Pingala

The Indian scholar Pingala (circa. 5th-2nd century BC) used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables). This was very much similar to today’s Morse code, shown in the following picture. Kindly compare them:

Pingala used the above in his Chhandahshastra. The knowledge of binary numbers indicates his deep understanding of arithmetic. Binary repersentation has now become the basis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers.


Leave a Reply