Pingala (पिङ्गल) is the author of the Chhandah-shastra, the Sanskrit book on meters, or long syllables.

According to the Indian literary tradition, Pingala was the younger brother of the great grammarian Panini of the fifth century BC. Modern scholars have tended to place him two or three centuries later.

Pingala presents the first known description of a binary numeral system. He described the binary numeral system in connection with the listing of Vedic meters with short and long syllables. His work also contains the basic ideas of maatraameru (Fibonacci number) and meruprastaara (Pascal's triangle).

His book

A summary of his contributions include:

• The formation of a matrix.
• Invention of the binary number system (while he was forming a matrix for musical purposes).
• The notion of a binary code (the precursor to Morse code).
• First use of the Fibonacci series.
• First use of Pascal's triangle, which he refers to as Meru-prastaara.
• Used a dot (.) to denote zero.
• His work, along with Panini's work, was foundational to the development of computing.

See also

• Indian mathematics
• Indian mathematicians