[3][4][5] It covers the mathematics of the entire Indian subcontinent, including the modern areas of Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan,[5][6] but largely restricts itself to Sanskrit-language sources.
[2][14][15] Chapter two discusses the Vedic period from 1500 to 500 BCE, and the Shulba Sutras, religious instructional texts with significant mathematical content that are generally attributed to this period, although (as the book discusses) the absence of concrete astronomical observations within these texts has made it impossible to date them precisely.
[2][8][14] The third chapter covers the next 500 years, the early classical period of India, including the Bhutasamkhya system for describing numbers in words[12] and the invention of decimal place-value arithmetic (although Plofker suggests that the concept of zero may be an import from China),[16] connections between poetic meter and binary representations, early trigonometry, the works of Pāṇini and Pingala (arguably including the invention of recursion), mathematics in Jainism and Buddhism from this period, and possible Greek influences in trigonometry and astrology, which became one of the driving forces in later mathematics.
[2][5][6][10][15] Chapter four covers roughly the first millennium CE, and focuses mainly on Indian astronomy and geocentrism,[2][10][17] including the use of verse forms and interpolation to make memorization of trigonometric tables possible.
[7] It makes scholarship in this area accessible to a general audience,[18] for instance by replacing many Sanskrit technical terms by English phrases,[12] although it is "more of a research monograph than a popular book".
[9] Dominik Wujastyk calls it "path-breaking", "a classic work that should be owned and read by any scholar interested in the history of science in South Asia".
[5] Dominik Wujastyk suggests using it as the basis for university-level courses,[14] and Toke Knudsen highlights its value as reference material for researchers in this area.