Re: [HM] Indian numbers

Kim Plofker (Kim_Plofker@Brown.edu)
Tue, 13 Apr 1999 13:08:09 -0400 (EDT)

>During my recent visit to India, I learned that when writing about large
>numbers, say in newspaper reports on the budget, they don't use
>"million", but rather two other numbers: Lakh, which is a hundred
>thousand, and Crore, which is a hundred lakhs. Does anybody know the
>history of these units?
>Avinoam Mann

As Heinz Lueneburg noted, "lakh" is from Sanskrit "laksha".
Similarly, "crore" is from Sanskrit "koti". These terms for
10E5 and 10E7 are attested in non-mathematical works in epic and
dharmasastra literature going back to the first few centuries of
this era; they seem to have got into Sanskrit scientific texts a few
centuries later. Cf. Takao Hayashi, _The Bakhshali Manuscript_,
Gronigen 1995, chapter 6.

Kim Plofker

Dept. of History of Mathematics
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912 USA