Indian Mathematics c11.10

c11.10

Muhammad b. Mūsā el-Chowārezmi (A.D. 782) is the earliest Arabic writer on mathematics of note and his best known work is the *Algebra*. The early orientalists appear to have been somewhat prejudiced against Arabic scholarship for, apparently without examination, they ascribed an Indian origin to M. b. Mūsā's work. The argument used was as follows: "There is nothing in history," wrote COSSALI, and COLEBROOKE repeated it, 'respecting Muhammad ben Mūṣā individually, which favours the opinion that he took from the Greeks, the algebra which he taught to the Muhammadans. History presents him in no other light than a mathematician of a country most distant from Greece and contiguous to India..... Not having taken algebra from the Greeks, he must either have invented it himself or taken it from the Indians.' As a matter of fact his algebra shows, as pointed out by Rodet, no sign of Indian influence and is practically wholly based upon Greek knowledge; and it is now well known that the development of mathematics among the Arabs was largely, if not wholly, independent of Indian influence and that, on the other hand, Indian writers on mathematics later than Brahmagupta were possibly influenced considerably by the Arabs. Alberuni early in the 11th century wrote: 'You mostly find that even the so-called scientific theorems of the Hindus are in a state of utter confusion, devoid of any logical order . . . . since they cannot raise themselves to the methods of strictly scientific deduction . . . . I began to show them the elements on which this science rests, to point out to them some rules of logical deduction and the scientific method of all mathematics, etc.”