Mahāvīra -Indian mathematician

The most celebrated mathematician of the ninth century AD is Mahaviracharya, well known as Mahāvīra (AD 817-875). Mahāvīra was a Jain by religion. He was born in Mysore, India and as a young man became familiar with the mathematics of southern India.

He was in the Royal Court of Karnataka Rastrakuta King, Amoghavarsha Nrpatunga who ruled from AD 815 to AD 874.

He wrote his work called ‘Ganita Sara Sangraha’ in AD 850. Ganita Sara Sangraha is te first book in the Indian mathematical tradition that confines its attention to pure mathematics.  This text contains nine chapters of about 1100 slokas dealing with arithmetic, algebra, geometry and mensuration.

The book is an ambitious attempt to summarize, improve upon and teach Indian mathematical knowledge as he understood it.

He provided methods for squaring numbers and determining the cube root of a number. He also gave a formula that approximately the perimeter and are of an ellipse.

Ganita Sara Sangraha served as a textbook in South India, where Vallabha and Varadaraja wrote commentaries on it and Pavaluri Mallana in translated it into Telugu.
Mahāvīra -Indian mathematician