I would just humbly like to point out that the dating of the dharmasastra
and itihasas, as well as the dating of the Bhaksali manuscript, is by no
means determined "once and for all".
As for the original composition of Vedic scriptures (here I include the
Upanishads as well as the Bhagavata Purana) I believe suggestions in the
range of 3000 B.C to 12th century A.D. have been proposed.
As for the age of the Bakshali manuscript is concerned, a similar
uncertainty is prevelent. As Hayashi himself notes, his dating is
<tentative> and does <not> take into consideration linguistic properties
of the text--the very thing that made Hoernle say that the manuscript
probably was from the first centuries A.D. Although Hayashi's presentation
is extremely impressive in terms of size (1000 pages?), paper quality, as
well as his treatment of the text, I don't see that his judgement
regarding the date is as complete as it could be--and therefore perhaps
less trustworthy than others. However, Kaye's dating procedure, as Hayashi
himself points out, is out of the question.
Greetings from a sunny Toronto,
Bo Klintberg
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto
On Tue, 13 Apr 1999, Kim Plofker wrote:
>> 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