Page:The Hindu-Arabic Numerals (1911).djvu/18

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THE HINDU-ARABIC NUMERALS

writers, even to the present day.[1] Indeed the phrase 'ilm hindī, "Indian science," is used by them for arithmetic, as also the adjective hindī alone.[2]

Probably the most striking testimony from Arabic sources is that given by the Arabic traveler and scholar Moḥammed ibn Aḥmed, Abū 'l-Rīḥān al-Bīrūnī (973–1048), who spent many years in Hindustan. He wrote a large work on India,[3] one on ancient chronology,[4] the "Book of the Ciphers," unfortunately lost, which treated doubtless of the Hindu art of calculating, and was the author of numerous other works. Al-Bīrūnī was a man of unusual attainments, being versed in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Syriac, as well as in astronomy, chronology, and mathematics. In his work on India he gives detailed information concerning the language and

    in uniuerso numero suo, propter dispositionem suam quam posuerunt, uolui patefacere de opera quod fit per eas aliquid quod esset leuius discentibus, si deus uoluerit." [Boncompagni, Trattati d' Aritmetica, Rome, 1857.] Discussed by F. Woepcke, Sur l'introduction de l'arithmétique indienne en Occident, Rome, 1859.

  1. ↑ Thus in a commentary by 'Alī ibn Abī Bekr ibn al-Jamāl al-Anṣārī al-Mekkī on a treatise on ġobār arithmetic (explained later) called Al-murshidah, found by Woepcke in Paris (Propagation, p. 66), there is mentioned the fact that there are "nine Indian figures" and "a second kind of Indian figures…although these are the figures of the ġobār writing." So in a commentary by Ḥosein ibn Moḥammed al-Maḥallī (died in 1756) on the Mokhtaṣar fī'ilm el-ḥisāb (Extract from Arithmetic) by 'Abdalqādir ibn 'Alī al-Sakhāwī (died c. 1000) it is related that "the preface treats of the forms of the figures of Hindu signs, such as were established by the Hindu nation." [Woepcke, Propagation, p. 63.]
  2. ↑ See also Woepcke, Propagation, p. 505. The origin is discussed at much length by G. R. Kaye, "Notes on Indian Mathematics.—Arithmetical Notation," Journ. and Proc. of the Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, Vol. III, 1907, p. 489.
  3. ↑ Alberuni's India, Arabic version, London, 1887; English translation, ibid., 1888.
  4. ↑ Chronology of Ancient Nations, London, 1879. Arabic and English versions, by C. E. Sachau.
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