Aryabhata · Mathematics
How a 23-year-old compressed the mathematics and astronomy of an age into one hundred and twenty-one terse Sanskrit verses - the aphoristic <em>sutra</em> form, and the alphabetic number notation Aryabhata invented to pack vast astronomical constants into a line of poetry.
You learned that the Aryabhatiya (c. 499 CE) sets out arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, and astronomy in 121 aphoristic verses across four chapters, and that Aryabhata invented an alphabetic numeral notation to encode large numbers. Explain the form of the work and why its brevity mattered.
Leads to Claudius Ptolemy.
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