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A: E Block, Central Secretariat, New Delhi, Delhi, India

Pingala Presents the First Known Description of a Binary Numerical System

Circa 500 BCE
statue of Pingala
Statue of Pingala, Attendant of Surya. Salt Hills, Southern Punjab. 5th-7th century. Beige Sandstone. Height: 43cm. (Source: http://asianart.com/eskenazi/pingala.html
(downloaded June 2001) )

In Chandaḥśāstra (also Chandaḥsūtra), the earliest known Sanskrit treatise on prosody,  “Pingala presented the first known description of a binary numeral system. He described the binary numeral system in connection with the listing of Vedic meters with short and long syllables. His work also contains the basic ideas of maatraameru (Fibonacci number) and meruprastaara (Pascal’s triangle.)”

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