Vanakkam Mahajanangaley, Once JB aiyya gave the Eureka! clue, I understood that we need not rediscover Archimedes principle to understand it. > > First the emperor, queen consort, mahout, got up on > the elephant. The elephant went onto the raft. > The combined weight caused the raft to sink to a certain > level. This level was marked. The elephant came out of the raft.The emperor's men, then piled the raft with enough gold and
> treasure until the raft sank to the previously marked level. > A system of fulcrums, pivots, and levers would have been > there to make the measurement accurate to the nearest > kilogram. > They did have accurate measuring instruments in those > days. > > That is how they did it. >
A boat in the place of raft might make it easy to understand. JB aiyya to quantify the weight one needs no fulcrums/levers. all you need to do is calibrate how much the boat goes inside for a known weight and then the volume/dimensions of the boat. One could have even used a regular box shaped piece (oru sevvaga vadivil mara mEdai) which can function like a scale directly. Also they didn't measure in kilograms them, just a reminder. I know you didn't mean it but it shows how much we are restrained in thinking due to this framework.