The Science of the Shulba: A Study in Early Hindu Geometry c8.43

c8.43

The reference to the sacrificial altars and their construction is found as early as the *Ṛg-veda Saṁhitā* (before 3000 B.C.).¹ There is mention in that work of the "three places" of the Agni,² which doubtless imply the *Gārhapatya*,³ *Āhavanīya* and *Dakṣiṇāgni*. Though we do not find there any specific mention about the relative sizes and shapes of these altars we have nothing to doubt that they were, in any way, different from what we meet with in posterior *Brāhmaṇa*.⁴ Hence it seems that the problem of the squaring of the circle and the theorem of the square of the hypotenuse (at least in its simplest form) are as old in India as the time of the *Ṛg-veda*. They might be older still. For it has been shown by Oldenberg that those three fires are earlier than the *Ṛg-veda*.⁵