Hindu _ Arabic Numericals
Origins
If u observe carefully, most of the numbers in Arabic seem to be sleeping version of Hindu numbers.
Check carefully
Even the 786 in Arabic if rotated anti clockwise is OM symbol.
Allah the word in Arabic means “Mother Durga” as in Sanskrit.
The Hindu-Arabic numeral system originated in India.[4] Graham Flegg (2002) dates the history of the Hindu-Arabic system to the Indus valley civilization.[4] The inscriptions on the edicts of Ashoka (1st millennium BCE) display this number system being used by the Imperial Mauryas.[4] This system was later transmitted to Europe by the Arabs.[4]
Buddhist inscriptions from around 300 BC use the symbols which became 1, 4 and 6. One century later, their use of the symbols which became 2, 4, 6, 7 and 9 was recorded. These Brahmi numerals are the ancestors of the Hindu-Arabic glyphs 1 to 9, but they were not used as a positional system with a zero, and there were rather separate numerals for each of the tens (10, 20, 30, etc.).
Positional notation without the use of zero (using an empty space in tabular arrangements, or the word kha “emptiness”) is known to have been in use in India from the 6th century. The oldest known authentic document that may be argued to contain the use of zero and decimal notation is the Jaina cosmological text Lokavibhaga, which was completed on August 25, 458. [5]
The first inscription showing the use of zero which is dated and is not disputed by any historian is the inscription at Gwalior dated 933 in the Vikrama calendar (876 CE.) [8] [9].
This 9th century date is currently thought to be the first physical evidence for the use of positional zero in India. According to Lam Lay Yong,
- “the earliest appearance in India of a symbol for zero in the Hindu-Arabic numeral system is found in an inscription at Gwalior which is dated 876 AD”.[10].
Professor EF Robertson and DR JJ O’Connor report:
- “The first record of the Indian use of zero which is dated and agreed by all to be genuine was written in 876” on the Gwalior tablet stone[11].
However, Arabic court records (see next section titled “Adoption by the Arabs”) and the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi’s book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, clearly indicate that this system and the use of zero by the Indians predates 876 AD; with the aforementioned documents dated as 776 AD and 825 AD respectively.
According to Menninger (p. 400):
- “This long journey begins with the Indian inscription which contains the earliest true zero known thus far (Fig. 226). This famous text, inscribed on the wall of a small temple in the vicinity of Gvalior (near Lashkar in Central India) first gives the date 933 (A.D. 870 in our reckoning) in words and in Brahmi numerals. Then it goes on to list four gifts to a temple, including a tract of land “270 royal hastas long and 187 wide, for a flower-garden.” Here, in the number 270 the zero first appears as a small circle […]; in the twentieth line of the inscription it appears once more in the expression “50 wreaths of flowers” which the gardeners promise to give in perpetuity to honor the divinity.”
The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, “Hindu literature gives evidence that the zero may have been known before the birth of Christ, but no inscription has been found with such a symbol before the 9th century.“[12].
Adoption by the Arabs
These nine numerals were adopted by the Arabs in the 8th century. How the numbers came to the Arabs is recorded in al-Qifti‘s “Chronology of the scholars”, which was written around the end the 12th century, quoting earlier sources [13]:
- … a person from India presented himself before the Caliph al-Mansur in the year 776 who was well versed in the siddhanta method of calculation related to the movement of the heavenly bodies, and having ways of calculating equations based on the half-chord [essentially the sine] calculated in half-degrees … Al-Mansur ordered this book to be translated into Arabic, and a work to be written, based on the translation, to give the Arabs a solid base for calculating the movements of the planets …
An Arab telephone keypad with both the Western “Arabic numerals” and the Arabic “Arabic-Indic numerals” variants.
This book presented by the Indian scholar was probably Brahmasphuta Siddhanta (The Opening of the Universe) which was written in 628 (Ifrah) [14] by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta.
The numeral system came to be known to both the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, whose book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals written about 825, and the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi, who wrote four volumes, On the Use of the Indian Numerals (كتاب في استعمال العداد الهندي [kitab fi isti’mal al-‘adad al-hindi]) about 830, are principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the Middle-East and the West [15].
The use of zero in positional systems dates to about this time, representing the final step to the system of numerals we are familiar with today.
The first dated and undisputed inscription showing the use of zero at is at Gwalior, dating to 876 AD. There were, however, Indian precursors from about 500 AD, positional notations without a zero, or with the word kha indicating the absence of a digit. It is, therefore, uncertain whether the crucial inclusion of zero as the tenth symbol of the system should be attributed to the Indians, or if it is due to Al-Khwarizmi or Al-Kindi of the House of Wisdom.
In the 10th century, Arab mathematicians extended the decimal numeral system to include fractions, as recorded in a treatise by Syrian mathematician Abu’l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi in 952-953.
In the Arab World—until modern times—the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was used only by mathematicians. Muslim scientists used the Babylonian numeral system, and merchants used the Abjad numerals, a system similar to the Greek numeral system and the Hebrew numeral system. Therefore, it was not until Fibonacci that the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was used by a large population.
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