The Great Ganesha

A recent article in the BBC brought to light something interesting. For about 700-800 years, starting in the first or second century BC, the Indians were sending pepper and other spices to the Romans from Muziris, a seaport located in Kerala. The spices would make their way to Egypt, from where they would then be sent to Rome. This trade route has also been called a Silk Road equal.

This is interesting because it adds support to the theory that mathematical developments in Kerala were exported to the West through this trade route. I’m referring to my two earlier posts [here and here] about how much of mathematics is purported to have been developed in India, and of course, how little credit is actually given. In that post, I mentioned that there is some evidence to show that calculus (amongst other mathematical concepts) was transmitted to Europe after being developed in Kerala. This was well before Liebniz and Newton were said to have developed it. In fact, the world’s first calculus text was developed in India, when Jyeshtadeva compiled the findings of the Kerala school in a text sometime in the 16th century. Given that this is the case, one might even speculate as to whether its a coincidence that calculus began making great strides at around this time in Europe. Well, maybe you can write that off as a crazy conspiracy theory, but I think its definitely worth taking a deeper look at exactly how much of calculus was developed in Kerala.

Math Teachers: This should be, at the very least, mentioned in any calculus class – college or high school. Most of the usual talk is about how there was a running feud between Newton and Liebniz, and so forth. Certainly, credit should go to them if they indeed developed these concepts on their own, but Kerala’s contributions should definitely be mentioned.

Desis: Instead of wasting your time on changing so-called “controversial” texts in school text books both, in India and the US (California) over so-called religious and colonial (non)issues, I think this is a more worthy endeavour to undertake. Wouldn’t you agree?

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