Ananta(Sanskrit) - The Infinity .

            Sanskrit grammar and interpretation in ancient India were closely linked to the handling of high value numbers. Studies relating to poetry and metrics initiated sastragnaas or scientists to both arithmetic and grammar. Grammarians were just as competent at calculations as professional mathematicians. Indian sastragnaas or scientists, philosophers, astronomers and cosmographers — in order to develop their arithmetical, metaphysical and cosmological speculations concerning ever higher numbers — became at once mathematicians, grammarians and poets. They gave their spoken counting system a truly mathematical structure which had the potential to lead directly to the discovery of the decimal place-value system.

Negative numbers had been rejected as solutions of problems in early times. They were eventually admitted in Hindu practical mathematics through problems involving money transactions, since the idea of receiving and owing money was a simple and obvious one — a negative number could be interpreted as a debt. Objection to negative numbers continued up to the early 19th century. Negative numbers are the mirror image of positive numbers. The invention of Cartesian geometry brought the X, Y co-ordinates and numbers came to be represented on a graph. Today, the series of negative natural numbers go up to infinity.

In Indian mysticism, the concept of infinity and zero are very closely linked. In the Isavasya Upanishad, there’s a line: “Poornasya poornam aadaya poornameva visish-yate”. To mathematically explain this, we have to assume that the first poornam represents infinity and the second, zero. In Sanskrit, poornam means both full and zero. Indian mathematicians knew perfectly well how to distinguish between these two notions which are mutually contradictory and which are the inverse of each other. They knew that division by zero gave them infinity. The symbol for infinity is called the leminiscate. English mathematician John Wallis introduced this symbol for the first time in 1655. Hindu mythological iconography contains a similar symbol representing the same idea. The symbol is that of Ananta, the great Adisesha of infinity and eternity, which is always represented, coiled up in a horizontal figure of 8 just like the leminiscate.

The concept of infinity has always remained an enigma. The Taittiriya Upanishad says: yatho vacho nivartante, apraapya manasa saha — where mind and speech return (being) unable to comprehend. In Indian cosmology, Ananta refers to the Adisesha or the great serpent on which Lord Vishnu reclines, taking His yoga nidra or anantasayanam. A Tamil azhwar paasuram (verse) says that Ananta acts as an umbrella when Vishnu walks, as a simhasana (throne) when He sits, as sandals when He stands, and as a bed when He reclines.