Pingala: Encyclopedia - Pingala

Pingala

Pingala (पिङ्गल) is the author of the Chhandah-shastra, the Sanskrit book on meters, or long syllables.

This Indian mathematician was from a region, that is now present day Kerala state in India. According to the Indian literary tradition lore, Pingala was the younger brother of the great grammarian Panini of the fifth century BC. Modern scholars have tended to place him two or three centuries later.

Pingala presents the first known description of a binary numeral system. He described the binary numeral system in connection with the listing of Vedic meters with short and long syllables. His work also contains the basic ideas of maatraameru (Fibonacci number) and meruprastaara (Pascal's triangle).

His book Chhandah-shastra contains the first known use of zero. He uses a dot (.) to indicate zero.

See also

• Indian mathematicians

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Pingala", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki