeev said...

The wrtiteup is good, but the picture is distracting. Is it just me, or does anyone else here think the picture kinda looks like Harvey Keitel dressed up as a Namboothiri? :-)

Sujeev hasn't noted what's really disturbing about the picture: it is of a man who has a hyper European skintone and the locks on top of his head are unmistakably golden hair. That is the extent of what modern Indians (wannabes) want Hindus to have looked like in the past. It's not enough that the 2D hand-drawn all-Indian-made animation from the last decade about Ramayanam showed both Sita and Rama with European skintone (actually more European than European; Rama was pink?), now they have to apply that to Madhava.

And golden locks?



One must be grateful I suppose that there are photographs of Ramanujan that at least prevent others from unrealistically depicting him: Raamaanujan just has typically black hair, and possesses an Indian colour that no doubt is sufficiently dark as would dissapoint the artist hired by the "Madhava Ganitha Kendram". Maybe they wanted to appeal to Europeans with this image of Madhava, as part of a plea for Europeans to include an acknowledgement for the contribution made to maths by Madhava and his students?

Ugh, yuck.



BTW, not even Harvey Keitel looks as Euro qua skintone let alone haircolour as the artist's rendering of poor Madhava. (And, as I recall, in Campion's "The Piano", Harvey Keitel was thought to look sufficiently like a Pacific-Islander to play the part of a native inhabitant.)





c. This bit was interesting in the interview with Georgh Joseph:

rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/indian-contribution-to-world-mathematics.html

Not just maths educators, even activists reviewed it. What particularly moved me was the extent to which African Americans and Blacks took up some of the things in it after they realised they had a very rich history. For instance, the earliest mathematical artefact is available right in the middle of Africa, but nobody knows. It’s called the Ishango bone which is a type of lunar calendar and dates back to 22,000 BC [color="#800080"](oh no, not BC-ism)[/color], much earlier than anything of that sort found anywhere in the world.

Phew, no one but Africans can claim the achievement of that lunar calendar. It's theirs and theirs alone. :cheer:

(* Since even the proto-proto-ancestors of the Oryans/PIE-ists had already moved to "EurAsia" well before then. Not even desperate Victor-Mair-type tactics can claim this for the oryans/oryanism syndrome. That's not to say they won't try tomorrow.)





d. This statement by George Joseph:

People who disappointed me were the Indians. Part of colonisation involves a form of brainwashing where you end up defending something because you think you have invested time and emotion in it. I was awarded a Royal Society Visiting Fellowship to deliver a series of lectures in Indian universities. But a number of those I met didn’t either want to know or were very critical. Subsequently, I also noticed that academics has been highly politicised in the country. So I suddenly find my views and conclusions either being approved by the Right who say, look here is a book that shows India is great, or being criticised by the Left, who claim that the book panders to the other side and contains not much of material analysis.

- Of course the Left doesn't want to acknowledge Madhava et al's contributions: they are Hindoos who made their contributions as Hindoos alone. They're not some "all-Indian" achievement ("Sorry"). Why is it that Hindoo achievements magically become "all-Indian" when everybody else wants to have a share in the cake?

At least the Left is honest in so far as recognising that these mathematical achievements are exclusively feathers in the crown of ethnic Hindoos and Hindoiism and have no bearing on others (and other idealogies), let alone seculars and leftists.



- And Joseph finds the only ones in India who were willing to listen to him were the Hindoo Right, but he dismisses their interest as beneath him: they are to be shunned (despite the Hindoo willingness to acknowledge the "Indian" contribution to maths instead of denying it, which last Joseph listed as a shortcoming in other Indians). The Hindoo Right's crime is to be nationalist, or even being Hindoo. Except Madhava and his students and all his forbears were all Hindoo onlee. Note: not some random "Indian", certainly not christian or Syrian christian or islamic - not any other alien or other minority religion, but Hindoo. As is even clear in one of the few representative details added by the artist's rendering: the hyper-Hindoo markings all over Madhava's body. (Ramanujan was another hyper-Hindoo: he straightforwardly admitted that Lakshmi Amman from his Narachimmam Kovil had whispered all his mathematical understanding to him in his sleep.)

So, contrary to Joseph's wishes, who *but* the Hindoos - such as the "Indian right" - should be the first to recognise such Hindoo achievements?



The unwillingness to accept the "Hindoo/Indian Right" as a fanbase is not only seen in Joseph. Rajeev Malhotra - otherwise considered a great champion by many Indians - showed his unease with Hindus yet again (wasn't it he who last time said that Hindoos were "obsessed" with fighting the AIT, right until Malhotra himself decided that the AIT ought to be fought - of course he decided it was not an obsession when he finally decided to enter the fray).



rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/fwd-do-western-religious-scholars-err.html

There's a fine line, some scholars say, between legitimate Hindu concerns and the right-wing political wave that has recently hit India. Although Malhotra, for example, condemns the violence and threats, he has acknowledged in a Washington Post article that the Hindu right has [color="#0000FF"]appropriated[/color] his arguments. Just as he points to certain Western academics, arguing they perpetuate what he calls the "caste, cows, curry, dowry" stereotypes, in India, says Vijay Prashad, AM'90, PhD'94, a Trinity College assistant professor of international studies, "the Hindu right has taken education as an important field of political battle," trying, for instance, to install conservative textbooks in schools.



Malhotra's goal is to "rebrand India," says Prashad, a self-described Marxist who studied history and anthropology, not religious studies, at Chicago, and who has debated Malhotra in online forums. But "scholars, to me, are not in the business of branding." Malhotra and others "have created the idea that there is one Indic thought," Prashad says, but "there are so many schools of thought within Hinduism."

- What's interesting is that Malhotra thinks every Hindoo to the "right" of him is the Indian Right (including any of Yesterday's Indians who didn't roll over to accept the AIT when he still thought that was no more than an "obsession") - since he clearly feels awkward about their "appropriating" his arguments and feels the need to distance himself from them by illegitimising their parroting of any ideas he may have articulated, as is apparent from his use of the word "appropriate" (that is, he wants to make it clear that the "Indian Right" did not have his permission and that he did not seek to inform *them* of his ideas: they merely "appropriated"), which seems to me to be a clear message to Hindoos/"the Indian right" that he'd rather they don't read and thereby appropriate his arguments: he doesn't want you to; obviously the intended audience for his writings is someone else.



- Meanwhile the leftist Vijay Prashad thinks that Malhotra - who is to the "right" of Prashad - IS the Indian Right/a representative vocalist of it and similarly denounces Malhotra. So denouncements all round. No Indian knows *how* fast to sell other Indians short as a means to curry favour with the western people they're conversing with (while denouncing other Indians). Rather appropriate that Vijay Prashad should have made Malhotra come off quite as untouchable as Malhotra has made the "Other Indians" aka the "Indian/Hindoo Right". (The nice thing is both are debarred from ever joining the "Indian right" or claiming they were ever part of it. Although Prashad types don't give the impression they may re-invent themselves as loyal natives tomorrow, remember that that other virulent anti-Hindu Yoginder Sikhand from the communist communalism-combat - who lied repeatedly and damnably for the purpose of brainwashing the masses against Hindus and Hindoo-ism - was last seen trying to slink back, now that old age had further rotted what passes for his brain. Sikhand should be shown the door, and preferrably kicked out.)





While George Joseph not feeling much for the "Indian Right" is perhaps understandable - he's not a Hindoo, as a Syrian christian he's at the top of the Indian food chain - I wonder who Malhotra viewed as the target audience for his ideas? Since one knows it is Not the Indian Right (the Hindoos), perhaps it's the Psecular Wrong or the Communist Left or the Christoislamic Black Hole Underneath Hindoos' feet? In any case, it's *not* any Hindoo. IIRC Sita Ram Goel identified himself as a "Hindoo communalist", so anyone who approves of SRG is clearly the "Indian Right" who has No Right to "appropriate" Malhotra's arguments (else Malhotra will feel embarrassed in front of western interviewers all over again and feel the need to "apologise" to them about the "Indian right" having "appropriated"/taken over "his ideas" without his intention/permission. Indian nationalists shouldn't do that to Poor Malhotra, else what would western people think of him?)

Amazing how often Malhotra slaps Hindoos right in their faces and they can't *wait* to run after him again.

Ugh, yuck. The treachery never ends.



[[color="#0000FF"]ADDED:[/color] Since I'm complaining anyway: fans keep crediting even those sections of the "Breaking India" book that are far more likely to have been researched and probably even written by Aravind Neelakandan - who is the co-writer of the work - to the "greatness" of Malhotra. I hear there are sections concerning Tamilnadu in Breaking India. And between the two of the authors, Aravind NeelakaNDdan - the one with the glorious surname - must surely be the expert on TN. Not to mention that NeelakaNThan was already highly aware about how US etc were trying to use evangelism etc to split India over a decade ago, and was moreover active about creating awareness on this. So active that even I had come across his name: the first I saw it was at Internet Infidels: Their Other "Dirty" Linen: Evangelism's Quest to Conquer the World. When I first heard that there was a book called Breaking India co-authored by Neelakanthan, I immediately concluded he was the primary mover in the germ of the idea behind the book and would have provided the case studies for it, since he was IIRC stated to work in a grassroots Hindoo organisation helping Vanavaasi Hindoos in India.]





Some 1700 years ago in Rome, the heathen Emperor protected even the highly desperate heathen activists who had wanted to forcibly retake heathen temple sites from evil christian usurpation. Though Julian was a man who did not approve of violence within Rome's civil society, he refused to let the heathens be punished when christian law would have thrown them into jail or sentenced them to worse. (Just like Constantine and his christian successors before Julian regularly had christians selectively acquitted for crimes against heathens and heathenism.)

Julian knew that the loyal heathen activists had been reduced to great desperation in their defence of heathenism and were acting with the sole thought of the restoration of their dear heathen religion/the heathen empire - something Julian understood very well himself, this being his own primary priority. Except that while his ends and objectives were the same as theirs, his means could be and thus were different: being Emperor now he was in the perfect position to strike devastatingly at christianism while still coming off looking as the perfectly-composed, faultlessly noble person he was. Yet for all his dislike of violence in civil society, he would not have heathens punished for taking back temple materials or evicting christians squatting on temple lands, nor did Julian ever pretend he was ultimately not one of them (that his ends were different). He protected the heathens who would have been sentenced to severe punishment - another advantage to being emperor (what else is the use of any position of power to heathens if not to protect other loyal heathens, after all?) and he knew that their intentions were blameless (and were nothing compared to the extreme violence of christian crimes against heathens and heathenism). And if Julian had not been emperor, I am beyond certain that he'd have resorted to whatever means were within his power to restore heathenism too. It was simply that as emperor he could finally choose less desperate measures. He knew that his heathens' hearts were breaking, and he plotted all the while to make sure that they would never have reason to cry again.



Christian and cryptochristian historians continue to screech about Julian's partiality towards the heathen "criminals" who tried to use 'force' against christian thieves in getting heathen sites returned to them (except the hysterians don't dare to compare it to the kind of violence christians employed against heathens, heathen sites and heathenism). Christian hysterians are correct in so far that Julian was not remotely impartial: he was a Super Heathen Communalist - and that is *exactly* what scared christians witless then and now. He was not secular and he aimed fully to permanently end the life of the canker that was christianism. And he knew who his trustworthy allies were: all the heathens who showed their loyalty to the same Gods despite any desperate measures they had by then been reduced to (and in hindsight, who could blame them for trying, I wish they had tried harder and succeeded). Julian would *never* have sold them down the river for all the world, not to bolster any reputation of "impartiality" among christos and seculars. [The emperor was nothing if not the most calculating and most dangerous mind of all. He puts everyone to shame now. "The most dangerous man" - from the POV of the christoclass virus - of all time.]



And that's one of the things one most admires about Julian: he never sold other heathens off (from from it, he was most consciously their great protector and benefactor) nor pretended that he was separate from them - he was *exactly* what they were, but with power to make the difference and a Plan. But then, that's just yet another difference between an arch-heathen - as Julian was - and modern Indian activists - who don't know *how* fast to sell off the "Hindu right". But the emperor did himself say "There's only one Julian", after all (bottom). In contrast, there are a great many Malhotras and Vijay Prashads. Each one the same as the last, and all of them interchangeable and replaceable. And utterly un-memorable. Meanwhile, Emperor Julian - the Heathen Super Communalist - is fondly remembered some 1700 years after his death by all heathens across the globe who have ever heard of what he did and what kind of man he was. He was right then and he remains right now (and right for all time). The Roman Right. The Hellenistic Right.

The much put-upon and castigated Indian Right actually comes off looking like a wussy Left (or left-lib) compared to him and his kind. The Indian Right after all has No Intentions - "banish the thought" - to put an end to christianism/christoclass mindvirus once and for all. And that's why the Indian Right has No Hope of winning. What to speak of the Malhotra-s who are - from their own POV - to the left of the Indian Right, and who always make the point that their problem is not with christianism (and one never doubts that is exactly what they mean)?





[color="#0000FF"]The links to the actual stuff worth reading were:[/color]

- rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2014/02/quick-notes-calculus-crown-parallel.html (with PDF of book)

- rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2014/02/indian-contribution-to-world-mathematics.html

[Husky]

The Greek Aristarchos (about 2200 yrs ago) wrote a work that got burned to a crisp along with most other books in the the Serapeum/Library of Alexandria when the christians did their usual trick of burning libraries. (CS-C-2)

The book's title however is known - IIRC it was listed in another text that did survive - and even the title revealed that the topic Aristarchos wrote on was specifically about how the earth and the other visible planets (which were known up to Saturn in the outer orbit) orbited around the sun and that the earth revolved around itself taking a day to do so. That Aristarchos had long ago drawn these conclusions is well-known - no thanks to modern peddlers of later plagiarists - and is not the point of this post.



What's interesting is rather the stuff in blue in the following. Just like Newton (see 2 posts up) was so small-minded he was prone to make personal insults against others in the sciences - and Newton's "standing on the shoulders of giants" was not the great ode to humility that people have been peddling it as - it turns out Copernicus is a *known* and terrible plagiarist:

[Aristarchos ("earth revolves around the sun"):

- correctly located earth's position in the solar system

- deduced from eclipse info that the sun is much much larger than the earth

- he puts sun in the centre of the solar system, with earth and other planets going around the sun

- also had earth rotating on its axis once a day]



[color="#0000FF"]These are ideas that we ordinarily associate with the name Copernicus. But Copernicus seems to have gotten at least some hint of these ideas by reading about Aristarchos. In fact, in the manuscript of Copernicus' book, he referred to Aristarchus but in the final version, he *suppressed* the citation.[/color]

(CS-C-7-45)

In the above the bullet pts are largely a direct quote, any paraphrasing is owing to having to type quickly. But the crucial final statement is a word for word direct quote. Even the emphasis on "suppressed" is there in the original, highly reliable source from where I stole the above statement.



[color="#0000FF"]The point is that - despite knowing the bit in blue - the rest of the west still peddles Copernicus far more often than Aristarchos, i.e. despite *knowing* that Copernicus was an unmistakable plagiarist* of the very ideas he's lauded with (*since he chose to suppress the reference to Aristarchos who was the source for his acquaintance with these ideas).

Points to a disturbing promotion of plagiarists.

Certainly seems to set a precedent (pattern?) for how knowledge of the existence of pre-Euro Hindu work in Calculus [and its influence] c/would similarly have been deliberately suppressed by plagiarists and their peddlers.[/color]

[Husky]

Still on the western habit of crediting the wrong people and how actual originals get shortchanged.



This post is about a matter I'm sure everyone already knows, but still:

real genius Tesla vs management-type Edison (can ya tell I don't like people who do MBAs and are in "management")



Nikola Tesla was a Serb, born in the Serb-majority "Military Frontier" of the Austrian empire, in an area that is now in Croatia, and from where the catholic Croatians have repeatedly ethnically cleansed the Serbs all the way down to the mid-1990s (so Nikola Tesla is lucky he and his orthodox christian family didn't live in his birth-place in the turbulent 20th century, else they'd have been ethnically cleansed aka genocided along with the other Serbs there by the catholics.

[color="#0000FF"]ADDED:[/color] Meanwhile, you can see the catholic Croatians - and suddenly even islamic Albanians - try to claim a part or even all of the Serb Tesla on this wacky page. Sort of like christoislamics try to claim all things Hindu, or the way islamaniacs in Malaysia claim a Hindu posthumously to have been a muslim and try to grab his body for an islamic burial, claim all of his achievements and try to forcibly convert his family. Typical christoislamic tactic.

BTW, it's not "bickering over merely petty things" to finally have recognition for a people - and especially so when said people (Serbs in this case) have frequently been genocided by catholicism and islamania, with this genocide then whitewashed and negated first by communism and then by western christendom/US, with the US usually re-arming the genocidal maniacs for round 2 and 3 against the victim population.)





Tesla had migrated to the US, where he was persecuted in a different manner:



It's better to read the stuff at the links themselves, since there's highlighting, useful links in the body of the texts and images.

And link 3 is full of images containing text which I can't easily reproduce here, but it is a must read as it explains how Edison wasn't the father of the lightbulb (he had minions to come up with ideas for him, and like typical management people - who are the most uninnovative people on the planet and can only parasite on other people's genius, Edison is only famous for filing patents of these his minions' inventions).

[color="#0000FF"]1. badassoftheweek.com/tesla.html

2. listverse.com/2012/06/07/10-ways-edison-treated-tesla-like-a-jerk/

3. theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla[/color]

1. badassoftheweek.com/tesla.html

The Badass of the Week.





Nikola Tesla



Pretty much everybody even remotely associated with real-time strategy games has heard the name Tesla before - the Serbian God of Lightning's omnipresent, ever-zapping coils have been ruining the lives of digital Allied soldiers and gibbing U.S. war machines into spare parts since the release of Command & Conquer: Red Alert in 1996 - but surprisingly few people these days are familiar with the life and times of one of humankind's most eccentric, badass, and volumetrically-insane scientific super-geniuses.



First off, Nikola Tesla was brilliant. And not just like Ken Jennings brilliant, either - I mean like, "holy crap my head just exploded (from all the awesome)" brilliant. The Croatian-born engineer spoke eight languages, almost single-handedly developed technology that [color="#0000FF"]harnessed the power of electricity for household use, and invented things like electrical generators, FM radio, remote control, robots, spark plugs, fluorescent lights, and giant-ass machines that shoot enormous, brain-frying lightning bolts all over the place like crazy. He had an unyielding, steel-trap photographic memory and an insane ability to visualize even the most complex pieces of machinery - the guy did advanced calculus and physics equations in his damn head, memorized entire books at a time, and successfully pulled off scientific experiments that modern-day technology STILL can't replicate. For instance, in 2007 a group of lesser geniuses at MIT got all pumped up out of their minds because they wirelessly transmitted energy a distance seven feet through the air. Nikola Tesla once lit 200 lightbulbs from a power source 26 miles away, and he did it in 1899 with a machine he built from spare parts in the middle of the god-forsaken desert. To this day, nobody can really figure out how the hell he pulled that shit off, because two-thirds of the schematics only existed in the darkest recesses of Tesla's all-powerful brain.[/color]



Of course, much like many other eccentric giga-geniuses and diabolical masterminds, Tesla was also completely insane. He was prone to nervous breakdowns, claimed to receive weird visions in the middle of the night, spoke to pigeons, and occasionally thought he was receiving electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrials on Mars. He was also obsessive-compulsive and hated round objects, human hair, jewelry, and anything that wasn't divisible by three. He was also asexual and celibate for his entire life. Basically, Nikola Tesla was the ultimate mad scientist, which is seriously awesome.



Another sweet thing about Tesla is that he conducted the sort of crazy experiments that generally result in hordes of angry villagers breaking down the door to your lab with torches and pitchforks. [color="#0000FF"]One time, while he was working on magnetic resonance, he discovered the resonant frequency of the Earth and caused an earthquake so powerful that it almost obliterated the 5th Avenue New York building that housed his Frankenstein Castle of a laboratory. Stuff was flying off the walls, the drywall was breaking apart, the cops were coming after him, and Tesla had to smash his device with a sledge hammer to keep it from demolishing an entire city block. Later, he boasted that he could have built a device powerful enough to split the Earth in two. Nobody dared him to prove it.[/color]



Tesla also ordered the construction of the Wardenclyffe Tesla Tower, a giant building shaped like an erect penis that would have housed the largest Tesla coil ever built. The massive structure, ostensibly designed to wirelessly transmit power, has been cited as a potential cause of the mysterious 1908 Tunguska Event � a ten-megaton blast that detonated in the wastelands above central Russia that completely obliterated and deforested everything unlucky enough to be located within a several hundred mile radius. While nothing has ever successfully proven Tesla's involvement in the ass-destroyingly huge explosion, it's pretty awesome that this guy could potentially have detonated a weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and have done it back before they'd even invented the submachine gun.

(Interesting if his research really did result in the Tunguska Event. The hypothesis I heard for what could have caused the event was that it may have been a meteorite impact, though only after-effects/ruins of such an impact were detected, no material from the supposed meteorite itself. It was concluded that it must then have been wholly ice and that this melted away upon impact. IIRC. [Ref: CS-C] Of course it's admitted this was only a hypothesis, since they couldn't really discover what had actually caused it.)



Tesla in his lab.



During his adventures blinding half of the world with science, Nikola Tesla harnessed the power of Niagara Falls into the first hydroelectric power plant, constructed a bath designed to cleanse the human body of germs using nothing but electricity, and created a 130-foot long bolt of lightning from one of his massive coils (a feat which to this day remains the world record for man-made lightning), but perhaps his most badass invention was his face-melting, tank-destroying, super-secret Atomic Death Ray. In the 1920s he claimed to be working on a tower that could potentially have spewed forth a gigantic beam of ionized particles capable of disintegrating aircraft from 200 miles away and blinking most men out of existence like something out of a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers comic. His weapon, known as the "Teleforce Beam", allegedly shot ball lightning at 60 million volts, liquefying its targets with enough power to vaporize steel, and, while it could shoot further than 200 miles, its effectiveness beyond that range was limited only by the curvature of the Earth. Luckily for all humans, this crazy insanity never came to fruition - most of the schematics and plans existed only in Tesla's head, and when he died of heart failure in 1943, little hard data on the project existed. Still, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI confiscated all his personal stuff and locked it away anyways, just to be safe.



Despite being incredibly popular during his day, now Tesla remains largely overlooked among lists of the greatest inventors and scientists of the modern era. Thomas Edison gets all the glory for discovering the lightbulb, but it was his one-time assistant and life-long arch-nemesis, Nikola Tesla, who made the breakthroughs in alternating-current technology that allowed for people to cheaply use electricity to power appliances and lighting in their homes. They constantly fought about whether to use alternating or direct-currents (their bitter blood feud resulted in both men being snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee), but ultimately Tesla was the one who delivered the fatal kick-to-the-crotch that ended the battle � at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, his AC generators illuminated the entire experience, marking the first time that an event of that magnitude had ever taken place under the glow of artificial light. Today, all homes and applicances run on Tesla's AC current.



Nikola Tesla was one of those super-genius badasses whose intellect placed him dangerously on the precipice between "great scientific mind" and "utter madness". He held 700 patents at the time of his death, made groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of physics, robotics, steam turbine engineering, and magnetism, and once melted one of his assistants' hands by overloading it with X-rays - which isn't really scientific, but is still pretty cool. And honestly, if there were one man on this planet who was ever capable of single-handedly destroying the entire planet through his insane scientific discoveries, it was Tesla. That alone should qualify him as a pretty righteous badass.

2. listverse.com/2012/06/07/10-ways-edison-treated-tesla-like-a-jerk/

10 Ways Edison Treated Tesla Like a Jerk

Jamie Frater June 7, 2012

Thomas Edison has over a thousand patents in his name. Some of them are even based on his own ideas. But more often than not, he was working off another great innovator’s findings, and tinkering until he produced something that could make a buck or two. He is often praised for having invented a number of household items we take for granted, and couldn’t live without. But considerably less credit is actually given to the genius scientists and inventors who worked under his employ to make him rich (and a household name). One of those men is Nikola Tesla, who got an incredibly short end of the stick, and whose brilliance often goes unacknowledged and under-praised beneath Edison’s blinding overcast. Here are ten ways in which Edison was a real jerk to Tesla.



10 Disrespectful

Towards the end of Edison’s life, he was quoted as saying he wished he respected Tesla and his work more than he had. Too bad, at that point the damage had been done: Tesla died broke and lonely, while Edison died wealthy and with great self-esteem. While they had worked together, Edison had often called his ideas “impractical” or mocked them (if he wasn’t plain threatened by them). It seemed Edison knew that he had this brilliant young mind under his thumb from the moment he came to America to work for him. (At that point he already had a few patents in his name, for devices that operated by rotating magnetic fields.)



9 Driven by Greed

Tesla once criticized Edison by saying in a New York Times interview, “He had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense.” Whereas Tesla was an impassioned engineer who seemed to be utterly fascinated by the technical aspects of his work. He had a photographic memory, could memorize entire books, and used to have literal flashes of genius where he’d conceive the solution to a problem, or visualize the detailed schematics of a device he’d yet to invent. Edison insisted on developing (or replicating and patenting) devices that had some practical utility (something that could make him money), never just science for purely science.



8 Mocked Tesla’s Line of Thinking

Not only did he call some of Tesla’s brilliant ideas impractical, or have potential inventions of his shut down, he just didn’t seem to value Tesla’s mind. Tesla, who worked late into the night, remained celibate until his death at 86, was an eccentric and often obsessed over his work. Edison, however, was more socially functional (well, he had a 16-year-old wife, if that counts as proof), and didn’t take Tesla often highly esoteric comments entirely seriously.



7 Took Credit for the Fluoroscope

The fluoroscope – a device for producing X-ray images – is something Tesla had been working on prior to Edison’s pig-headed dabbling. In the process, Edison managed to give his assistant terminal cancer (who had to have his arms removed before he ultimately died), and he almost blinded himself. But he sure got that patent all right.



6 Wouldn’t Pay Up

Edison backed out of paying Tesla $50,000 to fix his DC motor – which Tesla did with great ease. He managed to turn an inefficient device into something incredibly efficient that saved Edison all sorts of money (well more than he agreed to pay Tesla). All he said was that Tesla failed to “understand the American sense of humor” (Tesla was a Serbian immigrant). More like he failed to realize how much of a stingy two-timer Edison was. Edison offered to up his pay from $18 a week to all of $25. Tesla, not a moment too soon (but far too many too late), resigned. Thereafter he wound up digging ditches, before starting his own company and accepting investments to do some experiments in his own right.





5 Meddling Fool

Edison has a Medal Named After Him, Which Tesla Was Awarded. The Edison Medal is presented yearly by a group called IEEE, or the “Institute of Electrical Engineers” (a group of Edison’s friends). It is an outright slap in the face that Edison’s name is paraded by an award in the field (one he is not truly a part of) of which Tesla is an exceptional, shining example. A greater slap in the face still was when Tesla was awarded the Medal in 1916.



4 Early Radar Technology Laughed Off

If Edison hadn’t deemed one of Tesla’s most crucial radio wave-based innovations to be “impractical” back during World War I– when he first proposed plans for such–countless lives could have been saved for having the advantage of being able to detect enemy submarines. Of course it would be actualized until decades later. But just to think of what damage Edison’s ego-driven meddling has cost time and again is infuriating.



3 Fought against Tesla’s AC Power

Simply put Edison (with a few other moguls on his side) didn’t want to see Tesla’s Alternate Current succeed, because it posed a (fiscal) threat to the viability of his Direct Current (which Tesla had previously souped up for him). A bitter public battle took place, with George Westinghouse of the Westinghouse Company on Tesla’s side. Edison sought to use spineless scare tactics to convince the public his AC units weren’t safe. In order to “prove” this “fact,” he had a number of animals electrocuted, including a circus elephant (which was to be put to death for killing a some people). Ultimately, Tesla won this “War of Currents,” only because he indeed had the better power mechanism. Although the current of success swept into a place of high regard, he forewent obscene wealth so as to–in a show of unprecedented humility–save the Westinghouse Company (which would have gone broke with the royalty payments). Instead, Tesla made a few grand by just selling his patents outright. To view the full infographic above, go here.



2 Killed a Man to Prove Tesla Wrong

[color="#0000FF"]Edison was known for his intimidation tactics (e.g. he used to hire a bunch of goons to smash technology and make sure he got his dues for his patents), but never did it get so bad as with his campaign against Tesla; he went so far as to invent the electric chair, using Tesla’s AC power to have a man on death row execute. The event was gruesome and messy, drawn out. George Westinghouse was quoted to have said, “They would have done better using an axe.” And so the first execution by electric chair took place, just to prove Tesla wrong (and preserve Edison’s financial stakes).[/color]

[color="#800080"](The 3rd link also shows how Edison had lots of children's pets electrocuted to scare the masses away from AC, as something deadly.)[/color]



1 Shared Virtually None of His Wealth

Edison was a wealthy man, and always finding new ways to get wealthier. That meant rushing his crude discoveries and unoriginal devices to the patent office to secure his royalties. While Tesla was largely a one man technology-synthesizer, Edison had buildings stocked with brilliant engineers and scientists who did all his bidding, while he took the lion’s share of the revenue for himself. Tesla just happened to be one more sucker to get trapped in his greenhouse of genius, where all he need ask for is a few drops of water and sunlight to churn out unrelenting yields.



Jamie Frater

Jamie is the founder of Listverse. He spends his time working on the site, doing research for new lists, and cooking. He is fascinated with all things morbid and bizarre.

mentalfloss.com/article/30140/acdc-tesla%E2%80%93edison-feud

Tesla on Edison: "If he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once, with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was almost a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."

—New York Times, October 19, 1931 (the day after Edison died)

Compare this insightful statement by Tesla as to Edison's (in)abilities, with the much-praised and parroted statement attributed to Edison of "Genius <or something> is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration". What would that management-type Edison know about genius or inspiration etc anyway? Clearly Edison was talking about 1% inspiration by his many slaves aka "employees" - and the 99% perspiration refers to the work of said slaves too (except when Edison decided to dabble/perspire, on which occasions he could only use brute-force methods - since that's all his regressive 'brain' was ever capable of).

Meanwhile Tesla was largely inspiration, plus the minimum perspiration required - which may still be a lot - to get his ideas implemented.



Don't know what US is like today, but Edison = the typical AmeriKKKan capitalist of that time (which is ultimately the same as the communists, who also crush other people underfoot to get ahead and then hypocritically declare this is all in public interest too. Objectivists similarly walk all over others but announce that 'better' people have the right to do so and that there's no such thing as public interest. The fact that the inventor of objectivism - the raving Ayn Rand - viewed herself as an example of a 'better' person just underlines what was already obvious: that objectivism is yet another insane ideology. The longer humanity sticks around, the more looney and dangerous ideologies they keep unleashing on the world. Can't looney people be contained somehow? Whatever happened to MTV's "celebrity death match"? Now that was an idea worth keeping...)





[color="#0000FF"]3. theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla[/color]





The west treats even other Europeans like this (not to mention eastern Europeans, particularly Slavs and especially Orthodox Serbs always get the raw end of the deal from other Europeans). No surprises then that Hindoo mathematicians didn't get credited and got plagiarised instead with christo-aliens running off with all the credit.





Again, the stuff worth reading in this post was

[color="#0000FF"]1. theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

2. badassoftheweek.com/tesla.html

3. listverse.com/2012/06/07/10-ways-edison-treated-tesla-like-a-jerk/

[/color]

[Husky]

Guess the west's earlier attempt to pass zero off as a Chinese invention has ended, as something's come up to make them feel confident now to admit the following.



usatoday.com/videos/news/world/2017/09/14/-earliest-evidence-number-zero-found-ancient-manuscript/105608872/

Video's transcript:

Experts at Oxford University believe they have discovered the origin of the zero in an Indian Bakshali manuscript, a mathematical text that was discovered in 1881. Researchers conducted the first ever radiocarbon dating on the Bakshali manuscript and reveal that it dates from as early as the 3rd century, five centuries older than previously thought. Carbon dating indicates that the manuscript is the world's oldest recorded origin of the zero symbol, predating a 9th century inscription of zero on the wall of a temple in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. "We now know that it was early as the 3rd century that mathematicians in India planted the seed of the idea that would later become so fundamental to the modern world," said one of the researchers. While the use of zero as a placeholder was seen in several different ancient cultures, including the Mayans, the symbol in the Bakshali manuscript is significant because it was only in India that zero developed into a number in its own right, when an Indian astronomer named Brahmagupta wrote a text called brAhma-spUTa-siddhAnta in the 6th century.

And

www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/14/much-ado-about-nothing-ancient-indian-text-contains-earliest-zero-symbol

Much ado about nothing: ancient Indian text contains earliest zero symbol



Exclusive: one of the greatest conceptual breakthroughs in mathematics has been traced to the Bakhshali manuscript, dating from the 3rd or 4th century

In this close-up image you can see the use of a dot as a placeholder in the bottom line. This dot evolved into the use of zero as a number in its own right. Photograph: Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries/ University of Oxford



Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

@hannahdev



Thursday 14 September 2017 00.01 BST



Nowt, nada, zilch: there is nothing new about nothingness. But the moment that the absence of stuff became zero, a number in its own right, is regarded as one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics.



Now scientists have traced the origins of this conceptual leap to an ancient Indian text, known as the Bakhshali manuscript – a text which has been housed in the UK since 1902.



Radiocarbon dating reveals the fragmentary text, which is inscribed on 70 pieces of birch bark and contains hundreds of zeroes, dates to as early as the 3rd or 4th century – about 500 years older than scholars previously believed. This makes it the world’s oldest recorded origin of the zero symbol that we use today.



The ‘front’ page (recto) of folio 16 which dates to 224-383 AD. Photograph: Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries/ University of Oxford



Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, said: “Today we take it for granted that the concept of zero is used across the globe and our whole digital world is based on nothing or something. But there was a moment when there wasn’t this number.”



The Bakhshali manuscript was found in 1881, buried in a field in a village called Bakhshali, near Peshawar, in what is now a region of Pakistan. It was discovered by a local farmer and later acquired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.



Translations of the text, which is written in a form of Sanskrit, suggest it was a form of training manual for merchants trading across the Silk Road, and it includes practical arithmetic exercises and something approaching algebra. “There’s a lot of ‘If someone buys this and sells this how much have they got left?’” said Du Sautoy.



In the fragile document, zero does not yet feature as a number in its own right, but as a placeholder in a number system, just as the “0” in “101” indicates no tens. It features a problem to which the answer is zero, but here the answer is left blank.



Several ancient cultures independently came up with similar placeholder symbols. The Babylonians used a double wedge for nothing as part of cuneiform symbols dating back 5,000 years, while the Mayans used a shell to denote absence in their complex calendar system.



However the dot symbol in the Bakhshali script is the one that ultimately evolved into the hollow-centred version of the symbol that we use today. It also sowed the seed for zero as a number, which is first described in a text called Brahmasphutasiddhanta, written by the Indian astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta in 628AD.



“This becomes the birth of the concept of zero in it’s own right and this is a total revolution that happens out of India,” said Du Sautoy.

(Interesting choice of words by Monsieur Du Sautoy.)



The development of zero as a mathematical concept may have been inspired by the region’s long philosophical tradition of contemplating the void and may explain why the concept took so long to catch on in Europe, which lacked the same cultural reference points.



“This is coming out of a culture that is quite happy to conceive of the void, to conceive of the infinite,” said Du Sautoy. “That is exciting to recognise, that culture is important in making big mathematical breakthroughs.”

(Usual repackaging of religion as culture.)



Despite developing sophisticated maths and geometry, the ancient Greeks had no symbol for zero, for instance, showing that while the concept zero may now feel familiar, it is not an obvious one.



“The Europeans, even when it was introduced to them, were like ‘Why would we need a number for nothing?’” said Du Sautoy. “It’s a very abstract leap.”



Carbon dating reveals Bakhshali manuscript is centuries older than scholars believed and is formed of multiple leaves nearly 500 years different in age. Photograph: Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries/ University of Oxford



In the latest study, three samples were extracted from the manuscript and analysed at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. The results revealed that the three samples tested date from three different centuries, one from 224-383 AD, another from 680-779 AD and another from 885-993 AD, raising further questions about how the manuscript came to be packaged together as a single document.



The development of zero in mathematics underpins an incredible range of further work, including the notion of infinity, the modern notion of the vacuum in quantum physics, and some of the deepest questions in cosmology of how the Universe arose – and how it might disappear from existence in some unimaginable future scenario.



Richard Ovenden, head of the Bodleian Library, said the results highlight a Western bias that has often seen the contributions of South Asian scholars being overlooked. “These surprising research results testify to the subcontinent’s rich and longstanding scientific tradition,” he said.



The manuscript will be on public display on 4 October, as part of a major exhibition, Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation (sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/illuminating-india), at the Science Museum in London.

Hmmm, they're now mentioning 5000 years of Indian science and Innovation. <- "Wonder what led to that admission." And how long they knew the above among themselves and withheld it until just this particular timing. It's a rhetorical question. I suspect I know the answer to it, the answer to why they feel confident to admit 5000 years of Indian science and innovation at all. (And when they say "Indian" here, 5000 years ago there was no Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Ajeevikas, Charvakans or other assorted. Those didn't get invented until around half that time ago. Only heathen Hindoos existed all the way. And that's where the Indian scientific tradition traces to, it's why it's a tradition. These things need to be stated nowadays, considering that christoislamania isn't the only missionising religion trying to inculturate and poach on Hindu heathenism.)



Oh and the other text mentioned - the 6th century brAhma-spUTa-siddhAnta - is by the Shaiva i.e. the Hindoo Brahmagupta. <- Mentioning this before wikipedia gets defaced by the usual Buddhists/Jainists etc trying to pretend that he was a Buddhist/Jain/whatever and his text too, although I suppose that will happen next (and to the manuscript found in Bakshali too) and then the Buddhist plug Rajeev Srinivasan will be propagating that Brahmagupta and his text were Buddhist all over the internet. Any minute now.



Before that happens, I'll archive wikipedia's current admission that Brahmagupta is a Vedic Hindoo (specifically of the Shaiva variety).



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C4%81hmasphu%E1%B9%ADasiddh%C4%81nta

Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a full view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (December 2016)



The Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta ("Correctly Established Doctrine of Brahma", abbreviated BSS) is the main work of Brahmagupta, written[citation needed] c. 628. Τhis text of mathematical astronomy contains significant mathematical content, including a good understanding of the role of zero, rules for manipulating both negative and positive numbers, a method for computing square roots, methods of solving linear and quadratic equations, and rules for summing series, Brahmagupta's identity, and Brahmagupta’s theorem.



The book was written completely in verse and does not contain any kind of mathematical notation. Nevertheless, it contained the first clear description of the quadratic formula (the solution of the quadratic equation).[1][2]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta

Born c. 598 CE

Died after 665 CE

Bhillamāla[1]

Ujjain



Known for

Zero

Modern number system

Brahmagupta's theorem

Brahmagupta's identity

Brahmagupta's problem

Brahmagupta-Fibonacci identity

Brahmagupta's interpolation formula

Brahmagupta's formula



Scientific career

Fields Mathematics, astronomy



Brahmagupta (About this sound listen (help·info)) (born c. 598, died after 665) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He is the author of two early works on mathematics and astronomy: the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (BSS, "correctly established doctrine of Brahma", dated 628), a theoretical treatise, and the Khaṇḍakhādyaka ("edible bite", dated 665), a more practical text.



Brahmagupta was the first to give rules to compute with zero. The texts composed by Brahmagupta were composed in elliptic verse in Sanskrit, as was common practice in Indian mathematics. As no proofs are given, it is not known how Brahmagupta's results were derived.[2]

Life and career



Brahmagupta was born in 598 CE according to his own statement. He lived in Bhillamala (modern Bhinmal) during the reign of the Chapa dynasty ruler, Vyagrahamukha. He was the son of Jishnugupta and was a Shaivite by religion.[3] Even though most scholars assume that Brahmagupta was born in Bhillamala, there is no conclusive evidence for it. However, he lived and worked there for a good part of his life. Prithudaka Svamin, a later commentator, called him Bhillamalacharya, the teacher from Bhillamala.[4] Sociologist G. S. Ghurye believed that he might have been from the Multan or Abu region.[5]



Bhillamala, called pi-lo-mo-lo by Xuanzang, was the apparent capital of the Gurjaradesa, the second largest kingdom of Western India, comprising southern Rajasthan and northern Gujarat in modern-day India. It was also a centre of learning for mathematics and astronomy. Brahmagupta became an astronomer of the Brahmapaksha school, one of the four major schools of Indian astronomy during this period. He studied the five traditional siddhanthas on Indian astronomy as well as the work of other astronomers including Aryabhata I, Latadeva, Pradyumna, Varahamihira, Simha, Srisena, Vijayanandin and Vishnuchandra.[4]



In the year 628, at an age of 30, he composed the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (the improved treatise of Brahma) which is believed to be a revised version of the received siddhanta of the Brahmapaksha school. Scholars state that he incorporated a great deal of originality to his revision, adding a considerable amount of new material. The book consists of 24 chapters with 1008 verses in the ārya metre. A good deal of it is astronomy, but it also contains key chapters on mathematics, including algebra, geometry, trigonometry and algorithmics, which are believed to contain new insights due to Brahmagupta himself.[4][6][7]



Later, Brahmagupta moved to Ujjain, which was also a major centre for astronomy. At the age of 67, he composed his next well known work Khanda-khādyaka, a practical manual of Indian astronomy in the karana category meant to be used by students.[8]



Brahmagupta lived beyond 665 CE. He is believed to have died in Ujjain.[citation needed]

Anyway, the zero goes back earlier of course, to the Vedas. E.g. it was already known in the Devi atharvasheerSham of Vedic text. Not to be confused with dabblers in Buddhism's recent attempts to subsume this Hindoo text into Buddhism on account of the mention of shUnya therein. (Which is a particularly Hindoo reference to Shoonya and retains its original Hindoo meaning. Shoonya is Hindoo. Not Buddhist. Like Buddhism/Jainism/etc encroached on other Vaidika=Hindoo terms like dharma, Buddhists also encroached on Shunya, and then made a Bauddhicised clone of it, with whole new subverted meaning etc. Doesn't make any of these terms originally Buddhist. They remain Hindoo, and the original Hindoo concepts associated with the terms remain the originals too.)