The binary system behind every computer was prefigured by a Sanskrit scholar analysing poetic metre.
Piṅgala's Chandaḥśāstra enumerates metres using two states — laghu (short) and guru (long) syllables — an early binary representation, and describes what we now call Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence (mātrā-meru).
— Piṅgala, Chandaḥśāstra (c. 300–200 BCE)
Binary code (base-2) — the foundation of all digital computing.
A genuine, defensible parallel.
Studying Sanskrit prosody, Piṅgala needed to count and classify all possible patterns of short and long syllables in a verse. To do it he used a two-state system — effectively binary — and developed combinatorial tools that anticipate the binomial coefficients (Pascal's triangle) and the Fibonacci numbers, centuries before those names existed in Europe.
This is solid history, not interpretation. It's fair to say Piṅgala used a binary representation; it's an overclaim to say he 'invented the computer.' He wasn't doing Boolean logic or arithmetic in base-2 — he was enumerating metres. Pair this with India's two genuinely world-changing gifts to mathematics — the decimal place-value system and zero as a number (formalised by Brahmagupta, 628 CE) — and the through-line is clear: a deep, early Indian genius for abstraction and notation.