  Despite the extensive amount of scholarly work done on Indian mathematics in
the last 200 years, the conditions under which it originated and evolved is
still not clear. Often, one reads the ancient texts with the present concepts
and methods in mind. The fact of absence of script over a long stretch of
Indian history in ancient times also gets overlooked in such readings. The
purpose of this article is to explore the journey of mathematics by examining
what the ancient texts tell us about the nature of mathematics in their times.
What one finds from the investigation of arithmetic, geometry and algebra is
that while it was concrete and context bound, rooted in solving practical
problems in ancient times, Indian mathematics transitioned to context free,
abstract stage with the advent of algebra supported by writing.
