« Vedic Mathematics » can be the name of many things. It is the title of a book published posthumously in 1962 by a religious figure, the Śaṅkarācarya of the Puri Maṭh. Here, we will look at the posterity of the book, its enduring commercial and political success since the 1990’s, especially analyzing the different meanings these two words came to mean, and the images of India’s mathematical past they carried.