Person: Katyayana
Katyayana was the author of one of the Sulbasutras: documents containing some of the earliest Indian mathematics.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- It would also be fair to say that Katyayana's Sulbasutra is the least interesting from a mathematical point of view of the three best known Sulbasutras.
- We do not know Katyayana's dates accurately enough to even guess at a life span for him, which is why we have given the same approximate birth year as death year.
- Katyayana was neither a mathematician in the sense that we would understand it today, nor a scribe who simply copied manuscripts like Ahmes.
- Katyayana would have been a priest instructing the people in the ways of conducting the religious rites he describes.
- Katyayana lived in a period when the religious rites that the Sulbasutras were written to support were becoming less influential.
- People were turning to other religions and perhaps this lack of vigour in the religion at this time partly explains why several hundreds of years after Apastamba Katyayana adds little of importance to the Sulbasutra which he wrote.
Born about 200 BC, India. Died about 200 BC, India.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Ancient Indian, Origin India
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
