“The world owes most to India in the realm of mathematics, which was developed in the Gupta period to a stage more advanced than that reached by any other nation of antiquity. The success of Indian mathematics was mainly due to the fact that Indians had a clear conception of the abstract number as distinct from the numerical quantity of objects or spatial extension.”
A.L. Basham, Australian Indologist in The Wonder That Was India
Vedic mathematics has a misnomer. The name makes one think that this comes from one of the 4 Vedas, Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. These are the 4 true Vedas. But sometimes other ancient texts from the Vedic Age are mistakenly labeled as Vedas, a notable example being Ayurveda, which isn’t actually one of the Vedas. Rather, it is an ancient form of medicine, analogous to Vedic mathematics.
Vedic mathematics were first written thousand of years ago in the Ganita Sutras, texts that were, until the early 20th century, lost to time due to lack of translation. People ignored them because they couldn’t find any traditional mathematics in them. But it was the work of one man that started a whole cascade of events that popularized Vedic mathematics: Bharati Krishna Tirthaji.
A Sanskrit expert and expert mathematician, Bharati Krishna Tirthaji delved into the Ganita Sutras. After much translation and interpretation, he found that there was math to be had in the Ganita Sutras. It was just bad wording (just like SAT questions) that confused many. As such, he translated these confusing phrases into sutras in modern terms and in a way that people could understand. This is how Vedic mathematics started. Until next time…
Vedic Math for Kids 