Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.43

c13.43

The two steps or operations, which have thus given name to the method of analysis, are precisely what is enjoined without distinctive appellations of them, in the introduction of the arithmetics of Diophantus, where he directs, that, if the quantities be positive on both sides, like are to be taken from like until one species be equal to one species; but, if on either side or on both, any species be negative, the negative species must be added to both sides, so that they become positive on both sides of the equation: after which like are again to be taken from like until one species remain on each side.67