Most meetings take place on Fridays starting at 9:30 and ending about 17:30. They all take place in the Bâtiment Condorcet; maps and directions can be found here.
Friday 11 January 2013 Room 483A Malevitch
Cultures of computation: elementary operations and fractions, session prepared by Agathe Keller, Alessandra Petrocchi, and Catherine Singh
In this session we examine how sources in the Indian subcontinent evoke elementary operations: what vocabulary was used for them, what rules were given to carry them out, on what quantities they were to be executed and how their execution can be reconstructed. The texts examined will be from commentaries on the Brahmasphuṭasiddhānta (628), the Gaṇitasārasaṃgraha (ca. 850) and the Gaṇitatilaka (11th century). Emphasis will be on what characterizes each commentator’s practice of computation, making it unique compared to others.
Friday 8 February 2013 Room 646A Mondrian
The Construction of Fortifications in Classical South Asia, session prepared by Mark McClish
This session will concentrate on the third chapter of the second book (or 21st topic) of the Arthaśāstra, a manual on statecraft (ca 100 BCE- 100 CE). We will read portions of the text dealing with the construction of fortifications that imply that computations and measures were carried out. The question of the relation of such computations with what is known from mathematical texts will be raised.
Friday 1 March 2013 Room 646A Mondrian
About measures, values and numbers in different kinds of Sanskrit sources, session prepared by Alessandra Petrocchi and Catherine Singh
This session will examine texts and commentaries providing measuring units, reflecting on the different cultures of measure and computation they testify to. The sources examined will concern commentaries on the Arthaśāstra (ca 100 BCE- 100 CE), the Gaṇitasārasaṃgraha (ca. 850), the Līlavatī and a cosmographical Jain text.
Friday 15 March 2013 Room 646A Mondrian
Loans and Interests in Sanskrit and Legal Mathematical texts, session prepared by Takanori Kusuba and S. R. Sarma
This session will examine rules concerning loans and interests in a series of mathematical texts ranging from the Āryabhaṭīya (499) to the Gaṇitakaumudī (ca first half of the XIVth century). Echoes with prescriptions on loans to be found in different law treatises (dharma-śāstra) will be evoked as well.
Apart from these public sessions of the workshop, sanskritists members of SAW will meet every Wednesday afternoon to discuss and prepare the coming sessions. If you are interested, please contact Agathe Keller, kellera {at} univ-paris-diderot {dot} fr