The Hindu-Arabic numerals / by David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski.

  • Smith, David Eugene, 1860-1944.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Hindu-Arabic numerals / by David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and mentioned that the stars dotting the sky are here compared with zeros, these being points as in the mod- ern Arabic system. On the other hand, a strong argu- ment against any Hindu knowledge of the symbol zero at this time is the fact that about 700 a.d. the Arabs overran the province of Sind and thus had an opportu- nity of knowing the common methods used there for writing numbers. And yet, when they received the com- plete system in 776 they looked upon it as something new.1 Such evidence is not conclusive, but it tends to show that the complete system was probably not in com- mon use in India at the beginning of the eighth century. On the other hand, we must bear in mind the fact that a traveler in Germany in the year 1700 would probably have heard or seen nothing of decimal fractions, although these were perfected a century before that date. The elite of the mathematicians may have known the zero even in Aryabhata’s time, while the merchants and the common people may not have grasped the significance of the novelty until a long time after. On the whole, the evidence seems to point to the west coast of India as the region where the complete system was first seen.2 As mentioned above, traces of the numeral words with place value, which do not, however, absolutely require a deci- mal place-system of symbols, are found very early in Cambodia, as well as in India. Concerning the earliest epigraphical instances of the use of the nine symbols, plus the zero, with place value, there 1 Bayley, p. 38. 2 Novioinagus, in his Be numeris libri duo, Paris, 1539, confesses his ignorance as to the origin of the zero, but says: “ D. Henricus Grauius, vir Graecfe & Hebraic^ exiled doctus, Iiebraicam originem ostendit,” adding that Valla “Indis Orieutalibus gentibus inventionem tribuit.”