The dot of the empty place

Bakshali manuscript extract

Recent carbon dating of the Bakhshali manuscript revealed that parts of it were written as early as third or fourth century, which predates the results of previous study, done with the parameters like style of writing, the literary and mathematical content and other factors, which showed they originated sometime between 8th and 12th century. It also revealed that samples were written in different centuries like some of them in 224-383 AD, another in 680-779 AD and another in 885-993 AD.

The scientists were not half as perplexed as how parts from different centuries came to be packaged as one, as they were excited from the discovery that this manuscript is now the most ancient known record of the symbol zero as we know it today. Although in these manuscript, zero is not depicted as a number but as a placeholder in number system. For example in the number “502”, “0” indicates no tens, and helps us differentiate it from “52”; here “0” works as a placeholder. It’s not worth anything on its own but it changes the value of other digits.

These writings were found in 1881 by a farmer in a field in Bakhshali near Peshawar, now in Pakistan. The texts of the script, written on birch bark in Sanskrit appeared to be the trading manuals of merchant traders doing business across Silk Road. In these manuals they have solved problems involving arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and mensuration covering topics like simple equations, simultaneous linear equations, quadratic equations and indeterminate equations of second degree.

These writings were found in 1881 by a farmer in a field in Bakhshali near Peshawar, now in Pakistan. The texts of the script, written on birch bark in Sanskrit appeared to be the trading manuals of merchant traders doing business across Silk Road. In these manuals they have solved problems involving arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and mensuration covering topics like simple equations, simultaneous linear equations, quadratic equations and indeterminate equations of second degree.

Although, there have been many ancient cultures which have used their own placeholder symbols. The Babylonians adopted a double wedge to symbolize nothingness around 5000 years ago; the Mayans used a shell to represent absence in their calendar system. By 1770 BC, the Egyptians used the symbol nfr  to depict “0” in accounting texts and to mark the base level in drawings of tombs and pyramids, so that distances were to be measured from that base level. By 130 AD Ptolemy used ‘a small circle with a long overbar’ as a symbol for zero.

Before the findings on Bakhshali manuscript, Lokvibhaga, a Jain cosmological text, dated around 458 AD, was considered to be the oldest known mention of numeral “0”.

“That is exciting to recognize, that culture is important in making big mathematical breakthroughs. The Europeans, even when it was introduced to them, were like ‘Why would we need a number for nothing?’ It’s a very abstract leap.” said Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford.

These developments of zero in the field of mathematics later expanded the range of further work in different fields of study like the idea of infinity, the modern explanation of vacuum in quantum physics, and even the most profound questions like how our universe came into existence and how it might vanish from existence in the future.





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