Page:The Hindu-Arabic Numerals (1911).djvu/19

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EARLY IDEAS OF THEIR ORIGIN
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customs of the people of that country, and states explicitly[1] that the Hindus of his time did not use the letters of their alphabet for numerical notation, as the Arabs did. He also states that the numeral signs called aṅka[2] had different shapes in various parts of India, as was the case with the letters. In his Chronology of Ancient Nations he gives the sum of a geometric progression and shows how, in order to avoid any possibility of error, the number may be expressed in three different systems:: with Indian symbols, in sexagesimal notation, and by an alphabet system which will be touched upon later. He also speaks[3] of "179, 876, 755, expressed in Indian ciphers," thus again attributing these forms to Hindu sources.

Preceding Al-Bīrūnī there was another Arabic writer of the tenth century, Moṭahhar ibn Ṭāhir,[4] author of the Book of the Creation and of History, who gave as a curiosity, in Indian (Nāgarī) symbols, a large number asserted by the people of India to represent the duration of the world. Huart feels positive that in Moṭahhar's time the present Arabic symbols had not yet come into use, and that the Indian symbols, although known to scholars, were not current. Unless this were the case, neither the author nor his readers would have found anything extraordinary in the appearance of the number which he cites.

Mention should also be made of a widely-traveled student, Al-Mas'ūdī (885?–956), whose journeys carried him from Bagdad to Persia, India, Ceylon, and even

  1. ↑ India, Vol. I, chap. xvi.
  2. ↑ The Hindu name for the symbols of the decimal place system.
  3. ↑ Sachau's English edition of the Chronology, p. 64.
  4. ↑ Littérature arabe, Cl. Huart, Paris, 1902.
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