Document 12.3: Al-Biruni, Notes on the Writing of the Hindus, ca. 1030

Al-Biruni’s work was meant to help make Indian ideas more accessible to other scholars. With this in mind, he sought to identify the specific challenges presented by Indian texts to offer guidance in overcoming them. For example, Indian mathematical treatises were often written in the form of slokas, prayer-like verses that followed particular grammatical rules. In order to facilitate this merger of mathematics and religious poetry, numerous words were assigned to each number, ensuring that authors would always have an option available that both expressed the intended number and fit the meter of the verse. As you read this excerpt, pay particular attention to the table of numbers and their corresponding words. On what basis were words assigned to each number?

The Hindus use the numeral signs in arithmetic in the same way as we do. I have composed a treatise showing how far, possibly, the Hindus are ahead of us in this subject. We have already explained that the Hindus compose their books in Slokas. If, now, they wish, in their astronomical handbooks, to express some numbers of the various orders, they express them by words used to denote certain numbers either in one order alone or at the same time in two orders (e.g. a word meaning either 20 or both 20 and 200). For each number they have appropriated quite a great quantity of words. Hence, if one word does not suit the metre, you may easily exchange it for a synonym which suits. Brahmagupta says : “If you want to write one, express it by everything which is unique, as the earth, the moon; two by everything which is double, as, e.g. black and white; three by everything which is threefold; the nought [zero] by heaven, the twelve by the names of the sun.”

I have united in the following table all the expressions for the numbers which I used to hear from them; for the knowledge of these things is most essential for deciphering their astronomical handbooks. Whenever I shall come to know all the meanings of these words, I will add them, if God permits!

Source: Edward Sachau, ed., Alberuni’s India (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1910), pp. 177–178.

Questions to Consider

  1. What importance should we attach to the fact that Hindu mathematicians chose to express their findings in the form of slokas?
  2. What does the way they referred to numbers tell us about how Hindu scholars saw the relationship between mathematics and religion?