Preface

Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi was a man of many parts: phi beta kappa scholar and Harvard graduate, mathematics professor, historian, archaeologist, epigraphist, polyglot, numismatist, Sanskritist, Indologist, and Marxist: the list of his identities and his personæ is a long and varied one. Over a period of a little over 35 years, Kosambi built a reputation as a major (if somewhat maverick) thinker of modern India, and this reputation has largely remained intact over the years. Widely regarded as one of the founding figures of contemporary Indian historiography, Kosambi quantified numismatics and used statistical inference to inform the study of Indian history [1]. His contributions to Indology and the study of prehistory have been fundamental, and his translations of the poetry of Bhartrhari [2] are considered definitive. As it happens, while the historian, Indologist, and numismatist Kosambi has been written about and his articles and papers in those areas have been published in collections [3] and celebrated, much less has been done with regard to his contributions to mathematics and statistics. This is surprising for at least two reasons. Kosambi was first and last a mathematician in that his first independent paper and his last-known academic contribution were both in mathematics. Indeed, mathematics was the one constant and consistent preoccupation of his professional life: he says as much in the epilogue to his posthumously published autobiographical essay [4]. DDK’s first paper [DDK1] was written when he, then 22 years of age, was temporarily at the Banaras Hindu University in 1930, and his final work, a monograph on prime numbers [5], was submitted to publishers very shortly before his death at the age of 59, in 1966. It can be argued that his major contributions in other areas were moulded by his knowledge and style of mathematics—whether the