The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c8.15

c8.15

What suggested the form for the zero is, of course, purely a matter of conjecture. The dot, which the Hindus used to fill up lacunæ in their manuscripts, much as we indicate a break in a sentence,⁴ would have been a more natural symbol; and this is the one which the Hindus first used⁵ and which most Arabs use to-day. There was also used for this purpose a cross, like our X, and this is occasionally found as a zero symbol.⁶ In the Bakhṣālī manuscript above mentioned, the word *śūnya*, with the dot as its symbol, is used to denote the unknown quantity, as well as to denote zero. An analogous use of the zero, for the unknown quantity in a proportion, appears in a Latin manuscript of some lectures by Gottfried Wolack in the University of Erfurt in 1467 and 1468.¹ The usage was noted even as early as the eighteenth century.²