Virahanka
Also called: Virahanka-Fibonacci sequence · Topic: Gupta Empire and the Classical Age · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 3 "Empires and Kingdoms: 6th to 10th Centuries"
Meaning
Virahanka was an Indian scholar of prosody (the study of poetic metres, meaning the rhythm patterns of verse). He lived in c. 7th–8th century CE. While counting how many metres could be made from short and long syllables, he found the number series 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… In this series each number is the sum of the two before it. He described it centuries before the Italian mathematician Fibonacci, so it is now often called the Virahanka-Fibonacci sequence. It shows how Indian mathematics grew out of poetry and language study.
Example
Say a short syllable takes 1 beat and a long syllable takes 2 beats. Count the ways to fill 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 beats. The answers are 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8. Each answer is the sum of the two before it. Virahanka set out this rule in his work on metres.
Don't confuse with
- Fibonacci: an Italian mathematician who wrote about the same series in c. 1202 CE. That is several centuries after Virahanka.
Related concepts
- Aryabhata
- Aryabhatiya
- Hindu-Arabic numerals
- Bakhshali manuscript
- Surya Siddhanta
- Varahamihira
- Bhaskara I
- Kalidasa
- Abhijnanashakuntalam
- Meghaduta