The Zero
that was India
by
Kamesh Ramakrishna Aiyer
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.
April
9, 2006
Kamesh Ramakrishna
Aiyer lives in Brookline, MA. Professionally, he is a computer
scientist working for EMC Corporation. His interests include Indian
mythology, history, story-telling and writing.
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