Biography of baudhayana mathematicians

To write a biography of Baudhayana is essentially impossible since nothing is known of him except that he was the author of one of the earliest Sulbasutras.

We do not know his dates accurately enough to even guess at a life span for him, which is why we have given the same approximate birth year as death year.

He was neither a mathematician in the sense that we would understand it today, nor a scribe who simply copied manuscripts like Ahmes.

Biography of mathematicians

He would certainly have been a man of very considerable learning but probably not interested in mathematics for its own sake, merely interested in using it for religious purposes. Undoubtedly he wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for religious rites and it would appear an almost certainty that Baudhayana himself would be a Vedic priest.

The mathematics given in the Sulbasutras is there to enable the accurate construction of altars needed for sacrifices. It is clear from the writing that Baudhayana, as well as being a priest