Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.68

c13.68

Priority seems then decisive in favour of both Greeks and Hindus against any pretensions on the part of the Arabians, who in fact, however, prefer none, as inventors of Algebra. They were avowed borrowers in science: and, by their own unvaried acknowledgement, from the Hindus they learnt the science of numbers. That they also received the Hindu Algebra, is much more probable, than that the same mathematician who studied the Indian arithmetic and taught it to his Arabian brethren, should have hit upon Algebra unaided by any hint or suggestion of the Indian analysis.