Katapayadi System

While the article goes into history and detail, here are a couple of analogies that may help explain what this thing is:

• The convention of specifying phone numbers using words, e.g. 1-800-FLOWERS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneword): this is the mapping

    0 ↔ (space?)
    1 ↔ ??
    2 ↔ abc
    3 ↔ def
    …
    9 ↔ wxyz

Roughly, the Kaṭapayādi system is simply a different mapping between digits and letters.

• So a closer analogy may be, if the conventional English alphabet happened to list vowels (aeiouy, say) and consonants separately, then a mapping something like

    b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x z
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

(so there are two choices for each digit, e.g. 2 can be represented by either 'c' or 'p'), with the decoding convention that we ignore vowels, and consonants that are immediately followed (in the same word) by another consonant. Then, to specify a sequence of digits like "314159265", we could write down below each digit the two possibilities for it:

    3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5
    d b f b g l c h g
    q n r n s x p t s

…and use these letters to make words. So something like "dine rob soul cottage" would stand for DNRBSLCTG = 314159265, as would "dumb funny sex parties" (= DBFNSXPTS = 314159265) or whatever. Then we could write rhyming poems or memorable prose, to memorize the digits (and transmit them accurately in an oral tradition).

With the English alphabet the above mapping would be hard to remember, but the alphabet in Sanskrit happens to be organized in a more orderly way, so it's easier to remember the mapping. (And the name helps: ka ṭa pa ya are simply the beginning (ādi) letters of each chunk mapping to 1234567890, the way our mapping above could be called the "B-N" mapping.)

Something close that there's a (recent) tradition of in English is "pilish": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilish where the lengths of the words encode the digits, as in "how I wish I could remember pi" (=3141592). (See "Cadaeic Cadenza" and "Not a Wake": http://cadaeic.net/cadintro.htm )

The mnemonic major system is a more approachable technique for number memorization (in english), learnable in several hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system

This is certainly a cool system from a theoretical perspective, and functions as a great mnemonic device, provided you know how the standard Indian alphabet is structured.

But fear not, there's a sort of mnemonic for that as well:

The first group of consonants are the stops. They are organized first by place of articulation from back to front (there are five of these), and next by the mode of articulation (five of these as well). So the first group (velar) for instance is

K kh g gh ng

In the katapayadi system these would stand for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively.

After the stops come the vocalic consonants (y r l v) and then the sibilants (three of them once again back to front in articulation) (mnemonic: 1 thru 7) These are rounded off by 'h', whose placement I must confess I don't fully understand.

Having said all this, the practical implications of the katapayadi system for the actual learning and performance of Carnatic music are essentially none. A lot of the older ragas were retrofitted into the system ('dhee-ra'Shankarabharanam for the equivalent of the standard major scale, Shankarabharanam, with dh = 9, r = 2, flipped to give you 29)

Still cool though!

Probably something no one here wants to hear, but astrology is a big thing in India -- serious astrology, which is highly mathematical and historically goes hand-in-hand with advances in astronomy, not "sun sign astrology." I'm guessing that's not entirely irrelevant to there being this mnemonic system, though I don't know enough about India to support that suggestion.

Katapayadi is heavily employed in the nomenclature of melakarta ragas in carnatic (south Indian classical) music. One of the most fascinating mnemonic schemes ever.

Oooh. This article taught me that in India of 1400 someone figured out how to calculate pi more accurately than had ever been done before and it took until 1600 in Europe that these methods were independently rediscovered.

It's such a beauty to see this and so many sophisticated systems from India showing up. Unfortunately the white history always wiped out the parts of math, history, and culture that have influenced so many things that are part of normal world today.

Btw, i recently also learned that Mathematics, Medical Science, and Economics have always been part of the Hindu Religious texts. No doubt such intelligence could be produced in the country.

wasn't this the one where they had very accurate value of PI in a poem about lord krishna.

This is cool + reminds me of [Konnakol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konnakol) , which is a similar system for time signatures in music. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2LzlLMbqpM) is a good intro.

Katapayadi system has also been used to construct tables of related entries whereby the position of an entry in the table (its row and column) completely determines its properties. See, for example, the paragraphs on 'Carnatic Music' in the wikipedia entry for the katapayadi system. This Carnatic Music arrangement dates to the 17th century.

My go-to for memorizing numbers is Goroawase (0 = ma, 1 = i/hi, 2 = ni/fu/tsu etc.). It is less flexible in comparison (you can't choose the vowels freely) but uses less phonemes, so I think it's more intuitive for an English speaker to learn (e. g. you don't have to know the difference between ka and kha).

Phonetic number systems like this are commonly used by memory athletes, like the Major System[1]

The usable range can be expanded further using color, smell, taste, and so on.

https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Major_System/

Here is an interesting video on this https://youtu.be/QxTjaK8suMo

Is this related to the ta ka di mi mnemonic for rhythms?

Telephones and credit card numbers are coming any millennium; you can never be prepared too far in advance!