History of Hindu Mathematics: A Source Book v1.c7.s17.t5.1

v1.c7.s17.t5.1

Al-Bîrûnî resided in India for nearly thirteen years (1017-1030) and devoted himself to the study of the arts and sciences of the Hindus. He had also a remarkable knowledge of the Greek sciences and literature, so he was more qualified than any contemporary or even anterior Arab writer to speak with authority about the origin of the numerals. He wrote two books, viz., *Kitâb al-arqam* ("Book of Ciphers") and *Tazkira fî al-hisâb w'al-madd bi al-arqam al-Sind w'al-Hind* ("A treatise on arithmetic and the system of counting with the ciphers of Sindh and India"). In his *Tarikh al-Hind* ("Chronicles of India"), he says: "As in different parts of India the letters have different shapes, the numerical signs too, which are called *aṅka*, differ. The numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs." At another place he remarks: "The Hindus use the numeral signs in arithmetic in the same way as we do. I have composed a treatise showing how far possibly, the Hindus are ahead of us in this subject.”¹ In his *Athâr-ul-Bâkiya*² (“Vestiges of the Past,” written in 1000 A.D.) Al-Bîrûnî calls the modern numerals as *al-arqam al-hind*, *i.e.*, “the Indian Ciphers” and he has incidentally referred to their distinction from two other systems of expressing numbers, *viz.*, the sexagesimal system and the alphabetic system (*Harûf al-jumal*).