Ancient Indian Patiganita and Arithmetic Operations

Abstract

It is a well known fact that in ancient India Mathematics was quite developed. The base of all mathematics was believed to be Arithmetic. Those days all calculations were done on a wooden plank called falak or pati. For big calculations it obviously had space limitations. According to Brahmgupta (628 AD), only a person who knew twenty Arithmetics operations and eight determinations was a true mathematician. In this article out of those twenty, main eight operations will be studied and we will see how they were done on a pati. We will also try to understand how they are different from European style of calculations.