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The Vedic concept of infinity and infinitesimal system. (English) Zbl 1046.01004

Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (ed.) et al., History of the mathematical sciences. Based on the selected papers of the proceedings of the international conference, New Delhi, India, December 20–23, 2001. New Delhi: Hindustan Book Agency (ISBN 81-85931-45-3/hbk). 65-82 (2004).
This article, though written by an expert in the area, is a bad mixture of references to Vedas, Upanishads, Vedangas and post-Vedic books like Gita, Kapitthaka and so on extending upto the works of Bhaskara of 12th century AD. After reading the whole essay, one finds it difficult to comprehend what the author wants to communicate. Mixing Vedas and philosophy with Mathematics in a simplistic way as is given in the ‘Vedic functional’ – Dirac function representing the soul and so on – is, to say the least, childish – this has been extended to Fourier transforms etc., explaining the stanzas of Gita in an ‘appropriate’ way.
The author claims “we study in some detail the applications of infinity, infinitesimal systems and zero to mathematical sciences in ancient India and their impact on the development of other disciplines”.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1030.00025].

MSC:

01A32 History of Indian mathematics

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