The Sushruta Samhita (सुश्रुतसंहिता) is a Sanskrit redaction text on surgery. The original work is attributed to Sushruta, likely a historical physician from the 6th century BC Varanasi,^[1][2][3] although the text as preserved dates to the 3rd or 4th century AD. It is one of three foundational texts of Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine), alongside the Charaka Samhita and the medical portions of the Bower Manuscript.^[4] The original text however is lost and modifications and edited versions are currently available (Ruthkow IM (1961) Great Ideas in the History of Surgery, pp. 57. Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company. in Anatomy in ancient India: a focus on the Susruta Samhita Journal of Anatomy 2010)
The Sushruta Samhita, in its current form, contains 184 chapters and description of 1120 illnesses, 700 medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources and 57 preparations based on animal sources.^[1] The text discusses surgical techniques of making incisions, probing, extraction of foreign bodies, alkali and thermal cauterization, tooth extraction, excisions, and trocars for draining abscess draining hydrocele and ascitic fluid, the removal of the prostate gland, urethral stricture dilatation, vesiculolithotomy, hernia surgery, caesarian section, management of haemorrhoids, fistulae, laparotomy and management of intestinal obstruction, perforated intestines, and accidental perforation of the abdomen with protrusion of omentum and the principles of fracture management, viz., traction, manipulation, appositions and stabilization including some measures of rehabilitation and fitting of prosthetics. It enumerates six types of dislocations, twelve varieties of fractures, and classification of the bones and their reaction to the injuries, and gives a classification of eye diseases including cataract surgery.
The text was translated to Arabic as Kitab-i-Susrud in the 8th century.

Contents

• 1 Contents
  • 1.1 Surgical procedures described
• 2 Authorship
• 3 Medieval and modern reception
• 4 See also
• 5 References
• 6 Bibliography

The Legend of Sushruta

Aryabatta

Mathematics

Place value system and zero

The place-value system, first seen in the 3rd-century Bakhshali Manuscript, was clearly in place in his work. While he did not use a symbol for zero, the French mathematician Georges Ifrah argues that knowledge of zero was implicit in Aryabhata'splace-value system as a place holder for the powers of ten with null coefficients^[13]

However, Aryabhata did not use the Brahmi numerals. Continuing the Sanskritic tradition from Vedic times, he used letters of the alphabet to denote numbers, expressing quantities, such as the table of sines in a mnemonic form.^[14]

Approximation of π

Aryabhata worked on the approximation for pi (), and may have come to the conclusion that  is irrational. In the second part of the Aryabhatiyam (gaṇitapāda 10), he writes:

caturadhikam śatamaṣṭaguṇam dvāṣaṣṭistathā sahasrāṇāmayutadvayaviṣkambhasyāsanno vṛttapariṇāhaḥ."Add four to 100, multiply by eight, and then add 62,000. By this rule the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 20,000 can be approached."

^[15]

This implies that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter is ((4 + 100) × 8 + 62000)/20000 = 62832/20000 = 3.1416, which is accurate to five significant figures.

It is speculated that Aryabhata used the word āsanna (approaching), to mean that not only is this an approximation but that the value is incommensurable (or irrational). If this is correct, it is quite a sophisticated insight, because the irrationality of pi was proved in Europe only in 1761 by Lambert.^[16]

After Aryabhatiya was translated into Arabic (c. 820 CE) this approximation was mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra.^[8]