The zero that was India By Kamesh Ramakrishna Aiyer

April 2, 2006

What is it with Western scholars of all kinds? They have a mote in their eye that is a

beam that prevents them from following leads that end in India. I came across two of

these recently – Kaplan’s book on the Natural History of Zero and "The Lore of the

Unicorn" by Odell Shepard. I will discuss the second in a later essay. I use the first to

illustrate the fact that this mote does not afflict just the historians and the soft literary

types but hard scientists as well.

A case-study: The Natural History of Zero

Kaplan is a well-known mathematician from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The math

training program that he started for mathematically gifted children is well attended and

well received. As a mathematician, his credentials are impeccably "hard science", if

abstract. Kaplan comes into our sights because he writes a book, "The Natural History of

Zero" in which he decides to debunk the notion that the zero and decimal place notation

originated in India.

For many centuries, it has been the considered wisdom that the numerals in general and

the zero in particular were of Arabic origin. Hence the name "Arabic numerals" for these

in contrast to "Roman numerals" used in medieval Europe. In recent years, there has

been a developing consensus and agreement that the numbers and zero are of Indian

origin. This was first proposed by a French scholar (who?) who showed how the written

form of Arabic numerals derive from the written form (in the Brahmi script) of the Pali

(the commonly spoken language) words for those numbers. Along with these Arabic

numerals, comes the notion of decimal place-notation. Place-notation and the

representation for "zero" are key elements of the modern number system.

Kaplan quotes an Indian work of mathematics and astrology, the Surya Siddhanta, from

about 1500-2000 years ago that begins with a story of how the author is taken in a dream

to the country of Romaka (i.e., Rome) by a yaksha (a mythical semi-divine creature) and

how he learns the art of reckoning with place-notation there. The rest of the book

illustrates with examples and principles various techniques of computation.

Kaplan finds this extremely convincing. He accepts this as evidence of a non-Indian

origin for numbers and place-notation. The first half of the book is devoted to showing

that the particular book may have been written later than claimed by Indian writers and

that there was evidence that Arabs, Greeks, and Byzantine mathematicians used various

elements of these concepts or were familiar with them. Even though the author of the

Surya Siddhanta claims to have invented these techniques, Kaplan finds the frame story

(of the Romaka dream) credible but all other assertions of invention by the author not

credible.

Kaplan also addresses some inconvenient fancies common to the Arab, the Greek, the

Roman and the Byzantine authors he quotes (we will use the term "Western" to

categorize all the works and traditions that are considered foundational for

European/Western science and philosophy). These authors frequently claim that some of

their ideas came from India or from visiting Indian scholars. As far back as 500 B.C.,

Pythagoras was reputed to have learnt secret mathematical knowledge from visiting

India. These, according to Kaplan, are fantasies invented by the writers to make it appear

that their methods were not just invented by themselves but came from a mysterious land.

In this instance, Kaplan finds the frame story not credible but decides that the author had

actually invented the relevant techniques (even though there is no such claim made by the

author) or knew them from local practice.

One does not have to be biased to wonder how Kaplan justifies treating one author one

way and other authors differently. Kaplan does not quote any other Indian text that has a

similar frame story. He does quote many more than one Western writer with the reverse

frame story. He dismisses all the Western frame stories as fantasy and accepts the one

Indian frame story as true.

As is usually the case with Western scholarship, Kaplan does not feel that his behavior

needs any explanation. It has been the “modern” Western attitude that tales about India,

no matter what the origin, are fabulous and to be rejected. That justifies Kaplan's

actions. But why is the same not applied to the Indian frame story about a Western

origin for an idea. After all, if India was a myth for Westerners, Rome may equally have

been a myth for Indians (well, this symmetry is not strictly necessary but I argue that it

must have been so). The answer is not explored here, but it is important to understand

that Kaplan's behavior is not unusual.

Indian books, whether religious or secular, whether didactic tales or historical, rely on the

use of frame stories to contain and convey their points. The Ramayana is not the story of

Rama's exile and fight with Ravana – it is the story of how Valmiki the cruel hunter came

to compose an epic poem that contains the story of Rama. The story of Valmiki's

composition is part of the story of Rama and it ends with Valmiki playing a part in the

story by providing refuge to Sita when she is unfairly exiled by Rama. The Mahabharata

is not the story of a great war – it begins with a recital of the Mahabharata by a disciple of

a disciple of Vyaasa who composed it. But Vyaasa did not just compose it – his birth is a

part of the story and it is the story of his children's children (but not his to acknowledge).

Within the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad-Gita but the Gita is itself a recital, in flashback,

of what happened before the war that started ten days earlier got under way. The

Puranas invariably are told by raconteurs within a frame explaining the first telling; the

Upanishads make their philosophical points within frame stories.

The point is that the art of the frame story is well established in Indian oral tradition. If

anything is to be discounted as "story" when reading or listening to an ancient Indian

work, it is the frame story. The frame story is expressly NOT used to add credibility to

the main work; rather it is used as a story-telling technique to draw the listener in and

maintain their interest. If and when necessary, the teller will use the frame story as a way

of taking a break from the main plot line. But at no point is the frame story used to

justify the events of the main work.

This contrasts with the treatment of the Indian connection in ancient Western scholarly

works. The Indian origin of something invariably is seen by the teller as adding

credibility. The Indian connection is interpolated in text when it is seen as improving the

reader's ability to accept the conclusion. However, the consensus among modern

Western scholars is to dismiss the claimed connections and Kaplan behaves within that

tradition.

Digression

That brings up a minor digression: Was the West a wonderful myth for Indian writers? It

is clear from the record that India was such for Western writers. If the West was a

wonderful myth, was it more of a wonder for the Indians that India was to the Westerners

who wrote about India? This is not an easy question to answer and probably merits an

essay of its own. But a simple answer could be based on counting and categorizing the

quality of such cross-references.

When one does that, the answer is too easy – “yavanas” and “romakas” and “parsas”, and

“mlecchas” were used primarily as filler material when referenced by an Indian writer in

Sanskrit. The author wants to fill in space – the number of armies that participated in the

Mahabharata, or the different nations traversed by the hero in the Brihatkatha. The

actual reality of what the Yavana does or what is different about Romaka is not relevant

to the story. The author is trying to impress his audience with what he or she knows

about the peoples of the world, in general, not of the details of any particular people.

As opposed to this, the references to India in the West are concrete: Dionysios brings the

secret of wine-making from India; Pythagoras visited India and learned number

mysticism; Herodotus tabulates the tax revenues of the Persian Empire and reckons that

the “Indian provinces” (on the west bank of the Indus – modern Afghanistan and

Baluchistan) contributed half the revenues while the remaining eighteen provinces (from

Egypt to Persia) contributed the remaining half. During Augustus Caesar’s time, Rome

tries to limit imports from India because it was draining the country of gold. Seals of the

Indus-Saraswati civilization are found in reasonably large numbers distributed from

Bahrain to Sumer and beyond – Sumerian artifacts are only occasionally found in the

contemporary archeological sites in India and Pakistan. Fabulous fortunes were made by

Westerners who traded with India in the 18th

century – no Indian is recorded as having

made a fabulous fortune by trading with the West.

It seems that the answer to this is easy – India was the wonder; the West was not.

Conclusion

It isn’t clear to me what we can do about this except observe it and make the observation

stick. Ultimately, the British draining of the Indian economy from the late eighteenth to

the mid-twentieth changed the India, the wonder, to the wonder that was India, and

opened the door to the wholesale rejection by “modern” scholars of Indian

accomplishments.