Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.14.4

c6.14.4

in fact Woepcke chiefly relies on it⁴), but this assumption was made by J. Prinsep about 1838, or long before the Cave numerals were explained. The resemblance between the Neo-Pythagorean numerals in their cursive form on the one hand, and the India Cave numerals and the forms derived from them on the other, is too striking not to be noticed; but this fact does not warrant a presumption that one is borrowed from the other; more probably, both are from a common source. The question of what might have been the common original of the Neo-Pythagorean and Cave numerals is one for the decision of which evidence must yet be discovered, but a provisional hypothesis may be allowed.