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Hasn't this been known for decades now? 'According to (Hayashi 2005, p. 363), the Śulba Sūtras contain "the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorea

Hasn't this been known for decades now? 'According to (Hayashi 2005, p. 363), the Śulba Sūtras contain "the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorean Theorem in the world, although it had already been known to the Old Babylonians.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics I remember being taught that pythagoras probably got his math from the indians who possibly got it from mesopotamia.

random314 5y ago
The sulabha sutras are from 550BC and these discoveries are over 1000 years older. Pythagorean triplets have been discovered in Babylon in this time period before, but only as a list of triplets. Here we see its use in land surveys i.e. being applied in the marketplace. Another aspect of the sulabha sutra is that the statement can be interpreted as being applied only to isosceles right angle triangles. If this is true, the sutras don't really state the Pythagoras theorem because the isosceles 45 degree hypotenuse case is trivial. From geographical constraints it is unlikely Pythagoras obtained it from India. Pythagoras is however known to have stated multiple times that the greatest center of learning is in Egypt (Alexandria??) and one must travel there. So one possible transmission route is Babylon->Egypt->Greece. But all of this is wild speculation.