Conscious Choice Seattle: Yoga + Math = Whiz Kids

January 2006 | Feature Story

Yoga + Math = Whiz Kids

Put down your calculators. Ancient Hindu sutras offer lightning-fast shortcuts to crunching numbers in India and, soon enough, here in the U.S.

By John Myers

MUMBAI, INDIA – Math instructor Vivek Astunkar barely caps his pen before 12-year-old Janhavi Shah calls out “one, three, two, one, six, double zero!” She has, in mere seconds, correctly answered Astunkar’s whiteboard challenge—multiply 1,120 by 1,180.

Unlike Dustin Hoffman in the film “Rain Man,” Janhavi cannot instantly count toothpicks dropped to the floor. In fact, her nine classmates—all normal, middle-class Indian youngsters—confirm her results just seconds later.

They’ve used a shortcut from Vedic math, an alternative approach to calculation that Indian ascetics may have devised more than 3,500 years ago. These yogic math techniques are mental exercises that can waylay the fear of numbers, build confidence and enhance creativity, says Astunkar.

That goes for kids and adults alike.

Vedic math is largely unknown in India, let alone the West. But that’s changing. A local newspaper recently counted more than 40 Bombay schools using it. Astunkar, alone, has tutored thousands of students, and supplies newspapers with weekly Vedic problems.

A few organizations such as MathVedics, which has franchises in California and Colorado, are pioneering the approach in America. It is not farfetched to imagine some enterprising American newspapers and websites will join in the numbers game.

“School is just studies. This is fun,” says Janhavi, who sits at the end of a couch sandwiched by peers in Astunkar’s small apartment, four floors up in one of New Bombay’s mid-rise buildings. It’s Sunday morning and the students are happy, even giggling, as they speed through multiplication problems that would make the average adult sweat.

Making math fun

Astunkar, an aeronautical engineer who left his software firm five years ago to teach Vedic math, excels at making it fun. Using a small whiteboard, he writes out problems for the kids to race through, afterwards explaining the Vedic techniques in a flash of scribbling.

He says the methods, derived from devotional Sanskrit verses called sutras and integral to yoga practices, should not replace classic math methods. But, he adds, the sutras offer students fresh, and ultimately faster, ways to calculate.

A Hindu holy man, steeped deeply in Sanskrit and math scholarship, marshaled Vedic math into the modern era. Followers of Bharati Krishna Tirthaji believe he discovered 16 sutras in a long-lost appendix to the Vedas, Hinduism’s most sacred religious texts. Using these verses, Tirthaji spent eight years (1911-18) reconstructing formulas that span math’s various realms, from basic arithmetic to advanced calculus.
Tirthaji enthusiasts claim the 16 sutras encompass all possible mathematical knowledge. But they’re left with precious little guidance from their guru. He supposedly wrote one book for each sutra and entrusted them to a disciple. Near the end of his life, however, the works mysteriously disappeared. Tirthaji obliged frantic devotees and rewrote the works from memory into one compressed volume, published posthumously in 1965 under the title Vedic Mathematics.

Average readers will find the book virtually impenetrable. The sutras, simple phrases loaded with meaning, like, “All from nine and last from 10,” and “By one more than the one before,” are spelled out but hardly illuminated.

The resulting math procedures are recorded but left largely unexplained, notes Astunkar.

“I have read a little last night and not understood a word,” says his student Janhavi. Her mother, a college professor of commerce, bought a copy out of curiosity.

Spirituality vs. test scores

But, for most Indians, the appeal of Vedic math has less to do with its spiritual and cultural roots and more to do with the intense competition facing students on college entrance exams, says Atul Gupta, author of The Power of Vedic Maths.

Gupta’s book skims over the underlying sutras, instead featuring more than 1,000 practice problems with detailed explanations of the math techniques themselves. During a workshop Gupta offered in November, all but one of the students were preparing for technical examinations in the spring. They were enrolled for the shortcuts.

Still, Gupta waxes poetically about the spiritual nature of Vedic math.

“The simplicity and the brilliance of the techniques will make you feel humble,” he says.
Of course, Vedic math is not without controversy. Many scholars say it’s neither “Vedic” nor “mathematics.”

Joining 15 math and Sanskrit scholars, Madhav Deshpande, a Sanskrit professor at the University of Michigan, argued as much in a signed letter sent to India’s national council on school curriculum. Advocates hope to add Vedic math to the national curriculum, which the critics characterize as arithmetic “tricks.”

“I believe as a Sanskrit scholar that whatever its intrinsic merits or lack thereof, the contents of ‘Vedic Mathematics’ have no historical connection with the Vedas,” says Deshpande.

Regardless of what Sanskrit scholars make of the Vedic connection, it is full steam ahead for Astunkar, Gupta and other Vedic math teachers who hope to spread the practice. The goal is not to get students mired in Sanskrit, but to get them excited about math, says Astunkar.

Recalling a student who found a way to expand a method for squaring numbers that end in 5 (see sidebar), Astunkar says, “With Vedic math, their hidden creativity just pops up.”

Thanks to Vedic math, cultural writer John Myers can instantly convert any price in rupees to dollars, astounding both chaiwallas and fellow travelers throughout India.

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