Staal on Baudhayana

[Toke Lindegaard Knudsen]

Dear Dr. Wujystyk,

> Prof. Staal has written as follows (apparently this is not in print, I'm
> afraid):
> \begin{quote} Your memory is so excellent! However, that
> comment
> was made by Professor Sylvain Bromberger at MIT, a brilliant philosopher
> very close to the Chomsky crowd who had asked me how the Indians expressed
> the theorem. I wrote to Hayashi what he thought of it and he said it was
> certainly true that it could be interpreted thus but that the only
> interpretations he had come across were with regard to squares.
>
> It seems unlikely, then (though Takao is may be too careful a philologist
> to have taken that step!) that the Indians thought of other polygons or
> half-circles. Would be fascinating to find evidence. \end{quote}

Thank you very much for asking Professor Staal about this matter.
It certainly is interesting.  Some time back my supervisor asked
me if the ancient Indian formulation of the Pythagorean theorem
could be interpreted to include other figures than squares.  At that
time I did not know any Sanskrit, so I answered according to the
translations and studies with which I was familiar with.  None of
those works mention anything about the ancient Indian formulation
possibly being more general than the simple Pythagorean theorem.
 As Professor Staal remarks it would be fascinating to find
evidence of the ancient Indians having thought of other polygons or
arcs.

Sincerely,
Toke Lindegaard Knudsen