XIX. The Source of Hindu Mathematics

Extract

MANY writers have enlarged upon the subject of our indebtedness to India in matters intellectual, and in particular have drawn attention to ancient Hindu mathematics, which they consider exhibit in a marked degree the intellectual superiority of the Hindus in early times. They not only inform us that a system of mathematics was developed in India in early times, but imply that in this direction the Hindus were the benefactors of the rest of mankind. The latest authoritative statement of this kind is as follows: “In the mathematical sciences the achievements of the Indians have been very considerable. As the inventors of the numerical figures with which the whole world reckons, and of the decimal system connected with the use of these figures, they naturally became the greatest calculators of antiquity, just as the Greeks were the greatest geometricians . . . The later mathematicians made more progress in trigonometry, especially by the invention of the sine table. The greatness of the Indian mathematical writers who belong to the fifth century and later lies in their arithmetical and algebraical investigations . . . The raising of numbers to various powers and the extraction of the square or cube root were but elementary operations to these mathematicians. They also calculated arithmetical progressions, perhaps first suggested by the chess-board of sixty-four squares, which was known in India before the beginning of our era. They attained the greatest eminence in algebra, which they developed to a degree beyond anything ever achieved by the Greeks.”