5 ms·

The Sanskrit verse for the value of pi

55 points by monsterix 13y ago

sillysaurus2 13y ago
I'm in a random mood, so here are random pi facts: Inscribe a circle within a square. Choose random points within the square. As the number of points approaches infinity, the number of points that fall within the circle divided by the total number of points, times four, is pi. http://mathfaculty.fullerton.edu/mathews//n2003/montecarlopimod.html http://mathfaculty.fullerton.edu/mathews//n2003/montecarlopi... Memorizing something like the first 8 digits of pi is enough to calculate the circumference of the Earth to within a few inches, iirc. (My memory is bad, so it's probably 8 +/- 2 digits.) The quadrillionth bit of pi is zero. http://www.daemonology.net/papers/ http://www.daemonology.net/papers/ And keeping in spirit with the post, here's a pi chant: http://pi.ytmnd.com/ http://pi.ytmnd.com/
- hzay 13y ago
  I don't think you can calculate the circumference of the Earth to within a few inches that easily because earth's topology isn't perfectly smooth. It has ups and downs all over.
  - fizx 13y ago
    And is significantly bulgy around the equator due to rotation. Calling BS.
    - philhippus 13y ago
      Not BS, take the equator as the circumference and a weighted average between sea level and the highest point on that line for the constant circular path and you'll have a measurement relative to pi.
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    Right. It is undefined.
roywiggins 13y ago
Wikipedia is not infallible but it says Sanskrit sources had one or two digits of pi: "In India around 600 BC, the Shulba Sutras (Sanskrit texts that are rich in mathematical contents) treat π as (9785/5568)2 ≈ 3.088. In 150 BC, or perhaps earlier, Indian sources treat π as sqrt(10) ≈ 3.1622." Anyway, the source the linked article cites is http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html which notes It must be pointed out that these sutras given by Tirtha Maharaja are created by the author himself, as stated in the introduction to his book, "Vedic Mathematics" (published posthumously) and are therefore not actually Vedic. These mathematical sutras are Vedic only in the sense that they are inspired by the Vedas in the mind of one dedicated to the Vedas. Thus the title "Vedic Mathematics" is not correct.
kissickas 13y ago
Doesn't this give the value of pi if you don't put the decimal point before the first number? I mean you could say it represents pi*10^32, right? Incidentally, I used the same technique to memorize some (fewer) digits pi in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system
- waps 13y ago
  This looks like a hoax. If you look at the decoding ring, it's more complex than the message is in the first place. There are even duplicates in their decoder ring. Sa means 4 different numbers, and 7 duplicates in their decoder ring. Using their decoder ring (using the first "meaning" of any number, I get (text, value according to their decoding, value from pi approximation) : [('go', 3, 3), ('pi', 1, 1), ('bha', 4, 4), ('gya', 'UNKNOWN', 1), ('ma', 5, 5), ('dhu', 4, 9), ('vra', 'UNKNOWN', 2), ('ta', 1, 6), ('srngi', 'UNKNOWN', 5), ('so', 5, 3), ('da', 3, 5), ('dhi', 4, 9)] It's close, sure. But not better than other random stuff. In "lorem ipsum" text, translating a->1, b->2,... you find 3141(391491322514) at position 170 onwards. And the collected works of william shakespeare (as downloaded at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/100/pg100.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/100/pg100.txt) contain the following "PI approximations" (encoded as above): 3 => 290159 occurences 31 => 116402 occurences 314 => 7913 occurences 3141 => 3970 occurences 31415 => 1650 occurences 314159 => 39 occurences 3141592 => 8 occurences 31415926 => 0 occurences Shakespeare must have been a closet mathematical genius ! (Hmmm, I guess he lived after the discovery of Pi, ... oh well, still makes the point I guess) Even the bible contains actual approximations to pi (for example the surprisingly accurate 22/7). It even makes sense that it does. For a lot of history the bible was effectively the only book available for a large percentage of the population (and even then, often not directly). It seems the authors knew that and included tons of relevant stuff. It contains descriptions of how "large" buildings can be built (large by medieval standards, of course). Including textual descriptions of plans for things like churches. It contains details of how to make agriculture work, when to sow, when to harvest, when to switch between grain and animals, when to ... to make land productive. We still use the 7-year land rotation rule on today's farms. Given that the bible clearly was meant to be a sort of "civilization in a single (if massive) book", it makes sense that intuitive descriptions for pi would be one of the things found in there. Perhaps the same is true for the vedas ? Maybe I'm putting the horse before the cart here. The situation could be reversed as well. Assuming a religion gets of the ground at all, it's survival depends on how well it's subjects do. So it's only natural that the religions that grow huge in some way things like the (approximate) value of Pi, and stuff like making agriculture work. And like in the real world you have different flavors of survival. Building, breeding, growing and defense clearly weighed heavily on the bible, vedas and buddhist texts (all of those books, for example, heavily favor not counterattacking an enemy that comes and fights for plunder, merely to let plunder run out and let the attacker starve), whereas conquest, plundering and looting predominate, for example, the quran or the original mongol religion (those religions focus on things like plunder, remaining mobile (e.g. absurd punishments for doing things to horses), and very strict rules about not directly attacking other religions (only their power on the ground). They all have rules about recruiting new cannon fodder (ie. promises of plunder for anyone who joins the religion, making it everyone's duty to recruit new members, ...). Islam actually contains rules that bear a resemblance to a multilevel marketing scheme. If you bring new members, you get a share of their loot for a while). "Growing" religions are vulnerable when they reach a large size, because at some point the borders can't expand while the population keeps growing. "Attacking" religions have the same problem any predator population does : they can only grow by destroying other populations, never by themselves. They survive as tiny inactive pockets, every now and then blowing up exponentially only to die off just as fast soon after, leaving enormous devastation (to read about this in nature, read about the history of wildlife management, or about what happened in Australia, or for a less extreme example American national parks). Maybe we should just look at religions as just another form of life. Not "really" alive, but certainly making a huge difference in the world. (Yes, I've read Jared Diamond's books). If a religion did not imitate a real-world survival technique it simply wouldn't survive. So there probably have been a lot of alternate versions, just almost no surviving ones.
baby 13y ago
so learn sanskrit first, learn their numeral equivalence, then you can learn pi! In all seriousness, I've always wondered how I could learn Pi. I've seen people assimilating a word to each double digits. Then make a story out of those words. But first you'd have to learn exactly 100 associations. Anyone knows of another technique ?
intull 13y ago
How can ka mean 1 or 0, ta mean 1 or 6, da mean 3 or 8, etc ?? Some sounds have multiple numbers associated with it!
- deepuj 13y ago
  Could be that they are different Sanskrit characters without similar notations in English?
- fnbr 13y ago
  I presume it's a tonal language (like, say, Chinese), where words have different meanings depending on the gone that they are said in.
  - witty_username 13y ago
    No, it's just that there are different sounds that transcribe to the same letter in English. (aspirated th versus th (th in thirst)).
- swatkat 13y ago
  They differ in the way they sound; they're actually different letters. Check this consonant table, there are two "ta", one in row 3 and the other in row 4: http://www.languagereef.com/consonanttable.php?lang=SANSKRIT http://www.languagereef.com/consonanttable.php?lang=SANSKRIT This video shows their pronunciation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8GhoAIAtt4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8GhoAIAtt4 This structure is same in all Indian languages.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jeswin 13y ago
This is going to test HN's tolerance for myths and pseudo-science, but then it's a Sunday. "It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places." is not going to convince many people here. There are many alternate views on the origin of this verse itself. The one I find most believable, is that this is a fairly recent fabrication [1]. There is nothing to suggest that we had this level of accuracy that far back. For instance, how was this arrived at? Methods? None. But much later, _in the 5th century AD_, Aryabatta used a simpler expansion for which we actually have some evidence. Just like most other religious texts, the Vedas don't stand up to modern science and rigor. You'll see plenty of revivalist material on the web; many here in India hold it in high regard. In my view, its lasting significance has been the role in dividing India into castes. From the priests to the serfs, a system that continues to hurt even today. [1]: http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poem-gopi-bhagya-madhuvrata http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poe...
- unmole 13y ago
  Hear, hear! Was about to post the same link.
- s-topper 13y ago
  The verse 'gopi bhagya' basically follows Katapayadi system[0]. Earliest known usage of Katapayadi system was in 683 AD. That verse is from a 1965 book called "Vedic Mathematics" by Bharati Krishna Tirtha Maharaja[1]. The Quora blog you linked has issues with terminologies and timelines of this specific "Vedic Mathematics" book - such as calling these mental calculation techniques and tricks as Vedic even though there are no references to them in Vedas[2]. This is more of a political matter ;) And, it's already pointed out in the article linked by OP[3]. I'm quoting it here: It must be pointed out that these sutras given by Tirtha Maharaja are created by the author himself, as stated in the introduction to his book, "Vedic Mathematics" (published posthumously) and are therefore not actually Vedic. These mathematical sutras are Vedic only in the sense that they are inspired by the Vedas in the mind of one dedicated to the Vedas. Thus the title "Vedic Mathematics" is not correct. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_%28book%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_%28book%29 [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Krishna_Tirthaji#Mathematics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Krishna_Tirthaji#Mathem... [3]http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html
unmole 13y ago
A bit of background on the verse: http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poem-gopi-bhagya-madhuvrata http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poe...
vog 13y ago
I find the "real" pi poems more interesting, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology#German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology#German
curiousDog 13y ago
Noped out of that. Considering the recent string of these Nationalist, feel Good posts, it's about time they're autobanned. I'm Indian myself and I've done quite a bit of study on this topic.Vedic mathematics is rooted in ignorance and a disregard for proofs. It's pretty much a way for nationalists (which intensified after the british conquest) to appease and make a billion people feel good about their history. In short, it's pretty much bullshit. What Ramanujan did was math, not this hindutva propaganda crap. Next thing you know, you'll start hearing about astrology and how it's a Vedic science.
- eklavya 13y ago
  I would like to know what you think about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan Nearly all of his findings were without proof, so what are you trying to imply here? And about astrology, they did know about the Arundhati twin star system, so they did know something. While you are at it, blow your minds and lookup the fact that they gave a measurement of speed of light in Mahabharata. It's not about nationalism. No offense, I don't know you but you kind of sound like all those Indians who just have to look down on everything Indian.
  - curiousDog 13y ago
    I think we both understand where I was coming from with the Ramanujan thing. Regarding the Mahabharata, same story. how did they find it out? Why wasn't the methodology given with proof? Why didn't they put more effort into understanding it's properties? Do you have a source to the exact line in the early scripture? Otherwise, it just sounds like something that was slipped in during the translation process. None taken. Personally, I believe that if you're vehemently "proud" of your country and heritage, you havent accomplished much else in life thus far. I don't look down upon Indians, only worried that pseudoscience like this is a dent to credibility and only belittles and overshawdows the great work that's being done today/will be done in the future
    - eklavya 13y ago
      I think you do not understand why I mentioned Ramanujan. He said in his own words that mathematical facts just came to him while dreaming from a god. Since there is no methodology given for his findings he is a crook, right? As for early scriptures, suppose after 5000 years if the current civilization is no more and the future generations get hold of a book with no mathematical proofs but astounding facts which clearly state the technological advancements of our time, they should just call it "pseudoscience". Yeah, right. Personally I believe that if somehow you are proud of only the things YOU have done, you have got way too many problems of your own to take care of. The fact that you couldn't google a simple fact says a lot about your "achievements/accomplishments" too. Here you go http://alishekh.blogspot.in/2009/05/speed-of-light-in-rig-veda.html http://alishekh.blogspot.in/2009/05/speed-of-light-in-rig-ve... It's pretty simple Sanskrit, it's not even riddled, it's plain Sanskrit. If you understand even a little Sanskrit (I do) the translation will make sense. Of course you could trust the author of the article too for having done a good job in translating and explaining. And just so you know that guy who has written this seems to be a Muslim, so zero benefit in advancing the said "propaganda".
negamax 13y ago
As an Indian. I would request fellow Indians (who else is upvoting this?) to not encourage such posts. There's enough superstition already in the country. Let's not encourage it. Let people join and learn modern mathematics and sciences and make them study ancient texts as leisure but let's not shout there are hidden codes and blah in them.
vishkrishram 13y ago
This looks like part of the smokescreen trickery since the times of Swami Vivekananda who succeeded in fooling the Britishers with sugar-coated and watered-down sanskrit (to hide unpleasant and perverse facts), or even bastardised Sanskrit (to mean anything). After gaining insights and never-before knowledge through English, and Western education the cunning gurus (continued till today) then claimed "hey this is all said before in our holy books". Actually in some of the poorer regions of India people are taught that the atom bomb is made from a recipe in the Vedas by chanting some incomprehensible sanskrit mantras... there are even some "modern scientific" websites dedicated to it (search for it). Another typical trickery example (apart from sugar-coating and bastardising sanskrit) to be aware of is "loka samastha sukhino bhavadhu" etc.; actually there is nothing like that in any of the mythical books, it is a cunning trickery similar to taking the words "Harry Potter", "of", "Voldemort", "son", "is", "the", from the series and then saying "Harry Potter is the son of Voldemort". The truth is that Hindu mythologies, Hinduism and the Vedic age destroyed India and its greatness which was indeed great as evidenced from the Harappa and Dravida (atheist) civilisations. Even though post independent upper caste historians conveniently teaches us that the Muslims and Britishers destroyed India, the truth is hidden in the historical words of prince king Budha whose time was before the Muslims or Britishers. Even a Nepalese prince was woken up from his princely comfort at the sight of unspeakable vedic cruelty, massacres and perverse culture. Imagine what a horror world Vedic pure hinduism was... As an example (in the original Sanskrit), the supreme god vishnu as avatar Ram proclaims what needs to be done to the lower castes who happen to read or hear the holy Vedas and other mythical texts: "Tie them up in a public place and pour boiling oil into both their ears so they shall never hear again, and others shall learn from it". And as avatar Krishna, the supreme god silently witnessed the cutting of the finger of a lower caste who happened to be brighter than the brightest upper caste. As for hidden historical facts, there were unspeakable and numerous massacres between the upper castes who were the supporters of the different gods and goddesses in lieu of the vedas and other myths which speaks of numerous wars between the hindu gods and goddesses. The confusion is that there were and still are no honest translations of these myths mainly due to two reasons. One is that it is explicitly forbidden by the gods and goddesses that anyone other than from the upper castes should read or hear these. The second reason (which is the main reason) is the immediate heavy backlash and ridicule it would have invited from the Britishers, and would invite from the modern Indian masses. Hinduism and the mythologies thrive in India only because more than 90% of the population doesn't know about it (actually weren't allowed to hear or know) since vedic times. They only hear "lovely" cunning translations of the gurus or see only "lovely" TV serials or Bollywood films. There is nothing scientific in any of the vedas or puranas or bhagavadh geetha or any other texts. The only exception would be the Ayurveda collections which is the Sanskritised stolen knowledge of the Adivasis (ancient forest dwellers or were driven to the forests by the marauding massacre). It's all modern trickery. For an example just search for "thandaav" or "cosmic dance" and go through the modern "scientific" definitions. Well, actually it is originally the Vedic idiots' stupidity and misunderstanding of the Himalayan earthquakes, avalanches and snowstorms. They thought it was the supreme destroyer god shiv and his goddess wife pounding and dancing in their "unreachable heavenly kingdom" in the interiors of the Himalayas. Many of these stories have a lot in common with the Greek and Roman mythologies, but localised as Indian and to Indian conditions. The vedic trick is the "mantra" trick: repeat, chant, mantra many many times until it is memorized and seems to be the truth in the mind and repeat repeat mantra mantra chant chant always ... so that the mind has no opening for other things, or the mind doesn't have time for genuine doubts. Oh btw hasn't anyone noticed that it's only for already discovered/invented things that you hear and see these Vedic counter claims... nothing new or original or not yet discovered/invented is never claimed or proclaimed or announced.

55 points by monsterix 13y ago

I'm in a random mood, so here are random pi facts: Inscribe a circle within a square. Choose random points within the square. As the number of points approaches infinity, the number of points that fall within the circle divided by the total number of points, times four, is pi. http://mathfaculty.fullerton.edu/mathews//n2003/montecarlopimod.html http://mathfaculty.fullerton.edu/mathews//n2003/montecarlopi... Memorizing something like the first 8 digits of pi is enough to calculate the circumference of the Earth to within a few inches, iirc. (My memory is bad, so it's probably 8 +/- 2 digits.) The quadrillionth bit of pi is zero. http://www.daemonology.net/papers/ http://www.daemonology.net/papers/ And keeping in spirit with the post, here's a pi chant: http://pi.ytmnd.com/ http://pi.ytmnd.com/

hzay 13y ago
I don't think you can calculate the circumference of the Earth to within a few inches that easily because earth's topology isn't perfectly smooth. It has ups and downs all over.
- fizx 13y ago
  And is significantly bulgy around the equator due to rotation. Calling BS.
  - philhippus 13y ago
    Not BS, take the equator as the circumference and a weighted average between sea level and the highest point on that line for the constant circular path and you'll have a measurement relative to pi.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Right. It is undefined.

roywiggins 13y ago

Wikipedia is not infallible but it says Sanskrit sources had one or two digits of pi: "In India around 600 BC, the Shulba Sutras (Sanskrit texts that are rich in mathematical contents) treat π as (9785/5568)2 ≈ 3.088. In 150 BC, or perhaps earlier, Indian sources treat π as sqrt(10) ≈ 3.1622." Anyway, the source the linked article cites is http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html which notes It must be pointed out that these sutras given by Tirtha Maharaja are created by the author himself, as stated in the introduction to his book, "Vedic Mathematics" (published posthumously) and are therefore not actually Vedic. These mathematical sutras are Vedic only in the sense that they are inspired by the Vedas in the mind of one dedicated to the Vedas. Thus the title "Vedic Mathematics" is not correct.

kissickas 13y ago

Doesn't this give the value of pi if you don't put the decimal point before the first number? I mean you could say it represents pi*10^32, right? Incidentally, I used the same technique to memorize some (fewer) digits pi in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system

waps 13y ago
This looks like a hoax. If you look at the decoding ring, it's more complex than the message is in the first place. There are even duplicates in their decoder ring. Sa means 4 different numbers, and 7 duplicates in their decoder ring. Using their decoder ring (using the first "meaning" of any number, I get (text, value according to their decoding, value from pi approximation) : [('go', 3, 3), ('pi', 1, 1), ('bha', 4, 4), ('gya', 'UNKNOWN', 1), ('ma', 5, 5), ('dhu', 4, 9), ('vra', 'UNKNOWN', 2), ('ta', 1, 6), ('srngi', 'UNKNOWN', 5), ('so', 5, 3), ('da', 3, 5), ('dhi', 4, 9)] It's close, sure. But not better than other random stuff. In "lorem ipsum" text, translating a->1, b->2,... you find 3141(391491322514) at position 170 onwards. And the collected works of william shakespeare (as downloaded at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/100/pg100.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/100/pg100.txt) contain the following "PI approximations" (encoded as above): 3 => 290159 occurences 31 => 116402 occurences 314 => 7913 occurences 3141 => 3970 occurences 31415 => 1650 occurences 314159 => 39 occurences 3141592 => 8 occurences 31415926 => 0 occurences Shakespeare must have been a closet mathematical genius ! (Hmmm, I guess he lived after the discovery of Pi, ... oh well, still makes the point I guess) Even the bible contains actual approximations to pi (for example the surprisingly accurate 22/7). It even makes sense that it does. For a lot of history the bible was effectively the only book available for a large percentage of the population (and even then, often not directly). It seems the authors knew that and included tons of relevant stuff. It contains descriptions of how "large" buildings can be built (large by medieval standards, of course). Including textual descriptions of plans for things like churches. It contains details of how to make agriculture work, when to sow, when to harvest, when to switch between grain and animals, when to ... to make land productive. We still use the 7-year land rotation rule on today's farms. Given that the bible clearly was meant to be a sort of "civilization in a single (if massive) book", it makes sense that intuitive descriptions for pi would be one of the things found in there. Perhaps the same is true for the vedas ? Maybe I'm putting the horse before the cart here. The situation could be reversed as well. Assuming a religion gets of the ground at all, it's survival depends on how well it's subjects do. So it's only natural that the religions that grow huge in some way things like the (approximate) value of Pi, and stuff like making agriculture work. And like in the real world you have different flavors of survival. Building, breeding, growing and defense clearly weighed heavily on the bible, vedas and buddhist texts (all of those books, for example, heavily favor not counterattacking an enemy that comes and fights for plunder, merely to let plunder run out and let the attacker starve), whereas conquest, plundering and looting predominate, for example, the quran or the original mongol religion (those religions focus on things like plunder, remaining mobile (e.g. absurd punishments for doing things to horses), and very strict rules about not directly attacking other religions (only their power on the ground). They all have rules about recruiting new cannon fodder (ie. promises of plunder for anyone who joins the religion, making it everyone's duty to recruit new members, ...). Islam actually contains rules that bear a resemblance to a multilevel marketing scheme. If you bring new members, you get a share of their loot for a while). "Growing" religions are vulnerable when they reach a large size, because at some point the borders can't expand while the population keeps growing. "Attacking" religions have the same problem any predator population does : they can only grow by destroying other populations, never by themselves. They survive as tiny inactive pockets, every now and then blowing up exponentially only to die off just as fast soon after, leaving enormous devastation (to read about this in nature, read about the history of wildlife management, or about what happened in Australia, or for a less extreme example American national parks). Maybe we should just look at religions as just another form of life. Not "really" alive, but certainly making a huge difference in the world. (Yes, I've read Jared Diamond's books). If a religion did not imitate a real-world survival technique it simply wouldn't survive. So there probably have been a lot of alternate versions, just almost no surviving ones.

baby 13y ago

so learn sanskrit first, learn their numeral equivalence, then you can learn pi! In all seriousness, I've always wondered how I could learn Pi. I've seen people assimilating a word to each double digits. Then make a story out of those words. But first you'd have to learn exactly 100 associations. Anyone knows of another technique ?

intull 13y ago

How can ka mean 1 or 0, ta mean 1 or 6, da mean 3 or 8, etc ?? Some sounds have multiple numbers associated with it!

deepuj 13y ago
Could be that they are different Sanskrit characters without similar notations in English?
fnbr 13y ago
I presume it's a tonal language (like, say, Chinese), where words have different meanings depending on the gone that they are said in.
- witty_username 13y ago
  No, it's just that there are different sounds that transcribe to the same letter in English. (aspirated th versus th (th in thirst)).
swatkat 13y ago
They differ in the way they sound; they're actually different letters. Check this consonant table, there are two "ta", one in row 3 and the other in row 4: http://www.languagereef.com/consonanttable.php?lang=SANSKRIT http://www.languagereef.com/consonanttable.php?lang=SANSKRIT This video shows their pronunciation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8GhoAIAtt4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8GhoAIAtt4 This structure is same in all Indian languages.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jeswin 13y ago

This is going to test HN's tolerance for myths and pseudo-science, but then it's a Sunday. "It has a self-contained master-key for extending the evaluation to any number of decimal places." is not going to convince many people here. There are many alternate views on the origin of this verse itself. The one I find most believable, is that this is a fairly recent fabrication [1]. There is nothing to suggest that we had this level of accuracy that far back. For instance, how was this arrived at? Methods? None. But much later, _in the 5th century AD_, Aryabatta used a simpler expansion for which we actually have some evidence. Just like most other religious texts, the Vedas don't stand up to modern science and rigor. You'll see plenty of revivalist material on the web; many here in India hold it in high regard. In my view, its lasting significance has been the role in dividing India into castes. From the priests to the serfs, a system that continues to hurt even today. [1]: http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poem-gopi-bhagya-madhuvrata http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poe...

unmole 13y ago
Hear, hear! Was about to post the same link.
s-topper 13y ago
The verse 'gopi bhagya' basically follows Katapayadi system[0]. Earliest known usage of Katapayadi system was in 683 AD. That verse is from a 1965 book called "Vedic Mathematics" by Bharati Krishna Tirtha Maharaja[1]. The Quora blog you linked has issues with terminologies and timelines of this specific "Vedic Mathematics" book - such as calling these mental calculation techniques and tricks as Vedic even though there are no references to them in Vedas[2]. This is more of a political matter ;) And, it's already pointed out in the article linked by OP[3]. I'm quoting it here: It must be pointed out that these sutras given by Tirtha Maharaja are created by the author himself, as stated in the introduction to his book, "Vedic Mathematics" (published posthumously) and are therefore not actually Vedic. These mathematical sutras are Vedic only in the sense that they are inspired by the Vedas in the mind of one dedicated to the Vedas. Thus the title "Vedic Mathematics" is not correct. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_%28book%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_%28book%29 [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Krishna_Tirthaji#Mathematics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Krishna_Tirthaji#Mathem... [3]http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/vedic-mathematics.html

unmole 13y ago

A bit of background on the verse: http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poem-gopi-bhagya-madhuvrata http://vedicmathmyth.quora.com/The-misconceptions-of-the-poe...

vog 13y ago

I find the "real" pi poems more interesting, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology#German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology#German

curiousDog 13y ago

Noped out of that. Considering the recent string of these Nationalist, feel Good posts, it's about time they're autobanned. I'm Indian myself and I've done quite a bit of study on this topic.Vedic mathematics is rooted in ignorance and a disregard for proofs. It's pretty much a way for nationalists (which intensified after the british conquest) to appease and make a billion people feel good about their history. In short, it's pretty much bullshit. What Ramanujan did was math, not this hindutva propaganda crap. Next thing you know, you'll start hearing about astrology and how it's a Vedic science.

eklavya 13y ago
I would like to know what you think about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan Nearly all of his findings were without proof, so what are you trying to imply here? And about astrology, they did know about the Arundhati twin star system, so they did know something. While you are at it, blow your minds and lookup the fact that they gave a measurement of speed of light in Mahabharata. It's not about nationalism. No offense, I don't know you but you kind of sound like all those Indians who just have to look down on everything Indian.
- curiousDog 13y ago
  I think we both understand where I was coming from with the Ramanujan thing. Regarding the Mahabharata, same story. how did they find it out? Why wasn't the methodology given with proof? Why didn't they put more effort into understanding it's properties? Do you have a source to the exact line in the early scripture? Otherwise, it just sounds like something that was slipped in during the translation process. None taken. Personally, I believe that if you're vehemently "proud" of your country and heritage, you havent accomplished much else in life thus far. I don't look down upon Indians, only worried that pseudoscience like this is a dent to credibility and only belittles and overshawdows the great work that's being done today/will be done in the future
  - eklavya 13y ago
    I think you do not understand why I mentioned Ramanujan. He said in his own words that mathematical facts just came to him while dreaming from a god. Since there is no methodology given for his findings he is a crook, right? As for early scriptures, suppose after 5000 years if the current civilization is no more and the future generations get hold of a book with no mathematical proofs but astounding facts which clearly state the technological advancements of our time, they should just call it "pseudoscience". Yeah, right. Personally I believe that if somehow you are proud of only the things YOU have done, you have got way too many problems of your own to take care of. The fact that you couldn't google a simple fact says a lot about your "achievements/accomplishments" too. Here you go http://alishekh.blogspot.in/2009/05/speed-of-light-in-rig-veda.html http://alishekh.blogspot.in/2009/05/speed-of-light-in-rig-ve... It's pretty simple Sanskrit, it's not even riddled, it's plain Sanskrit. If you understand even a little Sanskrit (I do) the translation will make sense. Of course you could trust the author of the article too for having done a good job in translating and explaining. And just so you know that guy who has written this seems to be a Muslim, so zero benefit in advancing the said "propaganda".

negamax 13y ago

As an Indian. I would request fellow Indians (who else is upvoting this?) to not encourage such posts. There's enough superstition already in the country. Let's not encourage it. Let people join and learn modern mathematics and sciences and make them study ancient texts as leisure but let's not shout there are hidden codes and blah in them.

vishkrishram 13y ago

This looks like part of the smokescreen trickery since the times of Swami Vivekananda who succeeded in fooling the Britishers with sugar-coated and watered-down sanskrit (to hide unpleasant and perverse facts), or even bastardised Sanskrit (to mean anything). After gaining insights and never-before knowledge through English, and Western education the cunning gurus (continued till today) then claimed "hey this is all said before in our holy books". Actually in some of the poorer regions of India people are taught that the atom bomb is made from a recipe in the Vedas by chanting some incomprehensible sanskrit mantras... there are even some "modern scientific" websites dedicated to it (search for it). Another typical trickery example (apart from sugar-coating and bastardising sanskrit) to be aware of is "loka samastha sukhino bhavadhu" etc.; actually there is nothing like that in any of the mythical books, it is a cunning trickery similar to taking the words "Harry Potter", "of", "Voldemort", "son", "is", "the", from the series and then saying "Harry Potter is the son of Voldemort". The truth is that Hindu mythologies, Hinduism and the Vedic age destroyed India and its greatness which was indeed great as evidenced from the Harappa and Dravida (atheist) civilisations. Even though post independent upper caste historians conveniently teaches us that the Muslims and Britishers destroyed India, the truth is hidden in the historical words of prince king Budha whose time was before the Muslims or Britishers. Even a Nepalese prince was woken up from his princely comfort at the sight of unspeakable vedic cruelty, massacres and perverse culture. Imagine what a horror world Vedic pure hinduism was... As an example (in the original Sanskrit), the supreme god vishnu as avatar Ram proclaims what needs to be done to the lower castes who happen to read or hear the holy Vedas and other mythical texts: "Tie them up in a public place and pour boiling oil into both their ears so they shall never hear again, and others shall learn from it". And as avatar Krishna, the supreme god silently witnessed the cutting of the finger of a lower caste who happened to be brighter than the brightest upper caste. As for hidden historical facts, there were unspeakable and numerous massacres between the upper castes who were the supporters of the different gods and goddesses in lieu of the vedas and other myths which speaks of numerous wars between the hindu gods and goddesses. The confusion is that there were and still are no honest translations of these myths mainly due to two reasons. One is that it is explicitly forbidden by the gods and goddesses that anyone other than from the upper castes should read or hear these. The second reason (which is the main reason) is the immediate heavy backlash and ridicule it would have invited from the Britishers, and would invite from the modern Indian masses. Hinduism and the mythologies thrive in India only because more than 90% of the population doesn't know about it (actually weren't allowed to hear or know) since vedic times. They only hear "lovely" cunning translations of the gurus or see only "lovely" TV serials or Bollywood films. There is nothing scientific in any of the vedas or puranas or bhagavadh geetha or any other texts. The only exception would be the Ayurveda collections which is the Sanskritised stolen knowledge of the Adivasis (ancient forest dwellers or were driven to the forests by the marauding massacre). It's all modern trickery. For an example just search for "thandaav" or "cosmic dance" and go through the modern "scientific" definitions. Well, actually it is originally the Vedic idiots' stupidity and misunderstanding of the Himalayan earthquakes, avalanches and snowstorms. They thought it was the supreme destroyer god shiv and his goddess wife pounding and dancing in their "unreachable heavenly kingdom" in the interiors of the Himalayas. Many of these stories have a lot in common with the Greek and Roman mythologies, but localised as Indian and to Indian conditions. The vedic trick is the "mantra" trick: repeat, chant, mantra many many times until it is memorized and seems to be the truth in the mind and repeat repeat mantra mantra chant chant always ... so that the mind has no opening for other things, or the mind doesn't have time for genuine doubts. Oh btw hasn't anyone noticed that it's only for already discovered/invented things that you hear and see these Vedic counter claims... nothing new or original or not yet discovered/invented is never claimed or proclaimed or announced.