Place Value, not Zero is most important Aryabhatta did not invent the place value system, he was merely restating an already existing knowledge. Nor did he use the Brahmi numeral symbols 1 to 9, he used the traditional Sanskrit method of using letters to denote numbers. Place value system is an even ancient invention of India, and is in built into the very language of Sanskrit. For instance, the name for Eleven is eka dasha in Sanskrit where eka means one and dasha means ten. Note that this Sanskrit place value system is from the left, while modern place value system is from the right. So in Sanskrit when we say eka dasha, the left most value is 1 (eka), and the next value is ten (dash). While in modern notation 11, the right most value is 1, and the one to its left is 10. The invention of place value system (Positional Notation) created a new problem. There were places with no values at all, and there was no way to represent them via numeric symbols. For example, to represent hundred and one, the rightmost 1 has a value of one, the left most 1 has a value of 100. But the middle place has no value, its a null or empty. It had to be written something like 1 1 (meaning 1space1) where the space in between represented a positional notation which had no value. To overcome this difficulty, Indians invented 0, just to represent an empty place. It was not a number in itself, but just a notation implying “no value here”. In Sanskrit, Shunya means nothing or emptiness, and zero was given the name Shunya. The Arab merchants who came to India for trade called it Sifr or Safira which means “empty” in Arabic. These Arab merchants took the Indian arithmetic to Europe when they went to trade the Indian goods there. Sifr in Arabic became Zero in the European languages In fact, initially when this Indian number system was introduced in Europe, many European regions initially banned it. Florence in Italy banned its usage in 1299 CE. Most Europeans in those days were illiterate and also superstitious and were under the impression that there was some “black magic” CIPHER AND DICECIPHER In fact the strange Zero was considered to be a creation of Satan, devil. For them the Arabic word for zero, sifr, sounded like some secret code. Hence the Europeans started using the term “cipher” for secret codes, and decipher became solving secret codes.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 22:09:29 +0000
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