Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Adelard of Bath was also one of those who introduced Latin readers to Arab-Hindu numerals. These caught on surprisingly slowly, with many people still using the nine Greek alphabetical letters, plus a special zero symbol. One reason for the slow adoption of the Hindu system was that its advantages were not so apparent while people still used the abacus. There was in fact keen competition between the ‘abacists’ and the ‘al-gorists’ for several centuries. It was only with the wider spread of literacy that the advantages of Arabic-Hindu numerals became clear (in pen-and-paper calculations, rather than with an abacus). The algorists didn’t finally triumph until the sixteenth century. Boyer, Op. cit., pages 252–253.

CHAPTER 13: HINDU NUMERALS, SANSKRIT, VEDANTA

1. Basham (editor), A Cultural History of India, Op. cit., page 48.

2. John Keay, India: A History, London: HarperCollins, 2001, page 138. Romila Thapar, A History of India, London: Penguin Books, 1966, volume 1, pages 136ff.

3. Keay, Op. cit., pages 156–157. See Thapar, Op. cit., page 146, who says that Chinese Buddhist pilgrims mentioned them.

4. Keay, Op. cit., page 157.

5. Ibid., page 136.

6. T. Burrow, The Sanskrit Language, London: Faber & Faber, 1955, page 64. See also: Thapar, Op. cit., page 58.

7. Burrow, Op. cit., page 65.

8. Keay, Op. cit., page 139.

9. Ibid., page 145. See also: Thapar, Op. cit., page 140.

10. Keay, Op. cit., page 145.

11. Guilds even acted as bankers, lending money on occasion to the royal court.

12. Keay, Op. cit., page 145.

13. Ibid., page 146.

14. Basham (editor), Op. cit., page 162.

15. Burrow, Op. cit., page 43.

16. Basham (editor), Op. cit., page 162; see also Keay, Op. cit., page 61 and Thapar, Op. cit., page 123.

17. Burrow, Op. cit., page 58.

18. Ibid., page 2.

19. Ibid., page 50.

20. Basham (editor), Op. cit., page 170.

21. Keay, Op. cit., page 151.

22. Basham (editor), Op. cit., page 172.

23. Keay, Op. cit., page 152.

24. Ibid. Inside India itself, the development (or non-development) of Sanskrit led to certain anomalies. In Kalidasa’s plays, for example, there was a theatrical convention that servants, people belonging to the lower castes, and all female and child characters, spoke and understood only Prakrit, showing that it was everybody’s first language. Burrow, Op. cit., page 60. Sanskrit is preserved in the drama only for the ‘twice-born’ principals – kings, ministers, learned Brahmans. Keay, Op. cit., page 153. Because Sanskrit was frozen, writers who lived a full millennium after Panini were forced to replace innovation with ingenuity. One consequences was that, eventually, sentences sometimes ran to several pages, and words might have more than fifty syllables. (In early Sanskrit, in contrast, the use of compounds is no different from, say, Homer.) Burrow, Op. cit., page 55. But although Sanskrit was understood by just a tiny minority of the population, that minority was all-important and, as we shall see, this did not inhibit the development or the spread of new ideas. Sanskrit acted as a cultural bond in India, as the vernacular languages fragmented and proliferated.

25. Basham (editor), Op. cit., page 197.

26. Ibid., page 203.

27. Ibid., 204. See Thapar, Op. cit., page 158, for the plan of the Vishnu temple at Deogarh.

28. Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilisation, Princeton, New Jersey, and London: The Bollingen Series of Princeton University Press, 1972/1992, page 48.

29. Ibid., page 49.

30. Ibid., page 53.

31. Unlike in so many areas of the world, the sun was not worshipped in India. On the contrary, it was seen as a deadly power. The moon, however, was understood as life-giving. The dew followed its appearance and the moon also controlled the waters through the tides. Water was the earthly equivalent of amrita, the drink of the gods (and a word related to the Greek ambrosia). Water, sap, milk and blood were all different forms of amrita and its most conspicuous manifestations on earth were the three holy rivers – the Ganges, Sarasvati and Jumna. Sinners who expire near these rivers are released from all their sins. Basham (editor), Op. cit., page 110.

32. Ibid., page 81.

33. Keay, Op. cit., page 152.

34. Ibid., page 174.

35. Thapar, Op. cit., page 190, for a detailed description.

36. Keay, Op. cit., page 206.

37. Ibid., page 214.

38. Ibid., page 208. See also: Thapar, Op. cit., page 195.

39. Keay, Op. cit., page 217, while Thapar, Op. cit., page 210 gives details of the income of the temple.

40. Keay, Op. cit., page 209.