History of Hindu Mathematics: A Source Book v1.c7.s8.26

v1.c7.s8.26

Kaye, in his article quoted above, has given a list of eighteen inscriptions and grant plates and eliminates all but the last two as forgeries. The arguments he has employed and the assertions of facts that he has made are in most cases incorrect and misleading, so that his conclusions cannot be accepted. As an instance of his method, we quote his criticism about the Gurjara grant plate, No. 1 in our list. He writes: "Dr. Bühler quotes this Gurjara inscription of the Chedi year 346 or A.D. 594 as the earliest epigraphic instance of the use of the decimal notation in India. (i) An examination of the plate (*Ep. Ind.*, II., p. 20) suggests the possibility that the figures were added some time after the plate was engraved. The date is engraved in words as well as in figures. It is ‘three hundred years exceeded by forty-six.’ The symbols are right at the end of the inscription from which they are marked off by a double bar in a most unusual manner. (ii) The figures are of the type of the period, but they were also in use much later, and in no other example are such symbols used with place-value. (iii) Also there are nine dates written in the old notation (*Ep. Ind.*, V), *e. g.*, there is another grant of the Gurjara of Bharoch in which the date Saṁvat 391 (i.e., A.D. 640) is given in the old notation. Again, there is no other Chedi date, at least before the eleventh century A.D., given in the modern (place-value) notation. (iv) There cannot be the remotest doubt as to the unsoundness of this particular piece of evidence of the early use of the modern system of notation in India.”