The Story Of Zero

No, it's not about the SRK's movie Zero, just to be clear.

No civilization worked without maths. It has been eminent from Indus valley civilization. But before the representation of the digit zero, a blank was left in its place.

Then came

Aryabhatta, and Shoonya.

A Genius, a scientist, a scholar, and a teacher.
And also, a man lost to History.

Let us Look into the life of Arybhatta, also the name of our first satellite.

Aryabhatta was born in 476 AD and died in 550 AD. He lived during the Gupta dynasty. He was born in Patalipurta, Bihar. He studied at the University of Nalanda. Later he became the head of the institution and had an observatory for his study. Bhaskara 1, another famous mathematician, was his student.

In that age, he explained heliocentric nature, why eclipses formed and various other problems.
However Western civilization claimed his foundings as their own. How? Arabs learned from Aryabhata, and it passed on to Western civilization, and that’s how we lost our importance.

At the Age of 23, he wrote Aryabhatiyam. Roughly 1600 years ago, Aryabhata had compiled maths. Sine table, trigonometric table, area, algebra, quadratic equations- everything was available in his Aryabhatiyam. And he explained maths with Sanskrit!

He used alphabets, Sanskrit and not digits to code maths.

Aryabhatiyam

There were a total of 108 verses in his book divided into four chapters-

Gitikapad was all about time, the frame of reference.

Ganitapad covered mensuration, arithmetic, geometric progressions .

Kalakriyapada had a method of determining planets for a given day, different units of time.

Golapada explained zodiac signs of the horizon

Still, most of his work has been lost. That’s the problem with history, what we know is all because of preservation. We don’t know the whole truth. Arya Siddhanta containing astronomical computations, has been lost to history.

Some of his famous works, rather unrecognized works were- place value system, zero, the approximation of pie up to 5 digits, area of a triangle by trigonometry, indeterminate equations, algebra, astronomy, eclipses, heliocentrism, sidereal periods, and even calendars.

Before Nicholas Copernicus, Aryabhatta had mentioned that our Earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around. But he has lost to history.

Sad isn't it, not being acknowledged?