ARYABHAT – THE MATEMATICIAN AND
ASTRONOMER
A Project Report
Submitted by
Akshith Reddy Gongireddy
In partial fulfilment of
CBSE Grade XII
IN
MATHEMATICS
AT
EMERALD INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
Venkatapura, Bairegowdanahalli Bus Stop, Sondekoppa Road,
Nelamangala, Bengaluru, 562123
2023-24
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that _______________________________________
of Grade XII, Emerald International School, Bangalore with Roll
Number __________________________________
has satisfactorily completed the project in Mathematics on
“ARYABHAT – THE MATEMATICIAN AND ASTRONOMER” in
partial fulfilment of the requirements as prescribed by the CBSE, in
the year 2023 - 2024.
Signature of the Signature of the
Teacher In- Charge Candidate
Signature of the Signature of the
Principal External Examiner
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I warmly acknowledge the continuous encouragement and timely suggestions
offered by our dear Principal Mrs. Madhusmita Bezbaruah. I extend my hearty
thanks for giving the opportunity to make use of the facilities available in the
campus to carry out the project successfully.
I am highly indebted to Mrs. Arthi Abirami S for her constant supervision, for
providing us with necessary information and for supporting in the completion of
the project. I would like to express my gratitude for her kind co-operation and
encouragement.
Finally, I extend my gratefulness to one and all who are directly or indirectly
involved in the successful completion of this project work.
Signature of the candidate
INTRODUCTION
Aryabhata or Aryabhata I (476–550 CE) was
the first of the major mathematician-
astronomers from the classical age of Indian
mathematics and Indian astronomy. His
works include the Āryabhaṭīya (which
mentions that in 3600 Kali Yuga, 499 CE, he
was 23 years old) and the Arya-siddhanta.
For his explicit mention of the relativity of
motion, he also qualifies as a major early
physicist.
Time and Place of Birth
Aryabhata mentions in the Aryabhatiya that he was 23 years old 3,600
years into the Kali Yuga, but this is not to mean that the text was
composed at that time. This mentioned year corresponds to 499 CE,
and implies that he was born in 476. Aryabhata called himself a native
of Kusumapura or Pataliputra (present day Patna, Bihar).
Education
It is fairly certain that, at some point, he
went to Kusumapura for advanced studies
and lived there for some time. Both Hindu
and Buddhist tradition, as well
as Bhāskara I (CE 629), identify
Kusumapura as Pāṭaliputra,
modern Patna. A verse mentions that
Nalanda University
Aryabhata was the head of an institution
(kulapa) at Kusumapura, and, because the university of Nalanda was
in Pataliputra at the time, it is speculated that Aryabhata might have
been the head of the Nalanda university as well. Aryabhata is also
reputed to have set up an observatory at the Sun temple in Taregana,
Bihar.
FAMOUS WORKS OF ARYABHAT
Aryabhata is the author of several treatises
on mathematics and astronomy, though Aryabhatiya is the only one
which survives.
Much of the research included subjects in
astronomy, mathematics, physics, biology,
medicine, and other fields. Aryabhatiya, a
compendium of mathematics and astronomy,
was referred to in the Indian mathematical
literature and has survived to modern
times. The mathematical part of the
Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane
trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. It
also contains continued fractions, quadratic
equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of
sines.
The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is
known through the writings of Aryabhata's
contemporary, Varahamihira, and later mathematicians and
commentators, including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I. This work
appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta and uses the
midnight-day reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. It also
contained a description of several astronomical instruments:
the gnomon (shanku-yantra), a shadow instrument (chhAyA-yantra),
possibly angle-measuring devices, semicircular and circular (dhanur-
yantra / chakra-yantra), a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-
shaped device called the chhatra-yantra, and water clocks of at least
two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.
A third text, which may have survived in the Arabic translation, is Al
ntf or Al-nanf. It claims that it is a translation by Aryabhata, but the
Sanskrit name of this work is not known. Probably dating from the
9th century, it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of
India, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī.[10]
Aryabhatiya
Direct details of Aryabhata's work are known
only from the Aryabhatiya. The name
"Aryabhatiya" is due to later commentators.
Aryabhata himself may not have given it a
name. His disciple Bhaskara I calls
it Ashmakatantra (or the treatise from the
Ashmaka). It is also occasionally referred to
as Arya-shatas-aShTa (literally, Aryabhata's
108), because there are 108 verses in the
text. It is written in the very terse style typical
of sutra literature, in which each line is an aid to memory for a
complex system. Thus, the explication of meaning is due to
commentators. The text consists of the 108 verses and 13 introductory
verses, and is divided into four pādas or chapters:
1. Gitikapada: (13 verses): large units of time—kalpa, manvantra,
and yuga—which present a cosmology different from earlier
texts such as Lagadha's Vedanga Jyotisha (c. 1st century BCE).
There is also a table of sines (jya), given in a single verse. The
duration of the planetary revolutions during a mahayuga is
given as 4.32 million years.
2. Ganitapada (33 verses): covering mensuration (kṣetra
vyāvahāra), arithmetic and geometric progressions, gnomon /
shadows (shanku-chhAyA), simple, quadratic, simultaneous,
and indeterminate equations (kuṭṭaka).
3. Kalakriyapada (25 verses): different units of time and a method
for determining the positions of planets for a given day,
calculations concerning the intercalary month
(adhikamAsa), kShaya-tithis, and a seven-day week with names
for the days of week.
4. Golapada (50 verses): Geometric/trigonometric aspects of
the celestial sphere, features of the ecliptic, celestial equator,
node, shape of the earth, cause of day and night, rising
of zodiacal signs on horizon, etc. In addition, some versions cite
a few colophons added at the end, extolling the virtues of the
work, etc.
The Aryabhatiya presented a number of innovations in mathematics
and astronomy in verse form, which were influential for many
centuries. The extreme brevity of the text was elaborated in
commentaries by his disciple Bhaskara I (Bhashya, c. 600 CE) and
by Nilakantha Somayaji in his Aryabhatiya Bhasya (1465 CE).
Aryabhatiya is also well-known for his description of relativity of
motion. He expressed this relativity thus: "Just as a man in a boat
moving forward sees the stationary objects (on the shore) as moving
backward, just so are the stationary stars seen by the people on earth
as moving exactly towards the west."
MAJOR WORKS IN MATHEMATICS
1. Place value system and zero
The place-value system, first
seen in the 3rd-
century Bakhshali
Manuscript, was clearly in
place in his work. While he
did not use a symbol
for zero, the French
mathematician Georges
Ifrah argues that knowledge
of zero was implicit in
Aryabhata's place-value
system as a place holder for the powers of ten
with null coefficients.
However, Aryabhata did not use the Brahmi numerals.
Continuing the Sanskritic tradition from Vedic times, he used
letters of the alphabet to denote numbers, expressing quantities,
such as the table of sines in a mnemonic form.
The system for representing numbers which Aryabhata invented
and used in the Aryabhatiya consists of giving numerical values
to the 33 consonants of the Indian alphabet to
represent 1, 2, 3, ..., 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. The
higher numbers are denoted by these consonants followed by a
vowel to obtain 100, 10000, .... In fact, the system allows
numbers up to 1018 to be represented with an alphabetical
notation.
2. Approximation of π
Aryabhata worked on the approximation for pi (π), and may
have come to the conclusion that π is irrational. In the second
part of the Aryabhatiyam (gaṇitapāda 10), he writes:
caturadhikaṃ śatamaṣṭaguṇaṃ dvāṣaṣṭistathā sahasrāṇām
ayutadvayaviṣkambhasyāsanno vṛttapariṇāhaḥ.
"Add four to 100, multiply by eight, and then add 62,000. By
this rule the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 20,000
can be approached."
This implies that for a circle whose diameter is 20000, the
circumference will be 62832
i.e, π = = 3.14156, which is accurate to two parts in one
million.
It is speculated that Aryabhata used the
word āsanna (approaching), to mean that not only is this an
approximation but that the value is incommensurable
(or irrational). If this is correct, it is quite a sophisticated insight,
because the irrationality of pi (π) was proved in Europe only in
1761 by Lambert.
If obtaining a value this accurate is surprising, it is perhaps even more surpri
After Aryabhatiya was translated into Arabic (c. 820 CE), this
approximation was mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's book on
algebra.
3. Trigonometry
In Ganitapada 6, Aryabhata gives the area of a triangle as
tribhujasya phalaśarīraṃ samadalakoṭī bhujārdhasaṃvargaḥ
that translates to: "for a triangle, the result of a perpendicular
with the half-side is the area."
Aryabhata discussed the
concept of sine in his work by
the name of ardha-jya, which
literally means "half-chord".
He gave a table of sines
calculating the approximate
values at intervals of 90°/24 = 3° 45'. In order to do this he used
a formula for sin(n+1)x – sin(nx) in terms of sin(nx) and
sin(n 1) x. He also introduced the versine (versin = 1 -
cosine) into trigonometry.
4. Indeterminate equations
A problem of great interest to Indian mathematicians since
ancient times has been to find integer solutions to Diophantine
equations that have the form ax + by = c. This is an example
from Bhāskara's commentary on Aryabhatiya:
Find the number which gives 5 as the remainder when divided
by 8, 4 as the remainder when divided by 9, and 1 as the
remainder when divided by 7
That is, find N = 8x+5 = 9y+4 = 7z+1. It turns out that the
smallest value for N is 85. In general, diophantine equations,
such as this, can be notoriously difficult. They were discussed
extensively in ancient Vedic text Sulba Sutras, whose more
ancient parts might date to 800 BCE. Aryabhata's method of
solving such problems, elaborated by Bhaskara in 621 CE, is
called the kuṭṭaka (कुट्टक) method. Kuṭṭaka means
"pulverizing" or "breaking into small pieces", and the method
involves a recursive algorithm for writing the original factors in
smaller numbers. This algorithm became the standard method
for solving first-order diophantine equations in Indian
mathematics, and initially the whole subject of algebra was
called kuṭṭaka-gaṇita or simply kuṭṭaka.
5. Algebra
In Aryabhatiya, Aryabhata provided elegant results for the
summation of series of squares and cubes:
MAJOR WORKS IN ASTRONOMY
Aryabhata's system of astronomy was called the audAyaka system, in
which days are reckoned from uday, dawn at lanka or "equator".
Some of his later writings on astronomy, which apparently proposed a
second model (or ardha-rAtrikA, midnight) are lost but can be partly
reconstructed from the discussion in Brahmagupta's Khandakhadyaka.
In some texts, he seems to ascribe the apparent motions of the
heavens to the Earth's rotation. He may have believed that the planet's
orbits are elliptical rather than circular.
1. Motions of the Solar System
Aryabhata correctly insisted that the Earth rotates about its axis
daily, and that the apparent movement of the stars is a relative
motion caused by the rotation of the Earth, contrary to the then-
prevailing view, that the sky rotated. This is indicated in the first
chapter of the Aryabhatiya, where he gives the number of
rotations of the Earth in a yuga, and made more explicit in
his gola chapter:
In the same way that someone in a boat going forward sees an
unmoving [object] going backward, so [someone] on the equator
sees the unmoving stars going uniformly westward. The cause
of rising and setting [is that] the sphere of the stars together with
the planets [apparently?] turns due west at the equator,
constantly pushed by the cosmic wind.
Aryabhata described a geocentric model of the Solar System, in
which the Sun and Moon are each carried by epicycles. They in
turn revolve around the Earth. In this model, which is also found
in the Paitāmahasiddhānta (c. 425 CE), the motions of the
planets are each governed by two epicycles, a
smaller manda (slow) and a larger śīghra (fast). The order of the
planets in terms of distance from earth is taken as:
the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and
the asterisms.
The positions and periods of the planets was calculated relative
to uniformly moving points. In the case of Mercury and Venus,
they move around the Earth at the same mean speed as the Sun.
In the case of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, they move around the
Earth at specific speeds, representing each planet's motion
through the zodiac. Most historians of astronomy consider that
this two-epicycle model reflects elements of pre-
Ptolemaic Greek astronomy. Another element in Aryabhata's
model, the śīghrocca, the basic planetary period in relation to
the Sun, is seen by some historians as a sign of an
underlying heliocentric model.
2. Eclipses
Solar and lunar eclipses were scientifically explained by
Aryabhata. He states that the Moon and planets shine by
reflected sunlight. Instead of the prevailing cosmogony in which
eclipses were caused by Rahu and Ketu (identified as the
pseudo-planetary lunar nodes), he explains eclipses in terms of
shadows cast by and falling on Earth. Thus, the lunar eclipse
occurs when the Moon enters into the Earth's shadow (verse
gola.37). He discusses at length the size and extent of the Earth's
shadow (verses gola.38–48) and then provides the computation
and the size of the eclipsed part during an eclipse. Later Indian
astronomers improved on the calculations, but Aryabhata's
methods provided the core. His computational paradigm was so
accurate that 18th-century scientist Guillaume Le Gentil, during
a visit to Pondicherry, India, found the Indian computations of
the duration of the lunar eclipse of 30 August 1765 to be short
by 41 seconds, whereas his charts (by Tobias Mayer, 1752) were
long by 68 seconds.
3. Sidereal periods
Considered in modern English units of time, Aryabhata
calculated the sidereal rotation (the rotation of the earth
referencing the fixed stars) as 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1
seconds; the modern value is 23:56:4.091. Similarly, his value
for the length of the sidereal year at 365 days, 6 hours, 12
minutes, and 30 seconds (365.25858 days) is an error of 3
minutes and 20 seconds over the length of a year (365.25636
days).
4. Circumference of earth
He gave the circumference of the earth as 4 967 yojanas and its
diameter as 1581 yojanas. Since 1 yojana = 5 mile this gives the
circumference as 24 835 miles, which is an excellent
approximation to the currently accepted value of 24 902 miles.
