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Madhava's sine table


Madhava's sine table is the table of trigonometric sines of various angles constructed by the 14th century Kerala mathematician-astronomer Madhava of Sangamagrama. The table lists the trigonometric sines of the twenty-four angles 3.75°, 7.50°, 11.25°, ..., and 90.00° (angles that are integral multiples of 3.75°, i.e. 1/24 of a right angle, beginning with 3.75 and ending with 90.00). The table is encoded in the letters of Devanagari using the Katapayadi system. This gives the entries in the table an appearance of the verses of a poem in Sanskrit.

Madhava's original work containing the sine table has not yet been traced. The table is seen reproduced in the Aryabhatiyabhashya of Nilakantha Somayaji (1444–1544) and also in the Yuktidipika/Laghuvivrti commentary of Tantrasamgraha by Sankara Variar (circa. 1500-1560).

The image below gives Madhava's sine table in Devanagari as reproduced in Cultural foundations of mathematics by C.K. Raju. The first twelve lines constitute the entries in the table. The last word in the thirteenth line indicates that these are "as told by Madhava".

To understand the meaning of the values tabulated by Madhava, consider some angle whose measure is A. Consider a circle of unit radius and center O. Let the arc PQ of the circle subtend an angle A at the center O. Drop the perpendicular QR from Q to OP; then the length of the line segment RQ is the value of the trigonometric sine of the angle A. Let PS be an arc of the circle whose length is equal to the length of the segment RQ. For various angles A, Madhava's table gives the measures of the corresponding angles POS in arcminutes, arcseconds and sixtieths of an arcsecond.


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