310 HINDOO MATHEMATICS. 



have been a man of profound thought and of extensive 

 knowledge. However ancient, therefore, any book may be 

 in which we meet with a system of trigonometry, we may 

 be assured that it was not written in the infancy of the 

 science. We may therefore conclude, that geometry must 

 have been known in India long before the writing of the 

 Siirya Siddhanta. Professor Piayfair, speaking of the In- 

 dian rule for computing sines, wiiich is certainly very in- 

 genious, says, " It has the appearance, like many other 

 things in the science of those Eastern nations, of being 

 drawn up by one who was more deeply versed in the sub- 

 ject than may be at first imagined, and wlio knew much 

 more than he thought it necessary to communicate. It is 

 probably a compendium formed by some ancient adept in 

 geometry for the use of others who were merely practical 

 calculators." 



The earliest notices which reached Europe concerning 

 the Hindoo mathematics came, we believe, from an inge- 

 nious English mathematician, Reuben Burrow. Residing 

 in India, and taking a lively interest in every thing con- 

 nected with the history of his science, he was led to collect 

 oriental manuscripts, some of which in the Persian lan- 

 guage, accompanied with an interlined translation into Eng- 

 lish, he sent to his friend the late Isaac Dalby, Professor 

 of Mathematics in the Royal Military College. These 

 were communicated to various persons in this country about 

 the j-ear 1800. 



In the year 1813 Edward Strachey of the East India 

 Company's service pubhshed a translation from the Persian 

 of the Bija Ganita (or Vija Ganita), a Hindoo work on al- 

 gebra, written by Bhascara Acharya, who lived about the 

 year 1150 of the Christian era, and who, besides this book, 

 had composed other mathematical treatises, particularly the 

 Lilavati, a work on arithmetic and practical geometry. 

 These books, composed originally in Sanscrit, had the 

 highest reputation in India, and were translated into differ- 

 ent languages. The Lilavati was translated, by order of 

 the Emperor Akbar, into Persian, on account, as Fyzee the 

 translator says, of the wonderful arts of calculation which 

 it contained. The Vija Ganita was also translated into 

 Persian in the year 1634, and it was from this Mr. Strachey 

 made his English translation. 



