An arc of a circle is like a bow and so is called a
dhanu or
chāpa which in
Sanskrit means "a bow". The straight line joining the two extremities of an arc of a circle is like the string of a bow and this line is a chord of the circle. This chord is called a
jyā which in
Sanskrit means "a bow-string", presumably translating
Hipparchus's with the same meaning. The word
jīvá is also used as a synonym for
jyā in geometrical literature. At some point, Indian astronomers and mathematicians realised that computations would be more convenient if one used the halves of the chords instead of the full chords and associated the half-chords with the halves of the arcs. The half-chords were called
ardha-jyās or
jyā-ardhas. These terms were again shortened to
jyā by omitting the qualifier
ardha which meant "half of". The Sanskrit word
koṭi has the meaning of "point, cusp", and specifically "the
curved end of a bow". In trigonometry, it came to denote "the complement of an arc to 90°". Thus
koṭi-jyā is "the
jyā of the complementary arc". In Indian treatises, especially in commentaries,
koṭi-jyā is often abbreviated as
kojyā. The term
koṭi also denotes "the side of a right angled triangle". Thus
koṭi-jyā could also mean the other
cathetus of a right triangle, the first cathetus being the
jyā.
Utkrama means "inverted", thus
utkrama-jyā means "inverted chord". The tabular values of
utkrama-jyā are derived from the tabular values of
jyā by subtracting the elements from the radius in the reversed order. This is really the arrow between the bow and the bow-string and hence it has also been called
bāṇa,
iṣu or
śara all meaning "arrow". An arc of a circle which subtends an angle of 90° at the center is called a
vritta-pāda (a quadrat of a circle). Each zodiacal sign defines an arc of 30° and three consecutive zodiacal signs defines a
vritta-pāda. The
jyā of a
vritta-pāda is the radius of the circle. The Indian astronomers coined the term
tri-jyā to denote the radius of the base circle, the term
tri-jyā being indicative of "the
jyā of three signs". The radius is also called
vyāsārdha,
viṣkambhārdha,
vistarārdha, etc., all meaning "semi-diameter". According to one convention, the functions
jyā and
koti-jyā are respectively denoted by "Rsin" and "Rcos" treated as single words. Others denote
jyā and
koti-jyā respectively by "Sin" and "Cos" (the first letters being capital letters in contradistinction to the first letters being small letters in ordinary sine and cosine functions). ==From jyā to sine==