What Is Mathematics?

What does "Vedic Mathematics" have to do with ancient Indian mathematics?

• The Book "Vedic Mathematics"  by Jagadguru Swami Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaja (the Sankaracharya of Puri who passed away in 1960) has the following paragraph written by the General Editor: "...The question naturally arises as to whether the Sutras which form the basis of this treatise exist anywhere in the Vedic literature as know to us.  But this criticism loses all of its force if we inform ourselves of the definition of Veda given by Sri Sankaracharya himself as quoted below: " 'The very word Veda has this derivational meaning, i.e., the fountain-head and illimitable store-house of all knowledge.  This derivation, in effect, means, connotes, and implies that the Vedas should contain [italics mine, i.e. the General Editor] [Boldface, mine, i.e. Kamesh R. Aiyer] within themselves all the knowledge needed by mankind ... ' " It is the whole essence of his assessment of Vedic tradition that it is not to be approached from a factual standpoint but from the ideal standpoint viz., as the Vedas as traditionally accepted in India as the repository of all knowledge should be and not what they are in human possession.  [!!! exclamation marks mine] ... "... But this work of Sri Sankaracharya deserves to be regarded as a new Parisista by itself and it is not surprising that the Sutras mentioned herein do not appear in the hitherto known Parisistas." There are not too many ways to interpret the above, but surely there is no way to interpret it as saying that the concepts in the book (the foundational book for what people claim as "Vedic Maths") are ancient. One might argue that the General Editor has somehow mis-construed the author.  So, we turn to the Author's preface, which says (page xxxix of my softcover edition), " ... after eight years of concentrated contemplation in forest-solitude, we were at long last able to recover the long lost keys which alone could unlock the portals thereof. 9. And we were agreeably astonished ... that exceedingly tough mathematical problems ... can be easily and readily solved with the help of these ultra-easy Vedic Sutras ... contained in the Parisista (the Appendix-portion) of the Atharvaveda ..." Note that he does not say that he discovered the key to an existing known Parisista.  He says that after eight years of contemplation in solitude he discovered the key to Parisistas that he discovered in his mind by that same contemplation. We can ignore the minor issue that even in the ancient days of 1958 the "exceedingly tough math problems" that are addressed in the book would not be considered tough by contemporary mathematicians.  In 1958, proving Fermat's last theorem would have been considered tough; proving the four-color mapping theorem would have been considered tough; proving the twin primes conjecture would have been considered tough.  Nobody would have considered the problem of obtaining the recurring decimal representation of 1/19 to twenty decimal places "tough". Many of Ramanujam's conjectures were written down in a state of complete obsessive focus -- he claimed the mother goddess Bhavani appeared to him and dictated the formulae.  But he did not have to go into a forest to contemplate to come up with his equations/theorems.  And even the simplest of Ramanujam's conjectures is much much harder than all of the Sutras in Vedic Mathematics. In conclusion, I would claim that what is presented as "Vedic Maths" is: 1) Not ancient 2) Not addressing problems considered hard by mathematicians 3) Have nothing to do with what we would consider the "Vedas" -- i.e., the known documents and their commentaries and extensions. i.e. not ancient, not Vedic, and not hard.

• Answer:

  Completely agree with you.  That book called "Vedic Mathematics" has nothing to do with Vedas, the methods are not general enough to be useful, and it does not contain any serious mathematics.  Also, some "proofs" it gives are bogus.