Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.6

c6.6

The earliest known examples of Indian numeral figures occur in the Açoka inscriptions which have already been often mentioned, and which belong to the middle of the third century B. C. In the Kapurdigiri inscription the number ‘four’ is expressed by four upright lines, thus ||||¹. Later inscriptions in the same character furnish other examples; the most important is one from Taxila, which is of the first century B. C. and in which the number 78 is expressed by 3× 20 + 1× 10 + 2× 4; the figures for 20, 10 and 4 being distinct signs. The figures for ‘four’ in these two inscriptions (|||| and +) show a considerable development between the third and first centuries B. C. It is, therefore, certain that the method of denoting numerals, which prevailed in the early centuries B. C. in the Panjab and Ariana, began with the use of strokes equal to the number to be expressed, and that this primitive system had, by no means, become perfect in the first century B. C.