The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c5.7

c5.7

Others argued that they were probably invented by the Chaldeans or the Jews because they increased in value from right to left, an argument that would apply quite as well to the Roman and Greek systems, or to any other. It was, indeed, to the general idea of notation that many of these writers referred, as is evident from the words of England’s earliest arithmetical textbook-maker, Robert Recorde (c. 1542): “In that thinge all men do agree, that the Chaldays, whiche fyrste inuented thys arte, did set these figures as thei set all their letters. for they wryte backwarde as you tearme it, and so doo they reade. And that may appeare in all Hebrewe, Chaldaye and Arabike bookes . . . where as the Greekes, Latines, and all nations of Europe, do wryte and reade from the lefte hand towarde the ryghte.” ¹ Others, and among them such influential writers as Tartaglia¹ in Italy and Köbel² in Germany, asserted the Arabic origin of the numerals, while still others left the matter undecided³ or simply dismissed them as "barbaric."⁴ Of course the Arabs themselves never laid claim to the invention, always recognizing their indebtedness to the Hindus both for the numeral forms and for the distinguishing feature of place value. Foremost among these writers was the great master of the golden age of Bagdad, one of the first of the Arab writers to collect the mathematical classics of both the East and the West, preserving them and finally passing them on to awakening Europe. This man was Moḥammed the Son of Moses, from Khowārezm, or, more after the manner of the Arab, Moḥammed ibn Mūsā al-Khowārazmī,⁵ a man of great learning and one to whom the world is much indebted for its present knowledge of algebra¹ and of arithmetic. Of him there will often be occasion to speak; and in the arithmetic which he wrote, and of which Adelhard of Bath² (*c.* 1130) may have made the translation or paraphrase,³ he stated distinctly that the numerals were due to the Hindus.⁴ This is as plainly asserted by later Arab writers, even to the present day.¹ Indeed the phrase *'ilm hindī*, "Indian science," is used by them for arithmetic, as also the adjective *hindī* alone.²