The Mathematics Of The Gita

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5 days ago

The Gita is an intriguing work; there is much more hidden in its short review of the entire gamut of Indian darshana than is visible on a surface view
The Gita is a literary masterpiece. When I say literary, I am not including its remarkable exposition of the various Indian darshanas and their integration into a coherent vision, or its rhetoric, or the spiritual stepwise evolution experienced by the seeker who dives into it and adheres to it from beginning to end.
I bring to your attention an aspect of the Gita that is often ignored. Its symphonic structure conceived in 700 shlokas is an expression of what Sri Aurobindo called complex harmonies. Its structure of independent shlokas that are strung together through the various means of rhythm, internal referencing, refrains, and a didactic and dialogic process that builds up chapter by chapter creates a kaleidoscopic experience that is fluid, alive, and constantly fresh. My soon-to-be-released book The Literary Genius of the Gita explores this aspect of the scripture.
But there is another more esoteric and hidden aspect that might be worth exploring. That is its mathematical structure of matrix-like configurations that too has hitherto been ignored. The present essay is an attempt to explore this characteristic of its poetry.
It may be worth mentioning here that the tradition of Sanskrit poetry, as shown by Pingala in Chhanda Shastra, is unique that its letters or varnas can be arranged in a binomial pattern. That is, the short syllables are assigned a value of 1 and the longer syllables a value of 2. When the varnas are represented by their mathematical value, we see interesting patterns emerge that were described by him in detail as an aspect of Sanskrit prosody. The only other language that assigns a mathematical structure to its phonemes that I know of is Hebrew especially in the Kabbalistic traditions.
Modern mathematical structures such as Pascal's triangle and Fibonacci numbers were described by Pingala in his Meru Prastara couple of millennia ago. How far can we explore this today with artificial intelligence? Recently a write-up was published by Thomas Kissel in the journal Greek Reporter with the title 'Greek Philosopher Plato's Secret Code Discovered and Solved, Historian Claims'. It claims that there is a code of musical pattern buried in Plato's writings, most notably The Republic, discovered by a historian, Dr Jay Kennedy. The code seems to portray the entire Greek musical scale that contains twelve notes.
We too have studied the patterns in the Gita from an Indic perspective with the help of our custom-designed AI software. These are the findings we came up with that may be of interest:
We know that the Gita is divided into 18 chapters containing a total of 700 shlokas. Triadic structures are frequently seen such as three gunas (sattva, rajas and tamas). Sri Krishna classifies a tri-fold structure of many of his essential concepts, such as the triune path of Jnana-Karma and Bhakti, and the three types of knowledge, three kinds of action, three types of understanding and even three types of happiness in the 18th chapter, and these elements correspond to the three gunas that underline the play of Prakriti, or the principle of manifestation in Sankhya Yoga.
Number 9 is often employed metaphorically. For example, the body is described as the 'city of nine gates' in chapter 5. Other symbolic use of numbers such as 1000 appear in chapter 11 to describe the dazzling manifestation of Sri Krishna's Vishvaroopa.
There may be more as our AI system tells us: 'Some intriguing patterns emerge when looking at the proportions and sequence of verses in the Gita."
'Golden Ratio in Structure: It has been observed that the most climactic chapter – Chapter 11, where Arjuna witnesses Krishna's universal cosmic form (viśvarūpa) – occurs about 61 per cent of the way through the 18-chapter text. Chapter 11/18 is approximately 0.611 of the way in, which is remarkably close to the golden ratio (≈0.618). By verse count, too, the revelation of the cosmic form falls in the general vicinity of the 432nd verse out of 700 (around 61.7 per cent) — not exact, but notably close. This could be coincidental, but it does mirror a common storytelling technique of placing a dramatic 'golden climax" about two-thirds through a work.
The fact that viśvarūpa darśana is the Gita's emotional and philosophical high point lends credence to the idea that the text intentionally peaks around the golden-section division. In other words, the narrative pacing aligns with an aesthetically pleasing ratio. (Whether Vyāsa consciously used the golden ratio is speculative; however, Indian tradition did employ harmonious proportions in art and architecture. The ancient Vedic science of design, Vāstu Śāstra, extensively uses the golden ratio in temple architecture, so the concept of an ideal division would not be foreign to the culture."
There may be more such as instances of the use of Vedic and Pingala's numerology in the Gita, such as the use of Fibonacci numbers, Golden ratio in verse ratios, conscious numerology, etc. The Gita also uses musical and cosmic symbols. When we ran the AI application on the verses of the Gita, its conclusions seemed to support the hypothesis I have presented in my upcoming book, in pointing out the basic 'musical and mathematical resonance in language: it is worth noting that the Bhagavad Gita is mostly composed in anuṣṭubh meter, a quantitative verse form of 32 syllables (in two halves of 16 syllables each).
This even, steady meter lends a rhythmic and almost mathematical cadence to the entire text. Each śloka can be seen as a couplet of two 16-syllable lines, giving the discourse a structured flow. This consistency is analogous to a piece of music maintaining a time signature – it imposes an underlying order on the content. The Gita occasionally uses other meters for special verses (some verses in Chapter 11 use triṣṭubh meter, 44 syllables, to convey the grandeur of the scene), but by and large the metrical discipline is maintained. The uniform meter might not be a 'code," but it is a designed pattern that aids memorization and recitation, reflecting the oral mathematicality of Sanskrit prosody"
There is more. Mantric repetitions, alliteration, sound patterns, puns and double meanings, structured lists, recurring phrases or formulae, etc. It was impressive to have our AI application decode another aspect of The Literary Genius of the Gita. It concludes, 'In essence, the Gita's linguistic fabric is highly patterned, but these patterns serve didactic and emphasis purposes more than hiding secret messages. The 'code' of the Gita's language is in its mantra-like quality — through repetition, parallelism, and enumeration, it imprints ideas on the mind. For example, by the end, the reader has heard dharma dozens of times, yoga in many compounds, the refrain of 'surrender' in various forms — a bit like a musical theme recurring in different keys. This can be likened to a computational algorithm where key variables (dharma, atman, yoga, bhakti, etc) are revisited in multiple contexts, steadily building a complete picture. Notably, when comparing to the idea of a 'Plato code' (where a hidden musical-temporal structure was proposed in Plato's texts), the Gita's approach to encoding wisdom is more overtly structured rather than cryptographically hidden. It uses the natural Sanskrit propensity for symmetry and repetition as its 'code', making the text rhythmic, memorable, and conceptually clear."
Indeed, the Gita is an intriguing work. There is much more hidden in its short review of the entire gamut of Indian darshana than is visible on a surface view. It is my hope that we uncover this multi-dimensionality and let it reveal the cryptic, the occult and esoteric aspects of its message. It is a 'highly ordered work', as our AI says, but there is a lot of method in its inspiration. Perhaps that is the great and open secret that invites us repeatedly to its mystery and genius.
(This research was conducted using a novel, fine-tuned large language model [LLM] with expertise in Sanskrit literature, Hindu philosophy, and symbolic mathematics, combined with Python-based computational tools for structural and numerical analysis, including verse distribution mapping and golden ratio detection.)
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(AI analytics was done by Ed Laughman, who attended medical school in Jena, Germany, before discovering a passion for healthcare technology. He has 15 years of experience in AI, machine learning, mathematics, and modern computation.)
Pariksith Singh is author, poet, philosopher and medical practitioner based in Florida. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
July 27, 2025, 12:05 IST
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