The
Brahmi numerals are an indigenous
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
n
numeral systemA numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
attested from the 3
rd century BCE (somewhat later in the case of most of the tens). They are the direct graphic ancestors of the modern
IndicMost of the positional base 10 numeral systems in the world have originated from India, which first developed the concept of positional numerology...
and
Arabic numeralsThe Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from Indian numerals and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, by which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a whole number...
. However, they were conceptually distinct from these later systems, as they were not used as a positional system with a
zero0 is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, zero is used as a placeholder in place value systems...
. Rather, there were separate numerals for each of the tens (10, 20, 30, etc.). There were also symbols for 100 and 1000 which were combined in
ligatureLigature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a mouthpiece to a woodwind instrument...
s with the units to signify 200, 300, 2000, 3000, etc.
Origins
The source of the first three numerals seems clear: they are collections of 1, 2, and 3 strokes, in Ashoka's era vertical I, II, III like Roman numerals, but soon becoming horizontal like the modern Chinese numerals. In the oldest inscriptions, 4 is a +, reminiscent of the X of neighboring
{{Table_Numeral_Systems}}
The
Brahmi numerals are an indigenous
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
n
numeral systemA numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
attested from the 3
rd century BCE (somewhat later in the case of most of the tens). They are the direct graphic ancestors of the modern
IndicMost of the positional base 10 numeral systems in the world have originated from India, which first developed the concept of positional numerology...
and
Arabic numeralsThe Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from Indian numerals and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, by which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a whole number...
. However, they were conceptually distinct from these later systems, as they were not used as a positional system with a
zero0 is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, zero is used as a placeholder in place value systems...
. Rather, there were separate numerals for each of the tens (10, 20, 30, etc.). There were also symbols for 100 and 1000 which were combined in
ligatureLigature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a mouthpiece to a woodwind instrument...
s with the units to signify 200, 300, 2000, 3000, etc.
Origins
The source of the first three numerals seems clear: they are collections of 1, 2, and 3 strokes, in Ashoka's era vertical I, II, III like Roman numerals, but soon becoming horizontal like the modern Chinese numerals. In the oldest inscriptions, 4 is a +, reminiscent of the X of neighboring
{{Table_Numeral_Systems}}
The
Brahmi numerals are an indigenous
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
n
numeral systemA numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
attested from the 3
rd century BCE (somewhat later in the case of most of the tens). They are the direct graphic ancestors of the modern
IndicMost of the positional base 10 numeral systems in the world have originated from India, which first developed the concept of positional numerology...
and
Arabic numeralsThe Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from Indian numerals and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, by which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a whole number...
. However, they were conceptually distinct from these later systems, as they were not used as a positional system with a
zero0 is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, zero is used as a placeholder in place value systems...
. Rather, there were separate numerals for each of the tens (10, 20, 30, etc.). There were also symbols for 100 and 1000 which were combined in
ligatureLigature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a mouthpiece to a woodwind instrument...
s with the units to signify 200, 300, 2000, 3000, etc.
Origins
The source of the first three numerals seems clear: they are collections of 1, 2, and 3 strokes, in Ashoka's era vertical I, II, III like Roman numerals, but soon becoming horizontal like the modern Chinese numerals. In the oldest inscriptions, 4 is a +, reminiscent of the X of neighboring {{IAST, and perhaps a representation of 4 lines or 4 directions. However, the other unit numerals appear to be arbitrary symbols in even the oldest inscriptions. It is sometimes supposed that they may also have come from collections of strokes, run together in cursive writing in a way similar to that attested in the development of Egyptian
hieraticHieratic is a cursive writing system used in pharaonic Egypt that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, allowing scribes to write quickly without resorting to the time consuming hieroglyphs...
and
demoticDemotic refers to either the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Delta, or the stage of the Egyptian language following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and...
numerals, but this is unsupported by any direct evidence. Likewise, the units for the tens are not obviously related to each other or to the units, although 10, 20, 80, 90 might be based on a circle.
The sometimes rather striking graphic similarity they have with the hieratic and demotic Egyptian numerals is not good evidence of a historical connection, as many cultures have independently recorded numbers as collections of strokes. With a similar writing instrument, the cursive forms of such groups of strokes could easily be broadly similar as well, and this is one of the primary hypotheses for the origin of Brahmi numerals.
Another possibility is that the numerals were
acrophonicAcrophony is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself...
, like the
Attic numeralsAttic numerals were used by the ancient Greeks, possibly from the 7th century BC. They were also known as Herodianic numerals because they were first described in a 2nd century manuscript by Herodian...
, and based on the {{IAST|
KharoṣṭhīThe script, is an ancient abugida used by the Gandhara culture, nestled in the historic northwest Asian subcontinent to write the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit languages. It was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE...
}} alphabet. For instance,
chatur 4 early on took a ¥ shape much like the Kharosthi letter
ch;
panca 5 looks remarkably like Kharosthi
p; and so on through
shat 6,
sapta 7, and
nava 9 (Kharosthi
sh, s, n). However, there are problems of timing and lack of records. The full set of numerals is not attested until the 1st-2nd century CE, 400 years after Ashoka. Both suggestions, that the numerals derive from tallies or that they're alphabetic, are purely speculative at this point, with little evidence to decide between them.