and
(Bailey 1935, p. 14). It is a generalization of Dixon's
theorem (Slater 1966, p. 52).
An equivalent formulation is given by
(3)
(Hardy 1999, p. 104). The symmetry of this form was used by Ramanujan in his proof of the identity, which is essentially the same as Thomae's. Interestingly, this is one of the few cases in which Ramanujan gives an explicit proof of one of his propositions (Hardy 1999, p. 104).