गणितसारसंग्रह (महावीराचार्य - प्रो. लक्ष्मीचन्द्र जैन सविस्तार हिन्दी अनुवाद सटीक)

गणितसारसंग्रह ७३
we are now receiving new light upon the subject of Oriental
mathematics, as known in another part of India and at a time
about midway between that of Āryabhaṭa and Bhāskara, and two
centuries later than Brahmagupta. The learned scholar, Professor
M. Raṅgācārya of Madras, some years ago became interested in
the work of Mahāvīrācārya, and has now completed its translation,
thus making the mathematical world his perpetual debtor; and I
esteem it a high honour to be requested to write an introduction
to so noteworthy a work.
Mahāvīrācārya appears to have lived in the court of an old
Rāṣṭrakūṭa monarch, who ruled probably over much of what is now
the kingdom of Mysore and other Kanarese tracts, and whose name
is given as Amōghavarṣa Nṛpatuṅga. He is known to have ascended
the throne in the first half of the ninth century A. D., so that we
may roughly fix the date of the treatise in question as about 850.
The work itself consists, as will be seen, of nine chapters like
the Bīja-gaṇita of Bhāskara; it has one more chapter than the
Kuṭṭaka of Brahmagupta. There is, however, no significance in
this number, for the chapters are not at all parallel, although certain
of the topics of Brahmagupta's Gaṇita and Bhāskara's Līlāvatī are
included in the Gaṇita-Sāra-Saṅgraha.
In considering the work, the reader naturally repeats to
himself the great questions that are so often raised:—How much of
this Hindu treatment is original? What evidences are there here
of Greek influence? What relation was there between the great
mathematical centres of India? What is the distinctive feature, if
any, of the Hindu algebraic theory?
Such questions are not new. Davis and Strachey, Colebrooke
and Taylor, all raised similar ones a century ago, and they are by
no means satisfactorily answered even yet. Nevertheless, we are
making good progress towards their satisfactory solution in
the not too distant future. The past century has seen several
Chinese and Japanese mathematical works made more or less
familiar to the West; and the more important Arab treatises are now
quite satisfactorily known. Various editions of Bhāskara have
appeared in India; and in general the great treatises of the Orient