Acharya Shri Virasena Ji Maharaj | |
|---|---|
 Acharya Virasena | |
| Personal life | |
| Born | 792 CE |
| Died | 853 (aged 60–61) |
| Notable work(s) | Dhavala |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Jainism |
| Sect | Digambara |
| Religious career | |
| Predecessor | Aryanandi |
| Successor | Jinasena |
| Part of a series on |
| Jainism |
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Acharya Virasena (792-853 CE), [1] also spelt as Veerasena, was a Digambara monk and belonged to the lineage of Acharya Kundakunda. [2] He was an Indian mathematician and Jain philosopher and scholar. He was also known as a famous orator and an accomplished poet. [3] His most reputed work is the Jain treatise Dhavala . [4] The late Dr. Hiralal Jain places the completion of this treatise in 816 AD. [5]
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Virasena was a noted mathematician. He gave the derivation of the volume of a frustum by a sort of infinite procedure. He worked with the concept of ardhachheda: the number of times a number can be divided by 2. This coincides with the binary logarithm when applied to powers of two, but gives the 2-adic order rather than the logarithm for other integers. [6] [7]
Virasena gave the approximate formula C = 3d + (16d+16)/113 to relate the circumference of a circle, C, to its diameter, d. For large values of d, this gives the approximation π ≈ 355/113 = 3.14159292..., which is more accurate than the approximation π ≈ 3.1416 given by Aryabhata in the Aryabhatiya . [8]
