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

  • David Eugene Smith
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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    existed in earliest times, and of the seventy-two recognized sciences writing and arithmetic were the most prized.1 In the Vedic period, say from 2000 to 1400 B.c., there was the same attention to astronomy that was found in the earlier civilizations of Babylon, China, and Egypt, a fact at- tested by the Vedas themselves.2 Such advance in science presupposes a fair knowledge of calculation, but of the manner of calculating we are quite ignorant and prob- ably always shall be. One of the Buddhist sacred books, the Lalitavistara, relates that when the Bodhisattva 3 was of age to marry, the father of Gopa, his intended bride, demanded an examination of the five hundred suitors, the subjects including arithmetic, writing, the lute, and archery. Having vanquished his rivals hi all else, he is matched against Arjuna the great arithmetician and is asked to express numbers greater than 100 kotis.4 In reply he gave a scheme of number names as high as 1063, adding that he could proceed as far as 10421,6 all of which suggests the system of Archimedes and the unsettled question of the indebtedness of the West to the East in the realm of ancient mathematics.6 Sir Edwin Arnold, 1 A. Hillebrandt, Alt-Indien, Breslau, 1899, p. 111. Fragmentary records relate that Kharavela, king of Kalinga, learned as a boy lekhd (writing), ganand (reckoning), and rupa (arithmetic applied to mone- tary affairs and mensuration), probably in the 5th century b.c. [Biihler, Indische Palaeographie, Strassburg, 1896, p. 5.] 2 R. C. Dutt, A History of Civilization in Ancient India, London, 1893, Vol.I, p. 174. 8 The Buddha. The date of his birth is uncertain. Sir Edwin Ar- nold put it c. 620 b.c. * I.e. 100-107. 6 There is some uncertainty about this limit. 0 This problem deserves more study than has yet been given it. A beginning may be made with Comte Goblet d’Alviella, Ce que Vlnde doit ii la Grbce, Paris, 1897, and II. G. Keene’s review, “ The Greeks in India,” jn the Calcutta Review, Vol. CXIV, 1902, p. 1. See also F.