Bakhshali manuscript: oldest recorded use of the zero symbol (opens in new tab)

There was no shortage of outright stealing but it doesn't seem to be the case here. For one thing, it likely wasn't seen (other than by specialists) as a cultural artifact of quite the importance we give it today. The accounts of its discovery and early work done on it don't say anything about theft (including the Indian ones I can find). The fact it was found in what is today Pakistan probably means nobody on any side wants to as much as think about the can of worms any discussion about repatriation would be.

The downvotes here just go on to show the inherent racial bias of quite a few commenters here. The argument is simple. Either you think conquest, enslavement and exploitation of peoples around the world was right or you may think that was the unfortunate relic of the past and we must all move on. If you think it was wrong, then you should return the cultural relics plundered from the erstwhile colonies.

Seeing this manuscript "housed" in the UK is just sad. Seeing people continuing to support this situation just shows what really lies beneath the surface of "western civilization".

I believe they have a certain large diamond as well they stole from India and they would like it back.

> The English plundered [...] (saying this as an Indian).

I find it interesting that expensive physical artifacts loom larger than impalpables such as language and political system.

(The 'Pirates of the Caribbean' were pikers compared to Hume and Locke ...)

to the victor go the spoils

Far from all artifacts held by the English were stolen. Plenty were bought. Yes, things like keeping the Parthenon marbles are bullshit, but that doesn't mean that everything originating from outside the British isles was stolen.

Rather than type it out, this link gives a good rundown:

http://www.actforlibraries.org/the-importance-of-zero-in-mat...

Namely, I think you don't give poor zero quite enough respect. Zero is one of the biggest advancements to mathematics. Anyone can count to one, and even count multiple sets of one. The idea that nothing is something is underrated.

Poor zero is often not given due credit.

>For example can you think of the rules to multiply XVIV with XXV or can you quickly calculate what the result of that will be without translating to a decimal number system ? Exactly!

Well, very likely the Romans had some tricks to do that (and besides very likely they did use an abacus), the fact that it appears difficult to us (having been immersed in positional notation) does not mean much.

This algorithm (making use of halving and doubling) doesn't look so bad:

http://rbutterworth.nfshost.com/Tables/romanmult

and it can be used also with our "positional" numbers.

http://www.phy6.org/outreach/edu/roman.htm

The abacus (the Chinese "suanpan" or a derivative of it, as it is still used in some eastern countries) is - in the hands of someone used to it - very fast, I have seen people be on par or outperform a "westerner" trying to do the same operation on a pocket calculator, I wouldn't be surprised if the Romans abacus was as fast as that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus

the base as decimal (or actually bi-quinary) is the same.

There were positional number systems before there was a separate symbol for zero. People weren't flailing about with Roman numerals or similar systems until a symbol for zero was invented.

Seems like fake history...

aryabhatta was between 476 to 550 AD

I upvoted this submission, as did a large number of other people who probably live in the Western world. Do you think your comment is likely to increase or decrease upvotes?