The Science of the Shulba: A Study in Early Hindu Geometry c7.42

c7.42

We are equally uncertain about the time of Sundararāja. This much we are sure that he lived before the fourth quarter of the sixteenth century of the Christian era. For it appears from the post-colophon that the copy of the manuscript of his commentary on the *Āpastamba Śulba* now in the possession of the State Library of Tanjore (No. 9160) was made in Saṁvat 1638 (=1581 A.D.), and that in the Government Collection of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Saṁvat 1645 (=1588 A.D.). Sundararāja is found to have quoted from Dvārakanātha Yajvā's commentary on the *Baudhāyana Śulba* a few passages dealing with the transformation of a square into a rectangle having a given side, the correction to the Śulba formula for squaring the circle and *vice versa*, enlargement of an altar and certain other matters.