The Science of the Shulba: A Study in Early Hindu Geometry c12.36

c12.36

This explanation is doubtless wrong. For at the final stage it begs the original problem itself. If the *Śulba* writers had really intended a simple arithmetical operation to be followed at the final stage of their method, as is supposed by Thibaut and Bürk, they could have, and very likely would have, directed to adopt it at the preliminary stage, without taking recourse to any kind of geometrical operations at all. The method of Āpastamba and Baudhāyana was of course geometrical, not arithmetical.¹