Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.65

c13.65

Admitting on the ground of the mention of a mathematician of his name, whose works were commented by Hypatia about the beginning of the fifth century;97 and on the authority of the Arabic annals of an Armenian Christian;98 which make him contemporary with Julian; that he lived towards the middle of the fourth century of the Christian era; or, to speak with precision, about the year 360;99 the Greeks will appear to have possessed in the fourth century so much of Algebra, as is to be effected by dexterous application of the resolution of equations of the first degree, and even the second, to limited problems; and to indeterminate also, without, however, having attained a general solution of problems of this latter class.