Art and Culture with Devdutt What is India’s contribution to the Pythagorean theorem?
Known as the Pythagorean theorem, we are usually told that a Greek philosopher named Pythagoras discovered it around 500 BCE. But the real history is far more interesting and far more complicated than that. This geometric truth was discovered independently by several ancient civilizations, each arriving at the same insight through their own practical needs. India’s contribution, recorded in a set of ancient texts called the Sulvasutras, is genuine and impressive. But it was not the first. To understand the history of this geometry, we need to place the contribution of Baudhayana, the author of Sulvasutras, alongside the achievements of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Greece, rather than simply declaring India to be the first or the greatest. The oldest recorded evidence from Mesopotamia The oldest recorded evidence of the Pythagorean relationship does not come from Greece or India. It comes from Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq, where a highly organised civilisation of scribes and accountants left behind thousands of clay tablets.
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