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Whish's showroom revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

S. Parameswaran
S. Parameswaran*
Affiliation:
2150 Center Avenue Apt. 21 A, Fort Lee, NJ 07024, USA
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Extract

Charles M. Whish (of the Madras establishment of the East India Company Civil Service) visited Kerala, in southern India, during the early part of the nineteenth century, and collected some antiquities. The information he could gather about these antiquities was summarised and the curious looking items were displayed in his “showroom”, an article entitled “On the Hindu quadrature of the circle and the infinite series of the proportion of the circumference to the diameter exhibited in the four Sastras, Tantra Sangraham, Yukti-Bhasa, Karana-Paddhati and Sadratnamala.” This paper was read at the Royal Asiatic Society in 1832 and published in 1835 in [12]. Sightseers who passed by Whish's “showroom” were unaware of the worth of its exhibits, and the explorative and organisational labours of Whish remained unrecognised for over a century. By the 1940s though, an occasional enthusiast would wander in and the specimens kept mere amazed them and roused their interest and enthusiasm. Gradually more people were drawn to the antiquities, until by the 1980s Whish's small showroom had become die nucleus of a substantial institution. In this article mere will be a tour of the showroom, and some of the information on me exhibits will be brought up to date.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 76 , Issue 475 , March 1992 , pp. 28 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1992

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