IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-81-322-1053-5_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

An Illustrated Introduction to Some Old Magic Squares from India

In: Combinatorial Matrix Theory and Generalized Inverses of Matrices

Author

Listed:
  • George P. H. Styan

    (McGill University, Department of Mathematics and Statistics)

  • Ka Lok Chu

    (Dawson College)

Abstract

In this article we consider old magic squares from India associated with 1. Daivajna Varāhamihira (505–587 AD) and his Bṛhat Saṁhitā [39]: magic perfume; 2. Khajuraho 945 AD: Sir Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893) [14]; 3. Dudhai (Jhansi district) early 11th century: Harold Hargreaves (b. 1876) [27]; 4. Ṭhakkura Pherū (fl. 1291–1323): Gaṇitasārakaumudī: The Moonlight of the Essence of Mathematics [1]; 5. Simon de la Loubère (1642–1729): Monsieur Vincent, Surat [3,15]; 6. Major-General Robert Shortrede (1800–1868) [16], Gwalior 1483 [11, (1842)]; Andrew Hollingworth Frost (1819–1907) [23], Nasik [17, (1877)]; 7. Nārāyaṇa Paṇḍita (fl. 1340–1400): Gaṇita Kaumudī [2, (1356)]; 8. Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan (1887–1920) [34,35,40,43]; Prasantha Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972). Magic squares were once part of occult philosophy, but more recently, however, they form part of recreational mathematics. For the past 50 years or so, they have been studied in a matrix-theoretic setting. Our main interest is in the history and philosophy of magic squares and the related magic matrices and in the related bibliography and biographies. We try to illustrate our findings as much as possible and, whenever feasible, with images of postage stamps and other philatelic items.

Suggested Citation

  • George P. H. Styan & Ka Lok Chu, 2013. "An Illustrated Introduction to Some Old Magic Squares from India," Springer Books, in: Ravindra B. Bapat & Steve J. Kirkland & K. Manjunatha Prasad & Simo Puntanen (ed.), Combinatorial Matrix Theory and Generalized Inverses of Matrices, edition 127, pages 227-252, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-81-322-1053-5_18
    DOI: 10.1007/978-81-322-1053-5_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-81-322-1053-5_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.