The first ‘written’ zero in the world.

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

The first ‘written’ zero in the world.

It is now generally accepted that the present number system with its digits from 1 to 9, the digit 0, and the place value system, all of which tamed the infinity of numbers and made calculations with them easy, was a gift to the world of unknown Hindu mathematicians and that it reached Europe through Arabs in the 13^th century.  ‘History of Hindu Mathematics’ by Bibhuti Bhushan Datta and Avadhesh Narayan Singh, a classic first published in 1935, adequately deals with this subject.

In the early days there were sceptics like GR Kaye, who held the view that the number system was a Greek or Arab invention and that the Hindus borrowed it from them.

A counter-argument to this was the discovery of a written 0 symbol in an inscription dating to Vikram Samvat 933 (AD 877) in the Chaturbhuj Temple in the Gwalior Fort.  This inscription records a donation of land made by Alla अल्ल, who was the commander of that fort under Parameshwar Bhojadeva.  It mentions the measurement of the donated land as ‘270 hasta in length and 187 hasta in width’.  The 0 symbol appears in 270 hasta and is the first written 0 from anywhere in India.

 

The inscription was discussed by T. Hultzsch in Epigraphia Indica, V.I from p. 154.  It appears to be written in an archaic form of Devanagari as some words like नवदुर्गायतन in Line 3 and पुष्पवाटिका in Line 5 are in clearly readable Devanagari, Below are shown i) a facsimile of the first relevant 6 lines of the inscription, ii) their rendering in modern Devanagari, taken from the same article and iii) their translation in English.

 

However, skepticism still survived.  It could be argued that by the year 877 the Arab Court at Baghdad was well-established.  The Arabs were known to have made significant advances in several branches of knowledge and this could be one of them.

These doubts were finally laid to rest with the discovery of an inscription dating to AD 683 by the doyen pf Cambodian Epigraphists G. Coedes of Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EEFO) in 1931.  In a paper titled ‘À propos de l'origine des chiffres arabes’ published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 6, No. 2 he finally laid to rest any lingering doubts that the 0 symbol had arisen anywhere else but in the Brahminical culture of India. 

 

This Cambodian inscription, marked ‘K127’ by Coedes, mentions its date as ‘The Caka era reached year 605 on the fifth day of the waning moon’.  Here is a record of 0 being written in Shaka year 605, corresponding to AD 683, decades before there was any sign of the Baghdad Court.

 

Almost till the end of the 14^th century, Cambodia had rulers who were followers of the Brahminical religion, which had reached there from India  The Khmer Empire covered a very wide geographical area, comprising of today’s Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and portions of Vietnam.  No records survive of this once-mighty empire, except for about 1200 stone inscriptions scattered over a thousand ruins of Brahminical temples, dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, the massive temple of Angkor Wat being the most well-known amongst them.  The inscriptions are written in the old Khmer script and the principle language in them is classical Sanskrit, mixed with occasional old Khmer.

 

I recently visited the Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples over a week-long visit.  Prior to going there I had read about the inscription K127 found by Coedes and that it was almost lost in the chaos of the Pol Pot regime but has been recently rediscovered and now lies securely in the National Museum at Phnom Penh.  I visited that museum.  Though there was not much awareness among the general tourists and the Cambodian officialdom about the significance of K127, I was able to spot it among the exhibits in the Museum from pictures I had seen of it.  I show below two photos pf it taken by me – one a general picture of the upper part of K127 and the other a close up of the second line in it.  What looks like Devanagari 9 in the center of the line in old Khmer 6, the dot is the 0 and the squiggly line after it, somewhat like Devanagari 6, is old Khmer 5.

 

(For more, read the article ‘The Origin of the Number Zero’ by Amir Aczel and his book ‘Finding Zero’.)

 

 

[Amba Kulkarni]

Thank you Kolhatkar for this information.

With regards,

Amba Kulkarni

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "samskrita" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to samskrita+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sams...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/samskrita.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Fellow,
Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla

Adjunct faculty,
IIT Ropar

आ नो भद्रा: क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वत: ll
Let noble thoughts come to us from every side.
- Rig Veda, I-89-i.
Prof. (On leave)
Department of Sanskrit Studies
University of Hyderabad

Prof. C.R. Rao Road 

Hyderabad-500 046

(91) 040 23133802(off)

http://sanskrit.uohyd.ac.in/scl
http://sanskrit.uohyd.ac.in/faculty/amba

[Nagaraj Paturi]

There was a BVP thread on the topic of zero here

Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

 

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

 

 

 

[G S S Murthy]

Very informative and cogently presented. Many thanks, Aravindji.

Regards,

Murthy

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "samskrita" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to samskrita+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sams...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/samskrita.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

My web site : http://murthygss.tripod.com/index.htm
and also my Sanskrit blog :

http://simplesanskrit.blogspot.com/

http://gssmurthy.blogspot.com

[Amba Kulkarni]

Dear Sri Kolhatkar,

You may also like to read " Decimal System in India" by Amartya Kumar Dutta in "Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures" published by Springer.

This article deals with the antiquity of Decimal system, significance of Zero in place value notation, mention of zero, use of zero as a place holder, written symbol, and then zero as an integer, and the impact of place value system on Ancient Indian Mathematics.

Thanks and regards,

Amba Kulkarni

On 16 March 2017 at 00:00, Arvind_Kolhatkar <kolhat...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "samskrita" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to samskrita+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sams...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/samskrita.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

[ken p]

Here are some interesting links.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-origin-of-zer/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0

http://www.livescience.com/27853-who-invented-zero.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_inventions_and_discoveries

०->0 ( Simplified 0 )

Number System	Numbers
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Gurmukhi	o	੧	੨	੩	੪	੫	੬	੭	੮	੯
Oriya	୦	୧	୨	୩	୪	୫	୬	୭	୮	୯
Bengali	০	১	২	৩	৪	৫	৬	৭	৮	৯
Devanagari	०	१	२	३	४	५	६	७	८	९
Gujarati	૦	૧	૨	૩	૪	૫	૬	૭	૮	૯