MATH or MAGIC!

In 1911, a brilliant young Indian professor of mathematics, Venkatraman Sarasvati, threw aside a promising academic career as the faculty head of a new national college, and entered the forest ashram of the Shankaracarya of Shringeri, Mysore to fulfill a burning desire to research and unearth scientific secrets from the sacred texts of the Vedas.

The Vedas have long been acclaimed as the world's oldest and biggest storehouse of spiritual knowledge. The voluminous body of Vedic literature also encompasses various branches of the material arts and sciences: Sanskrit grammer, prosody, lexicography, astronomy, astrology, military science, medicine, surgery, architecture, sculpture, mathematics, engineering sciences, music, fine arts and more.

However these branches of Vedic arts and sciences were generally overlooked by mundane Indian academicians and scientists, who meekly swallowed whatever "theory" was dictated to them by their colonial masters, and showed little regard or inclination to conduct original study and research of the profound heritage of Vedic literature. The cryptic language of the Vedas was also a barrier to most scholars, it ensured that only the best of the intellectuals and the spiritually-inspired would be able to mine its hidden treasures.

Professor Venkatraman belonged to that rare creed, an accomplished scholar with deep conviction in the absolute truth of the sacred Vedic texts, and stood above and apart from the rest of the academic crowd. Born in Tinniveli, Madras, in 1884 to highly pious and learned parents (his father's name is Narasimha Shastri), he topped every examination in every subject in every class he took. In 1899, at age 16, he was awarded the title of "Sarasvati" by the Madras Sanksrit Association for his profiency in the language of the Vedas. In 1904, he took the external MA examinations of the American College of Sciences, Rochester, New York, in seven subjects -- Sanskrit, Philosophy, English, Mathematics, History and Science -- and scored top honours in all! This is reportedly a world record for academic achievement.

Unlike mundane academics who merely aped Western science and showed a biased, dishonest disregard for Vedic science, Professor Venkatraman had deep spiritual leanings and absolute faith in the truths of the Vedas. This spurred him towards his future calling as a revolutionary mathematician, preacher and religious leader of the country (he would go on to become the Shankaracarya of Govardhana Math, Puri). Unenlightened remarks on the Vedas from unenlightened academics only served to strengthen his resolve to take up the challenge and disprove them.

He wrote: "And the contemptuous or, at best patronising attitude adopted by some so-called orientologists, indologists, antiquarians, research-scholars etc who condemned, or light-heartedly, nay irresponsibly, frivilously and flippantly dismissed, several abtruse-looking and recondite parts of the Vedas as "sheer nonsense" or as "infant humanity's prattle", and so on, merely added fuel to the fire (so to speak) and further confirmed and strengthened our resolute determination to unravel the too long-hidden mysteries of philosophy and science contained in ancient India's Vedic lore..."

Professor Venkatraman performed tapas (austerities) and yoga in the forests of Shringeri to facilitate his research and contemplation. His endeavour was finally crowned with success when he made a breakthrough in deciphering revolutionary mathematical techniques from his research on the Vedic texts. He described the momentous occasion: "...after eight years of concentrated contemplation in forest solitude, we were at long last able to recover the long lost keys which alone could unlock the portals thereof."

However he did not claim any personal credit for his success. Instead he said that his findings were encapsulated in 16 Sanskrit sutras (and some corollary subsutras) that he attributed to Vedic sources: "We were agreeably astonished and intensely gratified to find that exceedingly tough mathematical problems (which the mathematically most advanced Western scientific world had spent huge lots of time, energy and money on and which even now it solves with the utmost difficulty after vast labour involving large numbers of difficult, tedious and cumbersome steps of working) can be easily and readily solved with the help of these ultra-easy Vedic sutras contained in the Parishishta (appendix) of the Atharva Veda in a few simple steps and by methods which can be conscientiously described as mere mental arithmetic."