India still teaches the Pythagorean Theorem—a² + b² = c² at school. It credits this theorem to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, with a little caveat in NCERT books that states that maybe Baudhayana and Sulbha Sutra discovered it earlier. What isn’t told is this: Pythagoras never left behind a single mathematical manuscript.
In contrast, Rishi Baudhayana and Rishi Katyayana left a written manuscript called Sulbha Sutra. This Sulbha Sutra predates Pythagoras Theorem date by almost a 1000 years. And the calculations are not random and disconnected. It is embedded in a sacred Vedic manual on altar construction. This wasn’t just math. It was precision engineering for divine purposes. Hence, calling it a discovery by Pythagoras is not a mathematical revelation, but a civilizational erasure.
The global academic machinery that credited the Greeks for discoveries slowly discusses how they originated in Bharat’s Vedic roots. It’s time to set the record straight – the right angle and its calculations can be the Baudhyana Theorem or Katyayana Theorem, but never the Pythagorean Theorem!
Baudhayana, Katyayana, and the Truth of Pythagoraean Theorem
Long before Euclid, Archimedes, or Pythagoras walked the Earth, Baudhayana penned down the Sulba Sutras (800–740 BCE). The Vedic Sanskrit compilation includes the works of Manava (700 BCE), Apastamba (600 BCE), and Katyayana (200 BCE). Their work was not abstract theories but practical guides to building sacred fire altars or yagya kunda.
The Vedic rituals demanded precision and accuracy to ensure proper spiritual benefits. Even a minor error in measurements was seen as a disruption of cosmic harmony.
The Sulba Sutras of Baudhyana laid down complex geometric principles, including the first recorded versions of the right angle method. The genesis of the Pythagorean theorem, square roots, area calculation, and even approximations of pi up to 32 decimal places. But what makes Baudhayana’s work so revolutionary is that it was not just theoretical – it was applied mathematics, refined through ritual, practice, and precision.
His famous shloka:
दीर्घचतुरश्रस्याक्ष्णया रज्जु: पार्श्र्वमानी तिर्यग् मानी च यत् पृथग् भूते कुरूतस्तदुभयं करोति ॥
Implied meaning: The areas produced separately by the length and the breadth of a rectangle together equal the areas produced by the diagonal of the rectangle.
That’s the origin of Pythagoras’ Theorem in Sanskrit, a millennium earlier than what the West assigns to the Greeks. But the Katyayana Sulbha Sutra defines the exact Theorem of Hypotenuese. As per Samprity Das of the Academy of Research for Cultivation of Indian Science, the Right Angle Theorem of Hypotenuse is defined by Katyayana as follows –
The area of the square drawn on the diagonal (considering it as one of the sides) of a rectangle is equal to the sum of the areas of the square drawn separately on its breadth (considering it as one of the sides) and on its length(considering it as one of the sides).
Somehow, this is the explanation as taught in schools by NCERT with a mere mention of the two Rishis while using Pythagora’s to name the theorem/property.
Sulba Sutras: Ancient India’s Code of Precision
The Sulba Sutras were part of the Kalpa Vedanga. This is an auxiliary discipline of the Vedas dealing with rituals and geometry. These texts are manuals for constructing altars, which require an almost obsessive level of geometric accuracy.
For example, constructing a square altar with the same area as a circle (or vice versa) was a common problem. This required understanding the relationship between radius, area, and pi. Rishi concepts Baudhayana tackled with surprising finesse. He offered approximations of pi. Additionally, he gave a formula for the square root of 2 accurate to five decimal places (1.414216), something the Greeks would be unable to even write with their numeric system.
Rishi Baudhayana’s methods were constructive, using ropes and pegs – essentially India’s version of Euclidean compass-and-straightedge.
The Sulba Sutras also contain concepts like:
- The diagonal of a rectangle bisects it into two right-angled triangles.
- The midpoints of a square’s sides form another square half the size.
- Rules for constructing complex geometrical shapes—rhombuses, trapezoids, and more.
These aren’t just coincidental similarities. In fact, they are foundational theorems. And they predate Pythagoras by centuries if not millennia!
No Proof That Pythagoras Proved Anything
Let’s talk about the man to whom the Pythagoras Theorem is ascribed!
Most historians agree that no surviving work of Pythagoras exists. His ideas were passed down orally through a secretive religious cult. He may have been more mystic than a mathematician. According to the History of Mathematics Archive at the University of St. Andrews, there is no concrete evidence that Pythagoras ever proved the theorem named after him.
So, how did his name end up on a theorem India documented 1,000 years earlier?
The answer lies in Eurocentric gatekeeping. Western academia, especially during the colonial period, were unable to accept that slave Indians knew much more than the “White Master”. Thus, they dismissed or ignored Indian mathematical texts and actively propagated Greeks as originators of scientific temperaments. The Sulba Sutras were considered ritualistic or symbolic, they were science for a cause.
Hence, the white men either stole the original manuscripts to decode and call it their own.
Or distorted the date of the attributed ancient Indian discoveries to call them refinements of “original Greek Theories.”
But many mathematicians are coming forth to show how Rishi Baudhayana and others practiced maths and science to the Vedic Bharat. Many papers clearly outline the relationship between sides and diagonals in right-angled triangles, using geometrical constructions and algebraic logic – as stated by Rishi Baushyana and Rishi Katyayan. Pythagoras, by contrast, presents no written evidence, no proof, no drawings. Just a name and legacy built on borrowed wisdom.
Give Credit Where It’s Due -To Bharat
It’s time we ask the uncomfortable but necessary question: Why is it still called the Pythagorean Theorem?
Rishi Baudhayana and Katayana gave a written, practical, and versatile version of the Theorem of Hypotenuese. They embedded it in Vedic tradition not for fame but for spiritual precision and spirituality. Pythagoras, revered in the West, left no texts, no diagrams, no verifiable proof. Yet, Western academia gave him the crown.
Thus, the quest is not about mathematical justice – it is about decolonizing knowledge and reclaiming civilizational pride.
The roots of geometry, algebra, and so many other sciences, lie in the sacred soil of Bharat. Let the world acknowledge that the Pythagorean Theorem should either be the Baudhayana Theorem or the Katyayana Theorem. The mathematics was Indian. The silence was colonial. The time for due credit and acknowledgment is now.
References:
Section 2 , Chapter 1, KATYAYANA SULBA SUTRA -With English Translation, Explanatory Notes by S D. Kbadilkar https://ia601403.us.archive.org/9/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.133882/2015.133882.Katyayana-Sulba-Sutra_text.pdf
https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~weibel/COURSES/436/IndianMath.pdf
https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m309-01a/kong/sulbasutra_geometry.htm