11 Unknown Facts - Hindu-Arabic Number System Originated in Ancient India

The ten digits from 0 to 9 are known as the Indian-Arabic numerals or Hindu-Arabic number system. These numerals 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9- are used in most of the countries of the world. In Vedic Era it was believed that Mathematics serves a connection between understanding material reality and perceiving the spiritual conception. Mathematics were often presented in a very different format by Vedic mathematicians. 

Number System In Hinduism

Al-Biruni and Kitab Tarikh Al-Hind

In 1017 Al-Biruni traveled to the Indian subcontinent and authored “Kitab Tarikh Al-Hind”

(History of India) after exploring the Hindu culture as well as Vedic science accomplished in India. Al-Biruni,had visited India on several occasions and made comments on the Indian number system. The number system was first developed in Ancient India, and then adopted by the Arabs in 9th century. It was initially known in the West as Arabic numerals, because Arabs introduced these numbers to Europe through Arabic texts in the 10th century. The Europeans therefore attributed the numbers to the Arabs, even through the Arabs themselves called them Indian Numerals. 

'Zero' Contribution

It was India that gave the world the concept of Zero. In AD 628, Indian mathematician Brahmagupta developed a symbol for zero, and developed mathematical operations using zero.

Bakhshali Manuscript

Bakhshali Manuscript

But in a recent studies it has been found that before AD 628 Indian used the 'Zero' for several mathematical operations. In 1881 a part of an ancient manuscript was found from a village Bakhshali, now in Pakistan, It is perhaps "the oldest extant manuscript in Indian mathematics. For some portions a carbon-date was proposed of AD 224–383. It contains the earliest known Indian use of a zero symbol. It is written in Sanskrit with significant influence of local dialects. The manuscript was unearthed from a field in 1881. The first research on the manuscript was done by A. F. R. Hoernle. The manuscript is famously known as Bakhshali Manuscript

Decimal System

Basic principles like counting 1, 2, 3, etc. to zero, were based on Brahmi Numerals or Sanskrit figures. In ancient times, mathematics was mainly used in an applied role. Thus, mathematical methods were used to solve problems for architecture and constructing Temples, in astronomy and astrology and in the construction of Vedic altars. 

Evolution of Brahmi numerals from the time of Ashoka.

From the Vedic Period

Period Hindu cosmology required the mastery of very large numbers such as the kalpa (the lifetime of the universe) said to be 4,320,000,000 years and the "orbit of the heaven" said to be 18,712,069,200,000,000 yojanas. Numbers were expressed using a "named place-value notation", using names for the powers of 10, like dasa, shatha, sahasra, ayuta, niyuta, prayuta, arbuda, nyarbuda, samudra, madhya, anta, parardha etc., the last of these being the name for a trillion (1012). For example, the number 26,432 was expressed as "2 ayuta, 6 sahasra, 4 shatha, 3 dasa, 2." 

Development In India

The form of numerals in Ashoka's inscriptions in the Brahmi script (middle of the third century BCE) involved separate signs for the numbers 1 to 9, 10 to 90, 100 and 1000. A multiple of 100 or 1000 was represented by a modification (or "enciphering") of the sign for the number using the sign for the multiplier number.

Brahmi numerals

Historians trace modern numerals in most languages to the Brahmi numerals, which were in use around the middle of the 3rd century BC. The Brahmi numerals have been found in inscriptions in caves and on coins in regions near Pune, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh in India. Those numerals were being used up to the 4th century with little variations. 

Gupta Era

During the Gupta era (4th century to 6th century), the Gupta numerals developed from the Brahmi numerals and were spread over large areas by the Gupta empire as they conquered territory. Beginning around 7th century, the Gupta numerals developed into the Nagari numerals.

Mathematician Brahmagupta

In 628 CE, astronomer-mathematician Brahmagupta wrote his text Brahma Sphuta Siddhanta which contained the first mathematical treatment of zero. He defined zero as the result of subtracting a number from itself, postulated negative numbers and discussed their properties under arithmetical operations. His word for zero was shunya (void), the same term previously used for the empty spot in 9-digit place-value system.

Adoption By Arab

Hindu Numerals adoption of Hindu Numerals by Arabs are described in Al-Khwarizmi's On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals (ca. 825), and Al-Kindi's four-volume work On the Use of the Indian Numerals(ca. 830). Today the name Hindu–Arabic numerals is usually used.

Al-Qifti (was an Egyptian Arab historian and biographer, ca. 1172–1248) said in his History of Learned Men: 

"... a personfrom India presented himself before the Caliph al-Mansur in the year [776 AD]who was well versed in the siddhanta method of calculation related to themovement of the heavenly bodies, and having ways of calculating equations basedon the half-chord [essentially the sine] calculated in half-degrees ... This isall contained in a work ... from which he claimed to have taken the half-chordcalculated for one minute. Al-Mansur ordered this book to be translated intoArabic, and a work to be written, based on the translation, to give the Arabs asolid base for calculating the movements of the planets ..."

According to the Nestorian scholar Severus Sebokht, the Hindu–Arabic numeral system was already moving West and was mentioned in Syria in 662 AD,before the rise of the Caliphate.

Adoption By Europe

Leonardo Fibonacci who was most famous and talented western (Italian) mathematician of the Middle Ages. His one of the great contribution is Fibonacci Series or Fibonacci Sequence, was actually taken from Ancient Indian mathematics. Leonardo Fibonacci studied mathematics in Algeria, promoted the Indian numeral system in Europe with his 1202 book Liber Abaci,

“When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an eye to usefulness and future convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of accounting. There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it.”

French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace(1749–1827) wrote:

"It is India that gave us the ingenuous method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."