I don't remember that Datta and Singh said that "zero diffused to
India before 100 B.C."--but then again my memory may be wrong. I would
also be grateful to receive references to these "Vedic history books" that
you say propose such a thing.
Here's the book you probably meant:
Datta, Bibhutibusan and Awadesh Narayan Sing (1935) History of Hindu
Mathematics--A Source Book. Lahore: Motil Banarsi Das.
Avaialable at every decent University Library.
Bo Klintberg
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto
-------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Milo Gardner wrote:
>
> Dear HM Listmembers:
>
> Kim's points are greatly appreciated. Zero did diffuse
> to India around 100 BC, as the Vedic history books that
> I have read have clearly indicated. The best book that
> I have read was written in 1938 two Indian mathematicians.
> I am sorry that I can not recall the name nor the
> authors.
>
> On the Mesoamerican side of zero, R.C. Gupta himself,
> as Kim cited as a reference summarized in Feb. 1994(?)
> a Historia Mathematica journal article suggested that
> aspects of zero may have also been diffused to India
> from Mesoamerica. The document that was cited in Gupta's
> summary (of a Ph.D. thesis) had long read the word Mayan
> as Ptolemy. Has anyone else looked into this issue, that
> simply reports the word Maya to mean Maya?
>
> On the separate issue of the Mesoamerican side of zero's
> early use, independent of diffusion, I strongly agree that
> a pre-Mayan culture first used zero in several ways, beyond
> the application of positional zero as Europe first accepted
> its general use. The Olmecs, even though not the historical
> name of the culture, Olmec implies 'rubber people', making
> the ball used in the great 'court game', clearly used zero,
> as Bernal suggested. However, the context of the earliest
> known zero appears to connect to sidereal time keeping,
> as UC-Berekely Prof. Hatch suggested some years ago.
>
> As a related point the diophantine equation aspect of the Dresden
> codex calendar accounting also implies that early Mesoamerican
> numeration was remainder based, as needed to keep time by star
> clocks, a much different context that the European positional zero
> as applied to a much needed decimal numeration system.
>
> I thought that these few fragments and glimpses from the past,
> several verified, some not, might be of interest.
>
> Regards to all,
>
> Milo Gardner
>