European scholars had long considered Greece the birthplace of mathematics & Geometry (Pythagoras theorem etc.), and this in spite of the ancient Greeks' own admission that they gained much of their knowledge from other civilizations, such as Egypt and Persia. Many developments that rightly belong elsewhere were thus falsely attributed to the Greeks, whose importance as preservers of other cultures' innovations is as least as great as their importance as innovators per se.

A perfect example of this sort of misattribution involves the so-called Pythagoras theorem, the well-known theorem which was attributed to Pythagoras who lived around 500 B.C.E., but which was first proven in Greek sources in Euclid's Geometry, written centuries later. What is not well understood is that this theorem was known to the authors of the Vedas, and was proved in Baudhayana's Shulva Sutra, which was composed several centuries before Pythagoras, and which might have been a source for Greek geometry, transmitted via the Persians who traded both with the Greeks and the Indians.

Math was not the only science in which the ancient Indians excelled. Various sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, linguistics and grammar were considered to be Vedangas, literally limbs or branches of the Vedas, that is, the knowledge which was necessary for the proper performance of the Vedic rites. One thing we might point out here is that the division between religion and science is not applicable to the Vedic context, wherein the two are seen as natural and necessary complements. Indeed, the very word Veda, derived from the verbal root vid, 'to know', with alternative meanings of 'to find or discover' and 'to be', can be literally translated as most generally "knowledge," or, more specifically, 'science', a word which is likewise derived from the Latin verb 'scire,' 'to know'. The Vedas, in short, include everything that their authors, writing thousands of years ago, considered worth knowing.

Knowledge of mathematics, and geometry in particular, was necessary for the precise construction of the complex Vedic altars, and mathematics was thus one of the topics covered in the brahmanas. This knowledge was further elaborated in the kalpa sutras, which gave more detailed instructions concerning Vedic ritual. Several of these treat the topic of altar construction. The oldest and most complete of these is the previously mentioned Shulva Sutra of Baudhayana, which proved Pythagoras theorem several centuries before Pythagoras.

The ancient Indians did not stop with geometry, but continued to develop advanced mathematical techniques. Aryabhata, for example, developed and solved in the fifth century C.E. complex algebraic and trigonometric problems which were neither conceived nor solved in Europe until over a thousand years later. The European developments, in turn, were dependent upon Indian works such as Aryabhata's  Aryabhatiya, which was transmitted by the Arabs to Europe, and translated into Latin in the thirteenth century. Such cultural debts of Europe to India, like the Pythagoras theorem, are not widely acknowledged, not due to any lack on the part of Indian scholarship but rather due to a lack on the side of European scholars, who were blinded by the cultural chauvinism characteristic of the colonial period. This is a darkness from which the West is only now beginning to awake.