Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.14.3

c6.14.3

it must also have occurred independently in India, but as the facts stand at present, it is impossible to connect India and Europe in the transmission of this particular invention from the first country to the other. As it is not proved to have been known in India before about 500 A. D., it is impossible to see how it can have been transmitted from thence to Europe before the rise of the Arabs, for direct communication ceased about the fourth century A. D.²), and in Europe, at all events, the little intellectual activity that was displayed ran in entirely different courses during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. Nor is there the least trace of the use of such numerals during this period. The Arabic numerals now in use certainly came from India, but numerals with value according to position and the cipher were already in use in Europe (by the Neo-Pythagoreans) before they were adopted³). If the derivation of the numeral figures from the initial letters of the Sanskrit words denoting the respective numbers be given up, there is nothing left to show where the figures were first used, by the Pythagoreans in Europe or the astronomers in India. The assumption that the last was the case, but which (as I have already said) an examination of the earliest forms of the numerals preserved in inscriptions will prove to be impossible, is the foundation of the theory that Europe is indebted to India in this respect;