‘In Britain, we are still astonishingly ignorant’: the hidden story of how ancient India shaped the west
Eh?
In AD628, an Indian sage living on a mountain in Rajasthan made one of the world’s most important mathematical discoveries. The great mathematician Brahmagupta (598–670) explored Indian philosophical ideas about nothingness and the void, and came up with the treatise that more or less invented – and certainly defined – the concept of zero.
We actually call the whole lot – including zero – Arabic, because of the path they took to us, Indian or Hindu numerals.
What the fuck do you mean we don’t acknowledge it?
It’s like a searchlight probing the clouds. Who can we find now who is oppressed and needs us to draw attention to the evil other white people have inflicted?
So what? India didn’t go on to evolve the social and philosophical context in which an Industrial Revolution could occur. We (or more accurately the Scots and Cornish) did.
It’s amazing to me that poor people from the turgid UK don’t flock to India to take advantage of its vibrant multicultural peaceful polity. Or Wakanda.
The reason people are ignorant about zero, is because they have never thought about it.
Zero just is
Or isn’t.
Depends really.
I think I learnt about zero by watching an Horizon programme 40odd years ago.
“And what did you invent up on the mountain today, husband?”
“Nothing.”
I thought Muslims invented everything?
The only questions are whether it is India, China or the US that will dominate the world by the end of this century, and what sort of India that will be
A visit to Leicester might shake his confidence somewhat. There’s another player in that particular game.
“In Britain, we are still astonishingly ignorant”
Speak for yourself.
I find it very hard to believe no one before 670AD understood what nothing was. Since people had been doing arithmetic for thousands of years before without it. The abacus as a calculating tool goes back to the ancient Egyptians. On an abacus, zero is the starting condition.
Zero is essential for a particular form of mathematical notation. If you don’t use it you don’t need it. That form of mathematical notation isn’t essential to doing arithmetic. Science has a tendency to do this. Defining a scientific principal without acknowledging people had been using the principle for thousands of years before it was defined.
The great mathematician Brahmagupta (598–670) explored Indian philosophical ideas about nothingness and the void, and came up with the treatise that more or less invented – and certainly defined – the concept of zero.
It is said that he came up with the idea after watching Indian techies spend all day doing zero work.
And another thing…
The Greeks ( Hipparchus ?) used the Babylonian model to define a circle and used 360 degrees, because of its perfection as a number.
What if one draws a straight line from the centre to the rim. What degree is that ?
It’s probably true that many people don’t realise the ‘Arabic’ numbers aren’t Arabic.
This might be a bit unfair on old Brahmagupta and has certainly contributed to the illusion that the Muslim world has ever created anything, but really, does it matter?
India’s not going to become a 21st century superpower by bitching about the past.
@Ottokring
Ever wondered why 360 was regarded as a perfect number? The answer is because you can factor it by so many useful numbers. Useful numbers? The numbers you actually need to use. Base 10 isn’t a particularly useful system Most base 10 numbers are useless.
Even an ancient like me learnt at school that the “Arabic” numerals were Hindu in origin, just as we learnt that much ancient knowledge came to us courtesy of the Babylonians and the Greeks. So? And in China were invented gunpowder, printing and the compass. So?
“the Scots and Cornish) did”: yeah, basically us Picts.
@John, I’m not sure what your point is, so I’m not sure if I’m answering it, but there are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan. Not that Modhi doesn’t have a plan, I’m sure.
His was a stalwart attempt, granted, but it wasn’t until the late 20th century that the definitive exposition was perfected by Captain Potato with his example of zero knowledge and zero friends.
Scots & Cornish‽ Celtic propaganda. What about the English and immigrant contribution? Braithwaite, Brunel, Ericsson, the Fourdriniers, Westley Richards, Whitworth et al.
“ The great mathematician Brahmagupta (598–670) […] more or less invented […] the concept of zero.”
I remember a science teacher getting quite arsey with us when someone got mixed up between invention and discovery, in his simple telling you can’t invent something that’s already in existence.
As bis points out, zero was already in use so at best he defined, for any definition of define.
Chris,
I was trying to state that over the next couple of generations the never-ending influx of sub-Saharan and near-eastern Muslims is going to be the major influence on western countries and to ignore them while naming India, China and the US is being deliberately obtuse. To quote the High Sparrow, you are few and we are many.
I used Leicester as an example that from now on violent Hindu/Muslim conflict will not be restricted to the sub-continent.
The article is exuberant about “Although we in the west are almost entirely unaware of it, Indian learning, religious insights and ideas are among the crucial foundations of our world. Like ancient Greece, ancient India came up with a set of profound answers to the big questions about what the world is, how it operates, why we are here and how we should live our lives.”
Oooh – and what did the sages actually say about how it operates?
“Out of India came not just pioneering merchants, astronomers and astrologers, scientists and mathematicians, doctors and sculptors, but also the holy men, monks and missionaries of several distinct strands of Indic religious thought and devotion, Hindu and Buddhist.”
Oh. Not much beyond a bunch of religious stuff, then. And thought on a level with Plato (ie, looks good to the cognoscenti, but utterly detached from reality).
What were the great, influential applied science/engineering accomplishments? Or the breakthrough mathematical theories? (incidentally, surely you *measure* the length of ‘the solar year’, rather than ‘calculating’ it???)
For engineering accomplishments, all my faulty memory could come up with was war rockets, good for killing the peasantry. Probably at odds with great strands of Indic religion, but the princes didn’t seem to much care about peasantry.
In short, mainly a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals preoccupied by gazing at their own navels, not doing much of utility. Yeah, zero is good. Makes arithmetic feasible. But what else?
What is interesting is what the Indians didn’t do. They didn’t write much history. They had no equivalent, apparently, of Herodotus or Thucydides or Xenophon. It was scholarly-inclined staff of the East India Company who started assembling what they could find about the Indian past.
One of their best sources was a Chinese chap who had pootled about India for years, visiting places associated with the Buddha.
The great philosopher Eric son of Idle said in first century Judaea : You know, you come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!
Said it in English too, the language that was the first into space and is being learned in every state of India. Thank you that continental congress. This little portion of an island will be in history books long after we’re 20 generations gone.
Without the Raj*, there would be no concept of India. It’s a subcontinent with many races, languages (not all Indo-European), alphabets … and without the Brits telling them what to do, there’d be dozens of princely states. at each others’ throats most of the time.
* the Mughals had a go, but stopped short of the southern half
I’ve always said about eastern philophies “When you can feed your children I might possibly pay attention.”
“ I’ve always said about eastern philophies “When you can feed your children I might possibly pay attention.””
I’d prefer waiting until you can drink the tap water, but that works for starting to take note.