3 ms·
True, but an ancient text giving the speed of light even within an order of magnitude is ... interesting. Though it's not clear that the author was really talki
by bloak 9y ago
True, but an ancient text giving the speed of light even within an order of magnitude is ... interesting. Though it's not clear that the author was really talking about the speed of light and not the speed of the sun. The 2202 is intriguing. To me, unfamiliar with Indian mythology and numerology, it looks like the result of a measurement or a calculation rather than a "magic" number. Is it possible that they calculated the speed of the sun on the assumption that it orbits the earth every day at a distance estimated using Aristarchus's method? With the correct distance to the sun that would give a result of about 1e7 m/s, but they could have had an incorrect distance. In the 3rd century BC Aristarchus himself was out by a factor of about 100, but in the wrong direction, unfortunately for my theory.
- kumarvvr 9y agoIn most ancient Indian texts, the meaning of Sanskrit verses refer to light, rather than the sun. > it looks like the result of a measurement or a calculation rather than a "magic" number That is because in Sanskrit, numbers are represented in form of "value" "qualifier" "qualifier", "value" "qualifier".. and so on. For example "sahasra" means 1000 (can be thousand anything), "sata" means 100, "dasa" means 10, & "varsha" means year (this year, that year, a year, next year, etc) To quote the famous Ramayana, to represent 11,000 years, it was written in the book as "dasa varsha shahasrani, dasa varsha sata nicha" meaning 10 x 1000 years + 10 x 100 years = 11000 years. One number placed after the other, without any conjunction implied addition. Elsewhere in the same epic, Rama goes to live in the jungle for "nava pancha cha varshani" meaning 9 + 5 years = 14 years, "nava" is 9 and "pancha" is 5 Note : "cha", "nicha" etc are similar to filler words in english