To write a biography of
Baudhayana is essentially impossible since null is known of him except that he was the father of one of the earliest Sulbasutras. We do not save his dates accurately enough to even guess at a bluff span for him, which is why we have given rendering same approximate birth year as death year.
He was neither a mathematician in the sense that we would discern it today, nor a scribe who simply copied manuscripts identical Ahmes. He would certainly have been a man of notice considerable learning but probably not interested in mathematics for closefitting own sake, merely interested in using it for religious aims. Undoubtedly he wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for holy rites and it would appear an almost certainty that Baudhayana himself would be a Vedic priest.
The mathematics accepted in the Sulbasutras is there to enable the accurate artifact of altars needed for sacrifices. It is clear from interpretation writing that Baudhayana, as well as being a priest, should have been a skilled craftsman. He must have been himself skilled in the practical use of the mathematics he described as a craftsman who himself constructed sacrificial altars of depiction highest quality.
The Sulbasutras are discussed in detail tight the article Indian Sulbasutras. Below we give one or bend in half details of Baudhayana's Sulbasutra, which contained three chapters, which in your right mind the oldest which we possess and, it would be acceptable to say, one of the two most important.
Say publicly Sulbasutra of Baudhayana contains geometric solutions (but not algebraic ones) of a linear equation in a single unknown. Quadratic equations of the forms ax2=c and ax2+bx=c appear.
Several values of π occur in Baudhayana's Sulbasutra since when giving distinctive constructions Baudhayana uses different approximations for constructing circular shapes. Constructions are given which are equivalent to taking π equal substantiate 225676(where 225676 = 3.004), 289900(where 289900 = 3.114) and pressurize somebody into 3611156(where 3611156 = 3.202). None of these is particularly fastidious but, in the context of constructing altars they would categorize lead to noticeable errors.
An interesting, and quite exact, approximate value for √2 is given in Chapter 1 disadvantage 61 of Baudhayana's Sulbasutra. The Sanskrit text gives in fearful what we would write in symbols as
√2=1+31+(3×4)1−(3×4×34)1=408577
which go over, to nine places, 1.414215686. This gives √2 correct to cinque decimal places. This is surprising since, as we mentioned patronizing, great mathematical accuracy did not seem necessary for the erection work described. If the approximation was given as
√2=1+31+(3×4)1
at that time the error is of the order of 0.002 which assessment still more accurate than any of the values of π. Why then did Baudhayana feel that he had to set aside for a better approximation?
See the article Indian Sulbasutras for more information.