पाटीगणित (श्रीधराचार्य - प्राचीन संस्कृत टीका एवं प्रो. कृपाशंकर शुक्ल सविस्तार व्याख्या)

xxxviii INTRODUCTION
Rāṣṭrakûṭa king Amoghavarṣa Nṛpatuṅga, who reigned from
814-15 A.D. to 877-78 A.D., and had wished prosperity to
his rule, so he must have lived about 850 A.D. Dîkṣita, there-
fore, placed Śrîdharâcârya anterior to that date.
Subsequent writers such as Datta and Singh,¹ Sabal
Singh,² Baladeva Miśra,³ N. C. Jaina,⁴ etc., following Dîkṣita,
have placed Śrîdharâcârya before Mahâvîra. Datta and
Singh tentatively assigned him the date 750 A.D., which is
roughly midway between the dates of Brahmagupta (628
A.D.) and Mahâvîra (850 A.D.).
Sabal Singh⁵ expressed the possibility of Śrîdharâcârya
being anterior even to Brahmagupta but there is no chance
of such a possibility, because, as we have already seen, Śrî-
dharâcârya has quoted and criticised a rule of Brahmagupta.
(2) Weaknesses of Dîkṣita’s argument. Dîkṣita’s argument,
though generally accepted by his successors, is not very sound
as it is contradicted by the following facts :
(i) The hemistich, which Dîkṣita found ascribed to
Śrîdharâcârya in the manuscript consulted by him,
occurs in M. Raṅgâcârya’s edition of the Gaṇita-sâra-
saṅgraha as part of that work, and not as a quotation
from Śrîdharâcârya. It exactly fits in the context
and, at the same time, conforms to the metre of the
chapter wherein it happens to occur.
(ii) The hemistich being in the anuṣṭup metre there is
remote possibility of its being a quotation from Śrî-
dharâcârya. For the rules given in the available works
of Śrîdharâcârya, viz., the Pâṭîgaṇita and the Triśatikâ,
¹ See B. Datta and A. N. Singh, History of Hindu Mathematics, Part I,
Lahore (1935), Bibliography.
² See Sabal Singh, ‘Time of Śrîdharâcârya,’ Annals of the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute, Poona, Vol. XXXI (1950), pp. 267-272.
³ See Baladeva Miśra, ‘Śrîdharâcârya’, Kashi Vidyâpîṭha Rajata Jayantî
Abhinandana Grantha, Banaras (1946), pp. 110-114.
⁴ See N. C. Jaina, l.c., pp. 31-42.
⁵ l.c.