The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c11.2

c11.2

It being doubtful whether Boethius ever knew the Hindu numeral forms, certainly without the zero in any case, it becomes necessary now to consider the question of their definite introduction into Europe. From what has been said of the trade relations between the East and the West, and of the probability that it was the trader rather than the scholar who carried these numerals from their original habitat to various commercial centers, it is evident that we shall never know when they first made their inconspicuous entrance into Europe. Curious customs from the East and from the tropics, — concerning games, social peculiarities, oddities of dress, and the like, — are continually being related by sailors and traders in their resorts in New York, London, Hamburg, and Rotterdam to-day, customs that no scholar has yet described in print and that may not become known for many years, if ever. And if this be so now, how much more would it have been true a thousand years before the invention of printing, when learning was at its lowest ebb. It was at this period of low esteem of culture that the Hindu numerals undoubtedly made their first appearance in Europe.