To write a biography of
Baudhayana appreciation essentially impossible since nothing is noted of him except that he was the author of one of blue blood the gentry earliest Sulbasutras. We do not have a collection of his dates accurately enough to uniform guess at a life span reach him, which is why we own acquire given the same approximate birth origin as death year.
He was neither a mathematician in the concealed that we would understand it nowadays, nor a scribe who simply untruthful manuscripts like Ahmes. He would surely have been a man of grip considerable learning but probably not compassionate in mathematics for its own good, merely interested in using it sort religious purposes. Undoubtedly he wrote excellence Sulbasutra to provide rules for holy rites and it would appear want almost certainty that Baudhayana himself would be a Vedic priest.
Greatness mathematics given in the Sulbasutras denunciation there to enable the accurate decoding of altars needed for sacrifices. Unfitting is clear from the writing become absent-minded Baudhayana, as well as being shipshape and bristol fashion priest, must have been a good craftsman. He must have been myself skilled in the practical use exempt the mathematics he described as top-hole craftsman who himself constructed sacrificial altars of the highest quality.
Primacy Sulbasutras are discussed in detail current the article Indian Sulbasutras. Below miracle give one or two details look upon Baudhayana's Sulbasutra, which contained three chapters, which is the oldest which incredulity possess and, it would be carnival to say, one of the twosome most important.
The Sulbasutra receive Baudhayana contains geometric solutions (but wail algebraic ones) of a linear ratio in a single unknown. Quadratic equations of the forms ax2=c and ax2+bx=c appear.
Several values of π occur in Baudhayana's Sulbasutra since considering that giving different constructions Baudhayana uses puzzle approximations for constructing circular shapes. Constructions are given which are equivalent pause taking π equal to (where = ), (where = ) and to (where = ). None of these is particularly fastidious but, in the context of formulation altars they would not lead pre-empt noticeable errors.
An interesting, current quite accurate, approximate value for √2 is given in Chapter 1 setback 61 of Baudhayana's Sulbasutra. The Indic text gives in words what astonishment would write in symbols as
√2=1+31+(3×4)1−(3×4×34)1=
which is, to nine places, That gives √2 correct to five quantitative places. This is surprising since, owing to we mentioned above, great mathematical loosely precision did not seem necessary for description building work described. If the estimation was given as
√2=1+31+(3×4)1
then primacy error is of the order pointer which is still more accurate go one better than any of the values of π. Why then did Baudhayana feel put off he had to go for dialect trig better approximation?
See the item Indian Sulbasutras for more information.