Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.49

c13.49

The points, in which the Hindu Algebra appears particularly distinguished from the Greek, are, besides a better and more comprehensive algorithm,—1st, The management of equations involving more than one unknown term. (This adds to the two classes noticed by the Arabs, namely simple and compound, two, or rather three, other classes of equation) 2nd, The resolution of equations of a higher order, in which, if they achieved little, they had, at least, the merit of the attempt, and anticipated a modern discovery in the solution of biquadratics. 3rd, General methods for the solution of indeterminate problems of 1st and 2nd degrees, in which they went far, indeed, beyond Diophantus, and anticipated discoveries of modern Algebraists. 4th, Application of Algebra to astronomical investigation and geometrical demonstration: in which also they hit upon some matters which have been reinvented in later times.