Contextualizing Playfair and Colebrooke 243
the Bija-Ganita and Lilavati of Bhaskara, 65 as well as Brahmagupta’s
(Colebrooke: ‘Brahmegupta’) Ganitadhyaya and Kuttakadhyaya (the
chapter entitled ‘Th e pulveriser’) (Colebrooke: Cuttacadhyaya ), the last two
as their name suggests being the mathematical sections of Brahmagupta’s
Brahmasphutasiddhanta. Without focusing too much on the antiquity of
these texts, Colebrooke saw his oeuvre as disclosing that the:
modes of analysis , and in particular, general methods for the solution of indetermi-
nate problems both of the fi rst and second degrees, are taught in the Vija-Ganita,
and those for the fi rst degree repeated in the Lilavati, which were unknown to the
mathematicians of the west until invented anew in the last two centuries by algebra-
ists of France and England. 66
Th e terrain of historical studies on Indian mathematics was being trans-
formed into a polemical one, with Colebrooke surreptitiously introducing
categories that the French Indologists had denied the Indian tradition:
typically for the fi rst time he speaks of ‘modes of analysis’, or the ‘general
methods for the solution of indeterminate problems’. Th e historians of
astronomy had previously advanced the idea that the Indians had no idea
of the generalizability of the methods they employed. In the absence of
such generalizability, how could it have been possible to extend the idea
of generalized methods dedicated to solving classes of problems in order
to extract the diff erent ‘modes of analysis’? Th e intention here is not to
paint Colebrooke’s construction as the diametrical opposite of that of the
French historians of science that provided a context to his eff ort. On the
contrary, Colebrooke’s project is naturally marked by a deep ambivalence.
Th e ambivalence arises from the fact that he attempted to draw the char-
acterization of Indian mathematics away from the binary typologies of
the history of science that were already set in place. According to these
typologies Indian mathematics was characterized as algebraic and prag-
matic while European mathematics was geometric and theoretical (deduc-
tive). Since the British Indologists were not mathematicians by profession
they lacked mathematical legitimacy amongst the network of historians
of mathematics and deterred his ability to create a new vocabulary. Th is
also explains why Playfair was so important to the Indological enterprise.
He was a mathematician of repute who endowed the Indological accounts
with authority.
65 I have given here the contemporary English spellings of the names of Sanskrit books and
scholars and removed the diacritics. Colebrooke himself spelled the Bija-Ganita as Vija-Ganita
and Bhaskaracharya as Bhascara Acharya.
66 C1817: iv (emphasis added).