Talk:Aryabhata

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[edit] Birth

See the book on Aryabhatiya by Shukla and Sarma (Indian National Science Academy, 1976) that is clear that the Kerala birth has no evidence to support it. MarcAurel 17:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic translation section

The section said:

"The 8th century Arabic translation of Aryabhata's Magnum Opus, the Āryabhatīya was translated into Latin in the 13th century, before the time of Copernicus. Through this translation, European mathematicians got to know methods for calculating the areas of triangles, volumes of spheres as well as square and cube root, while it's also likely that Aryabhata's work had an influence on European astronomy."

Clearly, methods for calculating areas of triangles are at least as old as Euclid's Elements (~300 BC), probably much older. Similiarly, you can find methods for calculations of volumes of spheres and many other shapes in Archimedes work. Also, one of your sources (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Aryabhata_I.html) even states that it is widely believed that Aryabhata's expressions for the volume of spheres and pyramids was actually incorrect!

Also, while this isn't currently mentioned in this article, something I noticed in the source (http://www.dialogweb.org/Contribute/Bineesha%20project.htm), was the statement:

"According to him the period of one rotation of the earth is 23 hours 56 mn 4.1s while the modern value is 23 hours 56 mn 4.091s. His accuracy regarding this is amazing."

While I would agree that his accuracy is amazing, keep in mind that the value today is not exactly the same as what it was 1500 years ago. So, while his accuracy is very good, it is not actually correct to 1/10th of a second, as is implied by the article. Just a heads up if someone wants to add a statement about his length of the day to the article. Grokmoo 16:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trig Identity

The trig identity mentioned under Mathematics is not true. Can someone fix this?

I removed the offending line: "One of the trigonometric formulas Aryabhata developed was sin(n + 1)x - sin nx = sin nx - sin(n - 1)x - (1/225)sin nx." While I don't claim to know every trig identity in existance, this particular statement is patently untrue, and I am unable to find an obvious variation this is true. I also looked through quite a few tables of identites and was unable to find any statement similar to the above one. Worse still, in light of the double angle and similar formulas, I can't imagine that anything similar to this could possibly hold for arbitrary (I assume integer, although this is not stated) n.Grokmoo 04:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (see Etymology above)

This statement isnt very clear it appears to refer to an etymology heading that doesnt exist, I didnt want to change it tho just incase I had misundersood the meaning. --AjP 11:32, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heliocentrism

I admire the dedication of many Wikipedians to expanding coverage of science in different cultures. Most encyclopedias do a terrible job of this subject area. I'm just not sure all of it is grounded in reality--in particular, the many-times-repeated statement that Aryabhata's astronomy was "heliocentric." To most people, "heliocentric" means that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but it seems like something else is meant here. Can someone who has actually read his work explain what role the Sun had in his astronomy? Is it different from what Ptolemy did with the Sun in the Almagest? Also, I wonder about the statement that he thought the planets moved on ellipses. Not that it's false, but it could mean different things. Is there someone who can explain? Maestlin 22:58, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

$I n s e r t f o r m u l a h e r e$ == What kind of a sick language is that? ==

The article says that "Aryabhata [...] writes: chaturadhikaM shatamaShTaguNaM dvAShaShTistathA sahasrANAm AyutadvayaviShkambhasyAsanno vr^ttapariNahaH.", which is then translated into English. I'm wondering if I'm having some kind of problem with Image:My computer, or is that citation supposed to look like that? Shouldn't it be written on some other alphabet than the Roman one, for example the one that looks like this:

[edit] हिन्दुस्तान?

Now it looks like klingon to me, not like a natural language at all. --[[

User:Riojajar|Riojajar]] 19:41, 30 May 2006 (UTC) $I n s e r t f o r m u l a h e r e$

[edit] Perplexities...

I was looking for heliocentrism in wikipedia and I have found a lot of references to Indian astronomy: see heliocentrism, history of astronomy and Aryabhata. I have a deep respect for all civilizations, and I think that we have still to learn a lot on Indian astronomy, but I believe these texts are biased and with a number of errors. I limit myself to what concerns the relations with Greek astronomy, because admittedly I am not an expert in Indian astronomy. The first to propose the rotation of the Earth was Heraclides of Pontus (IV century BC); Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose the heliocentric system (III century BC). I have not found in academic sites that Aryabhata had the idea of an heliocentric system; if I understand well he simply calculated the relative distances of the planets from the Sun. It has to be taken into account that after Alexander the Great hellenistic science had a direct influence on Indian science, a fact which is well documented. As concerning Vedic quotations, they appear quite obscure to me... I suspect they have the same value as the claim that the Genesis anticipates the Big Bang theory, but maybe I am wrong... I think that in a page on the history of science such references should not be present. --Alcap 09:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello, while I appreciate your deep respect for all civilisations of known history, and I am not going to argue about Aryabhata, I have to mention that, that the earth rotates on its own axis, and that it revolves around the Sun, and EVEN the Heliocentric concept were FIRST mentioned in known history in some of the surviving Hindu texts known as the Shatapatha Brahmana and the Aitareya Brahmana, which according to even the most conventional scholars and Western historians date back to at least 1000 BC. I am sure the relevant page Heliocentrism would be of great help in enlightening you on that such texts mentioned above, and scientists like Yajnavalkya said these things amongst many others several centuries before the Greeks you named. Also, the Greeks who stayed back in the then India intermarried with the local population in a part of present-day Afghanistan region giving rise to the Bactrian Kingdom. While they were a great culture they did not really influence the whole of the then India but only a part of it.

Regarding Alexander the greek, Some of the less documented facts says that India is the only place where his soldiers rebelled ... of course due to "homesickness" :)Bharatveer 10:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

That's true! However the point here is not Alexander, but the hellenistic period which followed his death when Occidental and Oriental civilizations (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Indian) met and gave rise to an original culture. The civilizations which successively received this heritage (Indian, Arabic, and Renaissance Europe) had an extraordinary and rapid scientific progress. I stress that this is a great merit of these civilizations: think to the celebrated Romans, who never had an interest in science and had no scientist at all! But of course mathematics and astronomy existed before the Greeks, and I am sure that a lot remains to be discovered. My point is that one should try to report facts as accurate as possible and separate the history of science from a more general history of ideas which can be discussed elsewhere. For example, I am skeptical that Aryabhata could discover the ellipticity of planetary orbits, I do not think this was possible observationally (planetary orbits are nearly circular), and I agree with a previous comment suggesting that this "ellipticity" could mean something else. Anyway, I find Aryabhata a very fascinating scientist, he apparently was the most original astronomy of his time, and I hope that some expert will give us more explanations and possibly some translations of his works. --Alcap 11:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

"He states that ... the orbits of the planets are ellipses around the Sun". This is an extraordinary claim! I didn't see it anywhere alse. I think clear references on the source of this claim must be added. Dmitri Klimushkin.

[edit] Earth measurement

The article says: "Aryabhata was the first astronomer to make an attempt at ...", but the article on Erastothenes contradicts this. It states that Posidonius used Erastothenes' method 150 years later. It seems likely that this article is wrong, and that the sentence should be changed. His secondness (first after E.) does not seem that important, anyway. It would also be good if his method could be given. --LarsMarius 11:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gravitation?

Amartya Sen writes in "Identity and Violence" that Aryabhata proposed a model of gravitational attraction, but the article makes no mention of this. Is this an omission? If so, it seems like a major omission. --LarsMarius 11:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] value zero

aryabhatta discovered the value zero as null. he itroduced zero to the world. there is no where mention of it. can anybody with more knowledge on this subject please edit the page and add the relevant information

Use of zero predates Aryabhata. Aryabhata extensively used zeros. But He did not discover zero. This is a popular myth. Historically we have not found the inventors name yet. But there are arguments that 200 BC mathematician Pingala uses dot to mean zeros in his work Chandasutra.

70.64.7.251

[edit] relativity

See talk in Aryabhata's relativity principle for more details. MarcAurel 05:16, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I have removed that from this article again. Why do you want to perpetuate such a crazy claim? I look at the article without that, and I see a genius who was way ahead of his time. With that included, I am forced to wonder what else in the article is an exagerated claim. --EMS | Talk 23:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Pls take your own time for wondering.-Bharatveer 06:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I thought about editing the "relativity" section to present my won viewpoint, but quickly concluded doing so would violate both WP:NPOV and WP:POINT. However, the persistent reinsertion of that piece of garbage makes doing so tempting.

Will you people please get it through your heads that "relativity" means that there is no special rest frame of reference!!!? Aryabhata did not make any such claim. Instead he shifted the special rest frame from being the Earth to being the Sun and stars. I know that other writers have been claiming that Aryabhata's verses constitute a principle of relativity, but that does not make that claim true or even encyclopedic. I strongly counsel you all to let Aryabhata's words speak for themself. They show real genius, but this relativity claim makes those words look silly since thay do not at all support that claim. --EMS | Talk 06:37, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

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