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RESONANCE December 2010

SERIES ARTICLE
Dawn of Science
7. The IndoArabic Numerals
T Padmanabhan
Keywords
I ndoArabi c numberl s, Al
Khowarizmi, Brahmagupta.
T Padmanabhan works at
IUCAA, Pune and is
interested in all areas
of theoretical physics,
especially those which
have something to do with
gravity.
It was traders who tilted the scale in favour of the new number
system in the Arab world.
In AD 773, at the height of Arab splendour, there appeared at the
court of the Caliph, Al-Mansur, in Baghdad a man from distant
India. This traveller had brought with him several volumes of
writings fromIndia. Al-Mansur promptly got themtranslated into
Arabic and later several Arabic scholars assimilated their con-
tents. One among them was Abu Jafar Mohammed ibn Musa Al-
Khowarizmi (which, freely translated, means Mohammed, the
father of Jafar and the son of Musa, the Khowarizmian, the last
word originating from the Persian province of Khoresem). This
man, who lived between AD 780 and 850, was one of the greatest
mathematicians of the Arab world and he quickly realised the
importance of the number system used in the Indian writings. In
fact, he wrote a small book explaining the use of these numerals
around AD 820.
The original of this book is lost but there is evidence to suggest
that it reached Spain in about AD 1100; there it was translated
into Latin by an Englishman, Robert of Chester. And this transla-
tion is probably the earliest known introduction of Indian numer-
als to the West. This manuscript begins with the words, Dixit
Algoritmi: laudes deo rectori nostro atque defensori dicamus
dignas (Algoritmi has spoken; praise be to God, our Lord and our
Defender, the Arab name Al-Khowarirmi having been transliter-
ated into Algoritmi in Latin). In later years, careless readers of the
book started attributing the calculational procedures described in
the book to Algoritmi; that is how we got the term algorithm for
any computational procedure.
Previous parts:
Resonance, Vol . 15: p.498;
p.590; p.684; p. 774. p.870,
p.1009.
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WHEN
Figure 2.
WHERE
Figure 1.
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The use of Indian numerals was picked up by many scholars and
was taught in major cities. In particular, the use of zero became
well established in these discussions. Al-Khowarizmi himself
says explicitly: When nothing remains...put down a small circle
so that the place be not empty... and the number of places is not
diminished and one number is mistaken for the other. However,
the new system was not accepted by the average man easily;
ultimately, what tilted the balance in its favour were not scholarly
expositions but commercial considerations! For by the end of the
first millennium, Italy had grown to be a major mercantile power
around the Mediterranean. Italian ships were used for crusades,
Italian bankers lent the money, and Venice, Genoa and Pisa rose
as cities of prominence. The traders and merchants very quickly
realisedtheadvantages of theIndoArabic number system. Blessed
by big business, the system stayed. For example, the Margarita
Philosophica (the philosophic pearl), a beautifully illustrated
encyclopaedia which was widely used as a university textbook in
the early sixteenth century, authored by the monk Gregor Reisch
(c.14671525) discusses arithmetic using IndoArabic numerals
compared to the use of a counting board (Figures 3 and 4).
Al-Khowarizimi also wrote another influential work called Al-
jabr-wal Muquabala, (which could be translated as The science
Figure 3. The genealogy of
modern numerals.
Courtesy: V F Turchin, The Phe-
nomenon of Science.
Al-Khowsrizmi
discusses in a
systematic manner
among other
things the
solution of
algebraic
equations up to the
quadratic order.
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SERIES ARTICLE
of transposition and cancellation). Here, he gives a de-
tailed exposition of the fundamentals of the subject,
which has come to be called alegbra. Al-Khowarizmi
discusses in a systematic manner among other things
the solution of algebraic equations up to the quadratic
order. The clarity of discussion in this book has made
later workers call Al-Khowarizmi the father of algebra.
The synthesising power of Arabic civilisation also influ-
enced trigonometry. This subject, well developed in both
India and Greece due to the stimulus given by astronomi-
cal observations, attained a unified look in the hands of
the Arabs. In Greece, it was developed by Aristarchus
(310230 BC), Hipparchus (around 140 BC) and most
notably by Cladius Ptolemy (AD 85165). In particular,
Ptolemy constructed what he called a table of chords which is
equivalent to the modern trigonometric table for the sine of an
angle. He did this by using a very elegant geometrical procedure
for all angles at half-degree intervals. This work, of course, was
developed further by the Arabs. Abul-Wefa (AD 940998), for
example, produced the tables for sines and tangents at quarter-
degree intervals; this table was used extensively by later scholars.
Similar tables were constructed in the East by Aryabhata.
Incidentally, there is an interesting story behind the term sine. In
trigonometry, one associates with each angle certain ratios usu-
ally called sine, tangent and secant (three other ratios, cosine,
cotangent and cosecant, arise as complements of these three
ratios). Of these three, the terms tangent and secant have clear
geometrical meaning and correspond to the standard definition in
Euclidean geometry (see Figure 5). How did the word sine
originate? Surprisingly enough, it came from the Sanskrit term
jya-ardha (half of chord)! This is how it happened.
The Indian mathematician, Aryabhata (AD 475550), used the
term jya-ardha to denote what we now call sine. This term,
abbreviated as jya, was converted phonetically as jiba by the
Arabs. Following the standard Arabic practice of dropping the
Figure 4. The title page of
Gregor Reischs Margarita
Philosophica (1503). The
seven liberal arts are
around the three-headed
figure in the centre with
arithmetica, with a count-
ing board, seated in the
middle.
Courtesy: Freiburg: Johann.
Schott, 1503 [Rare Books Col-
lection B765.R3 M2].
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Box 1. Algebraic Symbolism
The earliest discussions in algebra,
both in the East and the West, were
rhetorical. Questions and answers
were given in the form of dialogues
or discussions and no symbols were
used. The first two mathematicians to
realise the powers of symbolic ma-
nipulations were Diophantus in
Greece (AD 250 ?) and Brahmagupta
(AD 700 ?) in India.
Diophantus had symbols to denote
unknown quantities, various powers
of an unknown quantity, reciprocals
and equality. He also used Greek
letters to denote numerals. The sys-
tem followed by Brahmagupta was
more elaborate. Addition was indi-
cated by just placing the terms next to
each other, subtraction by placing a
dot over the term to be deducted,
multiplication by writing bha (the
first letter of bhavitha, the product),
and square root by the prefix ka (from
the word karana). The first unknown
in the problem is denoted by ya and
additional unknowns were indicated
by the initial syllables of various
colours.
The various mathematical symbols
we use today came into existence
over the centuries. The equal sign
(=) was due to Robert Recorde
(Figure A). The plus and minus signs first appeared in print in an arithmetic text by John Widman published
in 1489. The signs for multiplication and proportion were due to William Oughtred (15741660). It was
Dscarts who introduced the present compact notation with indices a, a
2
, a
3
, etc. Finally, as a ratio between
the circumference and the diameter of a circle was first used by the English writer, William Jones, in 1706.
Figure A. A page from Robert Recordes The Whetstone of
Witte (1557), showing the much longer equality sign.
Courtesty: http://www-groups. dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Bookpages/
Recorde4.jpeg
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SERIES ARTICLE
vowels in the written version. this became just jb. Of course, the
term jiba has no meaning in Arabic except in this technical
context. Later writers, coming across jb as a shortened version for
jiba (which appeared meaningless to them), decided to correct
it to jaib which is an Arabic word meaning cove or bay. Still
later, Gherardo of Cremona, while translating technical terms
from Arabic to Latin, literally translated jaib to the Latin equiva-
lent sinus. This, in English, became sine. That is howa cavity in
our upper nose and a trigonometric ratio ended up having the
same roots.
Suggested Reading
[1] V F Turchin, The Phenomenon of Science, Columbia University Press,
1977. Also available at: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/pos/default.html
[2] G Ifrah, The Universal History of Numbers, Penguin, 2005.
[3] Howard Eves, Great Moments in Mathematics, Vol. I, Mathematical
Association of America, 1983.
Address for Correspondence
T Padmanabhan
IUCAA, Post Bag 4
Pune University Campus
Ganeshkhind
Pune 411 007 India.
Email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
Figure 5. Geometrical meaningof trignometric
ratios. In a circle of radius 1 unit, draw a
tangent BE and secant BA from the external
point B. The lengths of AB and BE give,
respectively, the value of tangent (or tan )
and secant (or sec ). Similarly, the length
of half-chord (jya-ardha, in Sanskrit) CD is
equal to sine .