Number Systems

[Guest guest]

Dear All ,

 

I have been reading posts about number systems in Sanskrit . Here is some

information which the members may feel interesting . Many of you may already be

knowing many of the things that are written here but I feel this email will help

put the discussions in the right perspective .

 

There have been and there are a number of number or counting system in practice

side by side . All of them exist and prosper because there is something unique

about them . Aryabhat introduced a system , a modified version of which we use

today . He introduced the time place system . 1000 is one thousand in this

system because 1 is three places away from the left side . 10 is ten because 1

is one place away from the left side . As we all are using this system we may

find it difficult to believe at present that someone had to discover and

introduce this system . This is the way the system is defined and then the

number is read .

 

Now contrast this with the other system that was in vogue at that time . The

Brahmi system . In this system one line will mean one , two lines will mean two

and so on .

 

Now you see that the brahmi system was good for small practical calculations .

Say upto ten . Then the system was getting unwieldy . Like in Roman Numerals I

is one II is two , III is three and IV is four and so on . As we go on to bigger

numbers the system becomes unwieldy .

 

Aryabhata had two requirements . One he wanted a system which would deal with

big numbers easily . Second this would be easy for other students to understand

and carry forward. to do this he wanted to convert all numbers into alphabets .

The Aryabhat Alphabet table is available on the net . For example Lru will mean

10000 , Y would mean 30 and so on . Aryabhat defined this system with base 100 .

Many people adopted this system in the later years . This does not mean in

Sanskrit this is the way numbers are read. The numbers are read in this way when

this system is used .

 

So, we have to go with the reference to context always . Today 1000 is read as

one thousand in the common number system because this is the system majority of

us are learning and using and so we do it unconsciously . At the same time

1000000 would be read by some people as one million and by some people as ten

lakhs . Because these are two different ways of nomenclature of the same number

..

 

One more example of commonly found myth is the Thirty three crore Gods

worshipped by Hindus . The actual wording is TrayaTrinshat , how do you

translate ? You cannot translate without taking into consideration the context

and the complete shloka . But as we have been studying the number system for so

long that the basic assumptions have become second nature and we forget about

them and go about arguing about nonexistent issues .