Abstract
Factoring or finding divisors of a number does not appear as a subject of treatment in any early work on Hindu arithmetic. There are, however, reasons to believe that the ordinary method of factoring a number by successive division by 2, 3, 5, etc. was well known but being much too elementary was not considered suitable for inclusion in an arithmetical work. Even in Mahāvīrācārya’s (850 ad) voluminous Gaṇitasārasaṅgraha where we have explicit references to factorisation no rule has been stated for the purpose. Śrīpati (1039 ad) is probably the first Hindu writer who has formally dealt with the subject of factoring a number in his Siddhāntaśekhara. Besides stating the ordinary method based on successive division, he gives an additional method for factoring a non-square number by expressing it as a difference of two squares.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Hindustan Book Agency 2019 and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kolachana, A., Mahesh, K., Ramasubramanian, K. (2019). Hindu methods for finding factors or divisors of a number. In: Kolachana, A., Mahesh, K., Ramasubramanian, K. (eds) Studies in Indian Mathematics and Astronomy. Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7326-8_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7326-8_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7325-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7326-8
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)