Sometime around the sixth century BCE, new forms of knowledge began to evolve in parts of northern India, aimed at preserving and cultivating the Vedic wisdom, worldviews, rituals, and practices. The body of knowledge thus produced was called vedāṅgas (organs/limbs of the Vedas) and classified under six distinct categories: phonetics (śikṣā), grammar (vyākaraṇa), metrics (chhandas), etymology (nirukta), astronomy and calendars ( jyotiṣa), and rites, rituals, and sacrifices (kalpa). The last of these comprised prescriptive texts concerning ethics, morality and conduct (the Dharmasūtras), household affairs (the Gṛhyasūtras), and rituals (the Srautasūtras). Included in some of the Srautasūtras were guidelines for the construction of various fire altars (citis) and the arithmetic and geometrical formulae behind the process. These manuals were perhaps called rajju samāsa (“joining the measuring cord”). In course of time, they came to be identified as the Śulbasūtras.
Śulba, literally...
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References
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Devadevan, M.V. (2014). Śulbasūtras. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10281-1
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