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Ganita Bharati

Published in Association with Bulletin of The Indian Society for History of Mathematics

Current Volume: 45 (2023 )

ISSN: 0970-0307

Periodicity: Half-Yearly

Month(s) of Publication: June & December

Subject: Mathematics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/GB

Online Access is Free for Life Member

250

The “Hundred Fowls” Problem in the Gaṇitasārasaṅgraha of Mahāvīrācārya and Some New Perspectives on the “Kuṭṭaka”

By : Catherine Morice-Singh

Page No: 153-191

Abstract
Our main goal in this paper is to analyze the two rules for solving “hundred fowls” type of problems described in Mahāvīrācārya’s well-known Gaṇitasārasaṅgraha. This will be done based on two manuscripts that Prof. M. Rangacharya consulted to prepare his edition and translation of the text, in 1912, and which are still available at the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Centre – Chennai (Madras). One of the manuscripts contains a running commentary in a medieval form of Kannada that is particularly useful for clarifying the steps of the algorithms. It allows us to see how Rangacharya, in an unusual way, deviated for the first example from the solution given in the manuscripts and provided his own solution instead. It will also allow us to appreciate the uniqueness and originality of Mahāvīrācārya’s second rule. We are fortunate that four well-known Sanskrit texts propound independent rules for this type of problems and give as illustration an identical example involving the buying of four species of birds. This is a rare instance that can help us revise previous understandings regarding the meaning of technical terms such as kuṭṭaka and kuṭṭīkāra – usually considered as synonyms and translated as “pulverizers” – and suggest new perspectives.

Author:
Catherine Morice-Singh : c/o Laboratoire SPHERE, 8 Rue Albert Einstein, Bâtiment Olympe de Gouge. Université Paris Cité, F-75013 Paris, France
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/GB.2022.44.2.2

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