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MATHEMATICS IN INDIA by Kim Plofker Princeton University Press, 2009, 357 pp. ISBN: 978-0-691-12067-6
Kim Plofker states the far-reaching aim of her book on the first page, where she writes: "For well over 2500 years, Sanskrit texts have recorded the mathematical interests and achievements of Indian scholars, scientists, priests, and merchants. Hundreds of thousands of manuscripts in India and elsewhere attest to this tradition, and a few of its highlights - decimal place value numerals, the use of negative numbers, solutions to indeterminate equations, power series in the Kerala school - have become standard episodes in the story told by general histories of mathematics. Unfortunately, owing mostly to various difficulties in working with the sources, the broader history of Indian mathematics linking these episodes still remains inaccessible to most readers. This book attempts to address that lack." Plofker succeeds in that any careful reader of this text will come away with a greater understanding of the history of mathematics in India, the difficulties in assembling that history, and the cultural context within which that history was made.
Mathematics in India begins by describing its historical setting and the role of mathematics in Sanskrit learning. The reader is cautioned that the religious and prosodie nature of Sanskrit texts and the fuzzy distinction between the sacred and the secular, even in technical areas,...