Louis Charles Karpinski

“ The Egyptians, for example, had three systems of writing, with a numerical notation for each; the Greeks had two well-defined sets of numerals, and the Roman symbols for number changed more or less from century to century. Even to-day the number of methods of expressing numerical concepts is much greater than one would believe before making a study of the subject, for the idea that our common numerals are universal is far from being correct. It will be well, then, to think of the numerals that we still commonly call Arabic, as only one of many systems in use just before the Christian era. ”

“ It is therefore reasonable to conclude that in the Middle Ages, as in the time of Boethius, it was a simple matter for any inquiring scholar to become acquainted with such numerals of the Orient as merchants may have used for warehouse or price marks. And the fact that Gerbert seems to have known only the forms of the simplest of these, not comprehending their full significance, seems to prove that he picked them up in just this way. ”

“ As a matter of fact there is abundant reason for believing that Hindu numerals would naturally have been known to the Arabs, and even along every trade route to the remote west, long before the zero entered to make their place-value possible, and that the characters, the methods of calculating, the improvements that took place from time to time, the zero when it appeared, and the customs as to solving business problems, would all have been made known from generation to generation along these same trade routes from the Orient to the Occident. ”

“ He was the most celebrated mathematician of his time, either in the East or West, writing treatises on arithmetic, the sundial, the astrolabe, chronology, geometry, and algebra, and giving through the Latin transliteration of his name, algoritmi, the name of algorism to the early arithmetics using the new Hindu numerals. ”

“ A human mind cannot readily create simple forms that are absolutely new; what it fashions will naturally resemble what other minds have fashioned, or what it has known through hearsay or through sight. A circle is one of the world's common stock of figures, and that it should mean twenty in Phœnicia and in India is hardly more surprising than that it signified ten at one time in Babylon. [124] It is therefore quite probable that an extraneous origin cannot be found for the very sufficient reason that none exists. ”

“ When, therefore, we consider the rise of the numerals in the land of the Sindhu, [51] it must be understood that it is only the large movement that is meant, and that there must further be considered the numerous possible sources outside of India itself and long anterior to the first prominent appearance of the number symbols.
No one attempts to examine any detail in the history of ancient India without being struck with the great dearth of reliable material. ”

“ The introduction of myriads as in the Greek, and thousands as in Arabic and in modern numeration, is really a step away from a decimal scheme. So in the numbers below one hundred, in English, eleven and twelve are out of harmony with the rest of the -teens, while the naming of all the numbers between ten and twenty is not analogous to the naming of the numbers above twenty. To conform to our written system we should have ten-one, ten-two, ten-three, and so on, as we have twenty-one, twenty-two, and the like. The Sanskrit is consistent, the units, however, preceding the tens and hundreds. ”

“ On the other hand, we must bear in mind the fact that a traveler in Germany in the year 1700 would probably have heard or seen nothing of decimal fractions, although these were perfected a century before that date. The élite of the mathematicians may have known the zero even in Āryabhaṭa's time, while the merchants and the common people may not have grasped the significance of the novelty until a long time after. On the whole, the evidence seems to point to the west coast of India as the region where the complete system was first seen. ”

“ So little sympathy have the people with any save those of their own caste that a general literature is wholly lacking, and it is only in the observations of strangers that any all-round view of scientific progress is to be found. There is evidence that primary schools [15] existed in earliest times, and of the seventy-two recognized sciences writing and arithmetic were the most prized. [53] In the Vedic period, say from 2000 to 1400 B.C., there was the same attention to astronomy that was found in the earlier civilizations of Babylon, China, and Egypt, a fact attested by the Vedas themselves. ”

“ As to the Arabs, it is a mistake to feel that their activities began with Mohammed. Commerce had always been held in honor by them, and the Qoreish [330] had annually for many generations sent caravans bearing the spices and textiles of Yemen to the shores of the Mediterranean. In the fifth century they traded by sea with India and even with China, and Ḥira was an emporium for the wares of the East, [331] so that any numeral system of any part of the trading world could hardly have remained isolated. ”

“ CHAPTER II EARLY HINDU FORMS WITH NO PLACE VALUE
While it is generally conceded that the scientific development of astronomy among the Hindus towards the beginning of the Christian era rested upon Greek [42] or Chinese [43] sources, yet their ancient literature testifies to a high state of civilization, and to a considerable advance in sciences, in philosophy, and along literary lines, long before the golden age of Greece. From the earliest times even up to the present day the Hindu has been wont to put his thought into rhythmic form. ”

“ When the aṅkapalli, [145] the decimal-place system of writing numbers, was perfected, the tenth symbol was called the śūnyabindu, generally shortened to śūnya (the void) . Brockhaus [146] has well said that if there was any invention for which the Hindus, by all their philosophy and religion, were well fitted, it was the invention of a symbol for zero. This making of nothingness the crux of a tremendous achievement was a step in complete harmony with the genius of the Hindu. ”

“ As it then existed the system was no better than many others, it was of late origin, it contained no zero, it was cumbersome and little used, [2] and it had no particular promise. Not until centuries later did the system have any standing in the world of business and science; and had the place value which now characterizes it, and which requires a zero, been worked out in Greece, we might have been using Greek numerals to-day instead of the ones with which we are familiar. ”

“ Only as Western civilization is making its way into the commercial life of the East do the numerals as used by us find place, save as the Sanskrit forms appear in parts of India. It is therefore with surprise that the student of mathematics comes to realize how modern are these forms so common in the West, how limited is their use even at the present time, and how slow the world has been and is in adopting such a simple device as the Hindu-Arabic numerals. ”

“ The numerals must of necessity have been known to many traders in a country like Italy at least as early as the ninth century, and probably even earlier, but there was no reason for preserving them in treatises. Therefore when a man like Gerbert made them known to the scholarly circles, he was merely describing what had been familiar in a small way to many people in a different walk of life. ”

“ 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, [8] a man of great [5] learning and one to whom the world is much indebted for its present knowledge of algebra [9] and of arithmetic. Of him there will often be occasion to speak ”

“ Again, not far from the time of Boethius, in the sixth century, the Egyptian monk Cosmas, in his earlier years as a trader, made journeys to Abyssinia and even to India and Ceylon, receiving the name Indicopleustes (the Indian traveler) . His map (547 A.D.) shows some knowledge of the earth from the Atlantic to India. Such a man would, with hardly a doubt, have observed every numeral system used by the people with whom he sojourned, [329] and whether or not he recorded his studies in permanent form he would have transmitted such scraps of knowledge by word of mouth. ”

“ It is pathetic, however, to think of the medieval student trying to extract mental nourishment from a work so abstract, so meaningless, so unnecessarily complicated, as the arithmetic of Boethius.
He was looked upon by his contemporaries and immediate successors as a master, for Cassiodorus [285] (c. 490-c. 585 A.D.) says to him: "Through your translations the music of Pythagoras and the astronomy of Ptolemy are read by those of Italy, and the arithmetic of Nicomachus and the geometry of Euclid are known to those of the West." ”

“ Thus we find the numerals gradually replacing the Roman forms all over Europe, from the time of Leonardo of Pisa until the seventeenth century. But in the Far East to-day they are quite unknown in many countries, and they still have their way to make. In many parts of India, among the common people of Japan and China, in Siam and generally about the Malay Peninsula, in Tibet, and among the East India islands, the natives still adhere to their own numeral forms. ”

“ Even if Gerbert did not bring his knowledge of the Oriental numerals from Spain, he may easily have obtained them from the marks on merchant's goods, had he been so inclined. Such knowledge was probably obtainable in various parts of Italy, though as parts of mere mercantile knowledge the forms might soon have been lost, it needing the pen of the scholar to preserve them. Trade at this time was not stagnant. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Slavs, for example, had very great commercial interests, their trade reaching to Kiev and Novgorod, and thence to the East. ”

“ Few towns have honored a mathematician more, and few mathematicians have so distinctly honored their birthplace. Leonardo was born in the golden age of this city, the period of its commercial, religious, and intellectual prosperity. [517] [129] Situated practically at the mouth of the Arno, Pisa formed with Genoa and Venice the trio of the greatest commercial centers of Italy at the opening of the thirteenth century. Even before Venice had captured the Levantine trade, Pisa had close relations with the East. ”

“ As a result of this brief survey of the evidence several conclusions seem reasonable: (1) commerce, and travel for travel's sake, never died out between the East and the West; (2) merchants had every opportunity of knowing, and would have been unreasonably stupid if they had not known, the elementary number systems of the peoples with whom they were trading, but they would not have put this knowledge in permanent written form; (3) wandering scholars would have known many and strange things about the peoples they met, but they too were not, as a class, writers ”

“ So familiar are we with the numerals that bear the misleading name of Arabic, and so extensive is their use in Europe and the Americas, that it is difficult for us to realize that their general acceptance in the transactions of commerce is a matter of only the last four centuries, and that they are unknown to a very large part of the human race to-day. ”

“ The Brāhmī numerals would not have attracted the attention of scholars, for they had no zero so far as we know, and therefore they were no better and no worse than those of dozens of other systems. If Boethius was attracted to them it was probably exactly as any one is naturally attracted to the bizarre or the mystic, and he would have mentioned them in his works only incidentally, as indeed they are mentioned in the manuscripts in which they occur. ”

“ Ships sailed from the isthmus of Suez to all the commercial ports of Southern Europe and up into the Black Sea. Hindus were found among the merchants [332] who frequented the bazaars of Alexandria, and Brahmins were reported even in Byzantium.
Such is a very brief résumé of the evidence showing that the numerals of the Punjab and of other parts of India as well, and indeed those of China and farther Persia, of Ceylon and the Malay peninsula, might well have been known to the merchants of Alexandria, and even to those of any other seaport of the Mediterranean, in the time of Boethius. ”

“ Occasionally there went along these routes of trade men of real learning, and such would surely have carried the knowledge of many customs back and forth. Thus at a period when the numerals are known to have been partly understood in Italy, at the opening of the eleventh century, one Constantine, an African, traveled from Italy through a great part of Africa and Asia, even on to India, for the purpose of learning the sciences of the Orient. ”

“ The Jewish merchants speak Persian, Roman (Greek and Latin) , Arabic, French, Spanish, and Slavic. They travel from the West to the East, and from the East to the West, sometimes by land, sometimes by sea. They take ship from France on the Western Sea, and they voyage to Farama (near the ruins of the ancient Pelusium) ; there they transfer their goods to caravans and go by land to Colzom (on the Red Sea) . They there reëmbark on the Oriental (Red) Sea and go to Hejaz and to Jiddah, and thence to the Sind, India, and China. Returning, they bring back the products of the oriental lands.... ”

“ Then there were the Crusades, which in these times brought the East in touch with the West. The spirit of the Orient showed itself in the songs of the troubadours, and the baudekin, [428] the canopy of Bagdad, [429] became common in the churches of Italy. In Sicily and in Venice the textile industries of the East found place, and made their way even to the Scandinavian peninsula. [430]
We therefore have this state of affairs: There was abundant intercourse between the East and West for [110] some centuries before the Hindu numerals appear in any manuscripts in Christian Europe. ”

“ It would now be thought that the western world would at once adopt the new numerals which Leonardo had made known, and which were so much superior to anything that had been in use in Christian Europe. The antagonism of the universities would avail but little, it would seem, against such an improvement. It must be remembered, however, that there was great difficulty in spreading knowledge at this time, some two hundred and fifty years before printing was invented. "Popes and princes and even great religious institutions possessed far fewer books than many farmers of the present age. ”

“ Boethius could very well have learned one or more forms of Hindu numerals from some traveler or merchant.
To justify this statement it is necessary to speak more fully of these relations between the Far East and Europe. It is true that we have no records of the interchange of learning, in any large way, between eastern Asia and central Europe in the century preceding the time of Boethius. But it is one of the mistakes of scholars to believe that they are the sole transmitters of knowledge. ”

“ Not until the time of the powerful King Aśoka, in the third century B.C., do numerals appear in any inscriptions thus far discovered; and then only in the primitive form of marks, quite as they would be found in Egypt, Greece, Rome, or in [20] various other parts of the world. These Aśoka [69] inscriptions, some thirty in all, are found in widely separated parts of India, often on columns, and are in the various vernaculars that were familiar to the people. ”

“ The question is often asked, why did not these new numerals attract more immediate attention? Why did they have to wait until the sixteenth century to be generally used in business and in the schools? In reply it may be said that in their elementary work the schools always wait upon the demands of trade. That work which pretends to touch the life of the people must come reasonably near doing so. ”