ABSTRACT
The geometric principles expounded in the Sulbasutras (800-500 BCE) have often been considered to mark the beginning of mathematics in the Indian subcontinent (Seidenberg, 1975; Staal, 2008). This collection of sutras codify directions for constructing sacrificial fires, including rules for the complex configuration of ritual altars. The bird-shaped Agnicayan altar, consisting of five layers of two hundred bricks each, with the bricks being of square, rectangular or triangular shapes of various sizes, is considered by F. Staal to signal the beginning of geometry proper in South Asia (Staal, 2008). It has been dated by him to about 1000 BCE as some of the mantras that are concerned with the consecration of bricks occur in the earliest Yajurveda Samhita, the Maitrayani. The absence of any
recorded tradition of geometric knowledge predating these sutras have led some scholars to suggest a West Asian origin for the onset of mathematical thinking in India. However, the discovery of the archaeological remnants of the Indus Valley civilization in parts of Pakistan and northwestern India over the course of last century has revealed a culture having a sophisticated understanding of geometry which predated the Sulbasutras by more than a thousand years. It is difficult to ascertain whether there was any continuity between the geometry practised by the Indus civilization and that used by the later Vedic culture; however, it is not impossible that some of the earlier knowledge persisted among the local population and influenced the sulbakaras (authors of the Sulbasutras) of the first millennium BCE.
