Part of our Dharm ka Vignan Series in Dainik Bhaskar, Hindi Edition
One of the important ways of propitiating the divine is through Homa.
The completion of the Homa ritual, “Poornahuti” takes place with the utterance of a sloka from the Upanishad, which is more than 5000 years old.
In simpler language,
If there is an explanation for the concept of what constitutes infiniteness and infinity, this seems close to it.
The sum and substance of this ritual and sloka, is the propitiation of Divine Nature with a clear understanding of the Infiniteness in the divinity and the cosmos.
This was repeated all over the land at the end of every Homa ritual which showcases to us that the infinity was not an obscure thought but one that was known, understood and repeated almost every day.
This knowledge of the concept of Infinite, along with the knowledge of the Infiniteness of the Universe, Space, Time and the Knowledge in it, seems to have been an underlying basis for dealing with Infinity as a number in Ganitham, Mathematics in India as evidenced by the 7th century CE, Mathematical text from India, Brahmasphuta Siddhanta of Brahmagupta and in Beejaganita of Bhaskaracharya, later in the 12th century.
Brahmagupta and his verse
The Indian knowledge system had also well understood the process of Creation of the Universe and had likened it with the concept of Hiranyagarbha, the golden, glowing, cosmic egg from which everything arose. Hiranyagarbha denoted the nothingness from which emanated the entire Universe.
Hence, the shape of an egg, as a dot, was chosen to denote Shunya, Nothingness, Zero, from which, everything, including every aspect of Mathematics also arose.
We hence referred to Creation as Anadi – Ananta. Meaning, one which has no beginning and no end, since either ends of it are infinite – infinitely so small that it is nothing and infinitely so big that it is not measurable. Neither ends are reachable or perceivable.
We therefore, also had another name for the Divinity Vishnu who permeates this entire infiniteness from the smallest to the largest. We called Him Aprameya implying
- one who cannot be measured, as the size of what He pervades is immeasurable
- one who cannot be perceived as the nature of His presence is unperceivable
- one who cannot be comprehended as the Knowledge He represents is unknowable.
No wonder that India gave both Zero and Infinity to the world including great Mathematicians such as Srinivasa Ramanujan whose birth anniversary we celebrate on 22nd December every year. For our times Srinivasa Ramanujan with his divine intuitive ways to solve problems represents the countable aspect in the Universe as well as the unperceivable subtle nature of the infiniteness and nothingness in the Universe too.
Indian Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920)
To conclude, the very deep understanding of the Cosmos and the knowledge of Mathematics in the Bharata Civilization spans all the way from an understanding of the property of Shunya, Zero to Ananta, Infiniteness in the Universe which forms the Dharma, nature of the Universe. From this, stems our Dharma, nature too.
