Zero to Infinity in Indian Mysticism

[Guest guest]

Dear Mr Rajagopalan,

 

Hope by now you must have read your above article already published in the

SPEAKING TREE on Sept 23rd, TOI all editions. It was good to talk to you

while I was in Pune. Incidently, whar is your telephone # in Pune. From Oct

17th to 20th we are doing a lecture series of one of our prestigious

authors, ROY EUGENE DAVIS (Kriya Yogi), A Direct Disciple of Paramhamsa

Yoganandji. The lecture theme of Roy Davis will be

 

HOW TO PRACTISE MEDITATION FOR PERSONAL BENEFITS & SPIRITUAL

GROWTH

 

Besides Pune he will be lecturing at the following places :

 

!) New Delhi : Oct 2nd to 7th; Local contact # 410-5484 / 648-6862 /

641-3403 / 643-9205

2) Kolkata : Oct 8th, 9th & 10th; Local contact # 247 2346 / 280 6202 / 210

4105 / 98310-89033

3) Hyderabad : Oct 11th & 12th; Local contact # 626-3331 / 98480-34590

4) Bangalore : Oct 13th to 15th; Local contact # 654-2591 / 653-3729 /

659-2794

5) Pune : Oct 17th to 20th; Local contact # 448-6190 / 634-1592

6) Mumbai : Oct 21st to 29th; Local contact # 492-3526 / 498-2583

 

All the above different Group Members are invited & most welcome to

participate in the above events.

 

Regards

 

RP Jain

 

-

"Rajagopalan Iyengar" <mayuramtsr

"RP Jain" <mlbd

Cc: "MLBD Pune" <mlbdpune

Tuesday, September 10, 2002 7:33 AM

Zero, Infinity & Sanskrit Poetry

 

 

> Dear Mr Jain,

>

> I am sending herewith an article titled, "Zero,

> Infinity & Sanskrit Poetry" which you may find

> interesting.

>

> Ms. Narayani Ganesh mentioned in her e-mail dated Aug

> 30 asking me not to send any further article stating

> that she has a backlog of a good number of articles on

> Vedic Math. Accordingly, I have sent my articles only

> to the moderator Vedic Math and stopped copying these

> messages to Ms. Narayani.

>

> This is for your information.

>

> Sincerely,

> T S Rajagopalan

>

> ==================================================

>

> ZERO, INFINITY AND SANSKRIT POETRY.

>

> In the realm of Mathematics, zero and

> infinity are at the opposite poles of natural numbers.

> One is the origin and the other is the terminus.

> One is the inverse of the other. They are far away

> from each other, but in Indian mysticism they are very

> closely linked. Amongst the Sanskrit words for zero

> is "anantha" which literally means immense or

> "infinity". Anantha represents the great Aadi-Sesha,

> the great serpent on which Lord Vishnu is taking His

> Yoga-Nidhra. The words ambara, kha, gagana,shunya,

> aakaasha, Vishnupada and purna were also used to

> represent zero.

>

> ZERO AND SANSKRIT POETRY. In India, the use

> of zero and the place-value system has been a part of

> the way of thinking for so long that people have gone

> as far as to use their principal characteristics in a

> subtle and very poetic form in a variety of Sanaskrit

> verse.. As proof, here is a quotation from the poet

> Biharilal who in his Satsai, a famous collection of

> poems, pays homage to a very beautiful woman in these

> terms:"The dot (she has) on her fore-head increases

> her beauty ten-fold, just as a zero dot (shunya-bindu)

> increases a number, ten-fold.

>

> First of all it should be remembered that the dot

> the woman wears on her fore-head is none other than

> the tilaka, a mark representing for the Hindus the

> third eye of Shiva, that is the eye of knowledge.

> While unmarried girls wear a black bindu between their

> eye-brows by means of a non- indelible colouring

> matter, married women always wear a red bindu on their

> fore-heads . It is known that the bindu figures

> among the numerous numerical symbols with a value

> equal to zero, and is even used as one of the

> graphical representastions of this concept.

> This is a very clear allusion to the arithmetical

> operative property of zero in the place-value system,

> because, if zero is added to the right of a given

> number , the value of the number is multiplied by

> ten. Another quotation, taken from the Vasavadatta by

> the poet Subandhu ( a long love story, written in an

> extremely and elaborate language, swarming with

> word-plays, implications and periphrases) is given

> below.

>

> "And at the moment of the rising of the Moon

> With the darkness of the falling night,

> It was as if, with folded hands

> Like closed blue lotus blossoms,

> The stars had begun straightway

> To shine in the firmament (gagana)

> Like zeros in the form of dots (shunya-bindu)

> Because of the emptiness (shunyata) of the samsara,

> Disseminated in space (kha),

> As if they had been dispersed

> In the dark blue covering the skin of the Creator

> (Brahma),

> Who had calculated their sum total

> By means of a piece of Moon in the guise of chalk."

>

> Here the metaphor leaves the reader in doubt: the

> void (shunya)- which is placed in relation to the

> emptiness (shunyata) of the cycle of births and

> rebirths (samsara)- is also implied in its

> representation in the form of a dot (shunya-bindu), as

> an operator in the art of written calculation. These

> concepts were really a part of the way of thinking

> of the Hindus for a long time, for the subleties used

> in this way were understood and appreciated by the

> public of the time.

>

> To sum up,the Hindus, (much earlier and much

> better than all other countries) were able to unify

> the philosophical notions of void, vacuity, nothing,

> absence, nothingness, nullity etc. They started by

> regrouping them (from the beginning of the common era)

> under the single heading shunyata (vacuity), then

> (from at least the fifth century CE) under that of the

> shunyakha (the sign zero as empty space left by the

> absence of units in a given order in the place-value

> system) before recategorising them (well before the

> seventh century CE) under the heading of

> shunya-samkhya (the zero number). Once again this

> indicates the great conceptual advance and the

> extraordinary powers of abstraction of the scholars

> and thinkers of Indian civilisation. The contribution

> of the Indian scholars is not limited to the domain

> of Arithmetic; by opening the way to the generalising

> idea of number, they enabled the rapid development of

> algebra and consequently played an essential role in

> the development of mathematics and the exact sciences.

> It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of

> the Indian discovery of zero. It constituted a

> natural extension of "vacuity", and gave the means of

> filling in the space left by the absence of an order

> of units. It provided not only a word or a sign, but

> it became a numeral and a numerical element, a

> mathematical operator and a whole number in its own

> right, all at the point of convergence of all numbers,

> whole or not, fractional or irrational, positive or

> negative, algebraic or transcendental.

>

> ================END OF MESSAGE=====================

>

>

>

>

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