08-25-2007, 01:52 PM
He is referring to the work o f the Aryabhata group at the unversity of Exeter by Dennis Almeida and George Geverghese (also at University of Manchester)... I refer to their work in my Indology and Indologists .some excerpts
Mateo Riccii an Italian Jesuit Missionary who with Michael Ruggieri opened the door to China for evangelization but more importantly from the perspective of determining the means by which knowledge was transmitted to Europe, acted as the transmitter of such knowledge from the east to the West. Born in Macarena on October 6, 1552. Went on to study law at Rome. Where in 1572 he joined the society of Jesus (SJ)â¦. He studied mathematics and geography under Clavius at the Roman college between 1572 and 1576 and in 1577 left for the indies via Lisbon. He arrived in Goa in 1578 where he taught at the college until 1582 and went on to China to establish the Catholic church there. But it is the 4 years he spent in Goa and Malabar that interests us.
The Portuguese if we recall had a large presence in Cochin (until the protestant Dutch closed down the Cochin College in 1670. So Ricci was sent to Cochin and remained in touch with the Dean of the Collegio Romano. He explicitly acknowledges that he was trying to learn the intricacies of the Indian calendrical systems from Brahmanas. ( See for instance , Ricci (1609)
The task of preparing the Panchangas (literally the five parts) which were more than a calendar and would properly be referred to as a almanac,, was the provenance of the Jyotishi pundit who was well versed in the Calendrical algorithms to devise the proper almanac for his community. Each community (for example farmers) had differing needs for their almanac and hence the need for a Jyotishi Pundit. Today this is done with Calendrical software with the help of the ephemeris published by the Government of India annually. The standard treatises used then were the Laghu Bhaskariya and in Kerala the karanapadhati.
So, it is clear that Matthew Ricci was trying to contact the appropriate Brahmanas, as he explicitly stated that he was trying to do, and it appears unlikely that he did not succeed in imbibing these techniques from them.
The Aryabhata Group at the University of Exeter in the UK âTransmission of the Calculus from Kerala to Europeâ, published in Proceedings of thje International symposium and Colloquium on the 1500th Anniversary of the Aryabhatiyum, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat,2002.
Ricci (1609) et les remaniements de sa traduction latine (1615)â, in: Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus des séances de l'année 2003, janvier-mars, 2003, 61-84.
see also Prof. K. Ramasubramanian, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences , published a paper on `Indian Perspective on the Ontological status of Theory, in Bulletin of Kerala Mathematics Association, Vol.3, No.1, 2006. He also contributed an article entitled `Algorithms in Indian.
Astronomy', to the book "Contributions to the History of Indian Mathematics , Ed. Gerard, G. Emch, R. Sridharan and M. D. Srinivas and published by Hindustan Book Agency, New Delhi, 2005.
"Sherlock Holmes in Babylon" ed by Marlow Anderson, Victor katz, Robin wilson, Published by Mathematical association of america article on the so called Gregory series . see especially the paper by Ranjan Roy comparing the contributions of Leibnitz ,Gregory,Newton and Nilakanta somayaji.
An interesting piece of Nilakantha's work is the derivation of Leibniz-Gregory series:
and
Nilakantha's derivation the of above series is all the more interesting because it used the geometrical definition of Ï as the ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle.
Mateo Riccii an Italian Jesuit Missionary who with Michael Ruggieri opened the door to China for evangelization but more importantly from the perspective of determining the means by which knowledge was transmitted to Europe, acted as the transmitter of such knowledge from the east to the West. Born in Macarena on October 6, 1552. Went on to study law at Rome. Where in 1572 he joined the society of Jesus (SJ)â¦. He studied mathematics and geography under Clavius at the Roman college between 1572 and 1576 and in 1577 left for the indies via Lisbon. He arrived in Goa in 1578 where he taught at the college until 1582 and went on to China to establish the Catholic church there. But it is the 4 years he spent in Goa and Malabar that interests us.
The Portuguese if we recall had a large presence in Cochin (until the protestant Dutch closed down the Cochin College in 1670. So Ricci was sent to Cochin and remained in touch with the Dean of the Collegio Romano. He explicitly acknowledges that he was trying to learn the intricacies of the Indian calendrical systems from Brahmanas. ( See for instance , Ricci (1609)
The task of preparing the Panchangas (literally the five parts) which were more than a calendar and would properly be referred to as a almanac,, was the provenance of the Jyotishi pundit who was well versed in the Calendrical algorithms to devise the proper almanac for his community. Each community (for example farmers) had differing needs for their almanac and hence the need for a Jyotishi Pundit. Today this is done with Calendrical software with the help of the ephemeris published by the Government of India annually. The standard treatises used then were the Laghu Bhaskariya and in Kerala the karanapadhati.
So, it is clear that Matthew Ricci was trying to contact the appropriate Brahmanas, as he explicitly stated that he was trying to do, and it appears unlikely that he did not succeed in imbibing these techniques from them.
The Aryabhata Group at the University of Exeter in the UK âTransmission of the Calculus from Kerala to Europeâ, published in Proceedings of thje International symposium and Colloquium on the 1500th Anniversary of the Aryabhatiyum, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat,2002.
Ricci (1609) et les remaniements de sa traduction latine (1615)â, in: Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus des séances de l'année 2003, janvier-mars, 2003, 61-84.
see also Prof. K. Ramasubramanian, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences , published a paper on `Indian Perspective on the Ontological status of Theory, in Bulletin of Kerala Mathematics Association, Vol.3, No.1, 2006. He also contributed an article entitled `Algorithms in Indian.
Astronomy', to the book "Contributions to the History of Indian Mathematics , Ed. Gerard, G. Emch, R. Sridharan and M. D. Srinivas and published by Hindustan Book Agency, New Delhi, 2005.
"Sherlock Holmes in Babylon" ed by Marlow Anderson, Victor katz, Robin wilson, Published by Mathematical association of america article on the so called Gregory series . see especially the paper by Ranjan Roy comparing the contributions of Leibnitz ,Gregory,Newton and Nilakanta somayaji.
An interesting piece of Nilakantha's work is the derivation of Leibniz-Gregory series:
and
Nilakantha's derivation the of above series is all the more interesting because it used the geometrical definition of Ï as the ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle.