Asthana Kolahalam

Asthana Kolahalam is the title of two different Tamil books both dealing with elementary mathematics but with totally different contents.

One of them was published by Government Oriental Manuscripts Library (GOML), Madras (now Chennai) in 1951 with 167 pages and the other published by Saraswathi Mahal Library (SML), Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu in 2004 with 306 pages.

Both books are based on old palm-leaf manuscripts with the same title composed in the form of verses and both contain explanations and illustrative examples.

[1][2] The title "Asthana Kolahalam" may be literally translated as "assembly room (royal audience place) uproar" and the term "uproar" suggests making the audience happy, jovial and cheerful.

The topics covered in this detour include the history of the computations of the value of pi (incidentally, he mentions Sangamagrama Madhava's approximate value of pi also, namely the value 2827433388233/(9 x 1011) ), the various trigonometric functions, formula for the area of a circle, formulas for the surface area and volume of cones, cylinders, etc., formulas for the circumference and area of ellipses, Pythagorean theorem and several related geometrical problems.

Title page of "Asthana Kolahalam" published by Sarasvati Mahal Library in 2004
An extract from page 55 of GOML's "Asthana Kolahalam" showing Saṅgamagrāma Mādhava's value of pi