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From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com

In article
<ln8YD.136298$AX6.26411@fx13.iad>,
FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer <FBInCIAnNSATe...@yahoo.com> posted:

HOW INDIA GAVE US THE ZERO

The greatest mathematical inventions of ZERO and DECIMAL
SYSTEM were invented by HINDUS.

http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/181490

How India gave us the zero

The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which
made physics, engineering and much of modern technology
possible.

Independent Online Desk/ BBC

In Gwalior, a congested city in the centre of India, an
8th-Century fort rises with medieval swagger on a plateau
in the town's heart. Gwalior Fort is one of India's largest
forts; but look among the soaring cupola-topped towers,
intricate carvings and colourful frescoes and you'll find a
small, 9th-Century temple carved into its solid rock face.

Chaturbhuj Temple is much like many other ancient temples
in India -- except that this is ground zero for zero. It's
famous for being the oldest example of zero as a written
digit: carved into the temple wall is a 9th-Century
inscription that includes the clearly visible number '270'.

The invention of the zero was a hugely significant
mathematical development, one that is fundamental to
calculus, which made physics, engineering and much of
modern technology possible. But what was it about Indian
culture that gave rise to this creation that's so important
to modern India -- and the modern world?

Nothing from nothing

I recalled a TED talk by renowned Indian mythologist
Devdutt Pattanaik in which he tells a story about Alexander
the Great's visit to India. The world conqueror apparently
met what he called a 'gymnosophist' -- a naked, wise man,
possibly a yogi -- sitting on a rock and staring at the
sky, and asked him, "What are you doing?".

"I'm experiencing nothingness. What are you doing?" the
gymnosophist replied.

"I am conquering the world," Alexander said.

They both laughed; each one thought the other was a fool,
and was wasting their life.

This story takes place long before that first zero was
inscribed on Gwalior's temple wall, but the gymnosophist
meditating on nothingness does in fact have a connection to
the digit's invention. Indians, unlike people from many
other cultures, were already philosophically open to the
concept of nothingness. Systems such as yoga were developed
to encourage meditation and the emptying of the mind, while
both the Buddhist and Hindu religions embrace the concept
of nothingness as part of their teachings.

Dr Peter Gobets, secretary of the Netherlands-based
ZerOrigIndia Foundation, or the Zero Project, which
researches the origins of the zero digit, noted in an
article on the invention of zero that "Mathematical zero
('shunya' in Sanskrit) may have arisen from the
contemporaneous philosophy of emptiness or Shunyata [a
Buddhist doctrine of emptying one's mind from impressions
and thoughts]".

In addition, the nation has long had a fascination with
sophisticated mathematics. Early Indian mathematicians were
obsessed with giant numbers, counting well into the
trillions when the Ancient Greeks stopped at about 10,000.
They even had different types of infinity.

Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhata, born in
476, and Brahmagupta, born in 598, are both popularly
believed to have been the first to formally describe the
modern decimal place value system and present rules
governing the use of the zero symbol. Although Gwalior has
long been thought to be the site of the first occurrence of
the zero written as a circle, an ancient Indian scroll
called the Bhakshali manuscript, which shows a placeholder
dot symbol, was recently carbon dated to the 3rd or 4rd
Centuries. It is now considered the earliest recorded
occurrence of zero.

Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the
University of Oxford, is quoted on the university's website
as saying, "[T]he creation of zero as a number in its own
right, which evolved from the placeholder dot symbol found
in the Bakhshali manuscript, was one of the greatest
breakthroughs in the history of mathematics. We now know
that it was as early as the 3rd Century that mathematicians
in India planted the seed of the idea that would later
become so fundamental to the modern world. The findings
show how vibrant mathematics have been in the Indian sub-
continent for centuries."

But equally interesting are the reasons as to why the zero
wasn't developed elsewhere. Although the Mayans and
Babylonians (and many other civilisations) may have had a
concept of zero as a placeholder, the idea is not known to
have developed as a number to be used in mathematics
anywhere else. One theory is that some cultures had a
negative view of the concept of nothingness. For example,
there was a time in the early days of Christianity in
Europe when religious leaders banned the use of zero
because they felt that, since God is in everything, a
symbol that represented nothing must be satanic.

So maybe there is something to these connected ideas, to
the spiritual wisdom of India that gave rise to meditation
and the invention of zero. There's another connected idea,
too, which has had a profound effect on the modern world.

The concept of zero is essential to a system that's at the
basis of modern computing: binary numbers.

Silicon Valley, India-style

As you drive out of Bengaluru's Kempegowda International
Airport towards the city centre, about 37km away, you're
greeted by several large signs stuck somewhat incongruously
into the ground of rural India. They proclaim the names of
the new gods of modern India, the companies at the
forefront of the digital revolution. Intel, Google, Apple,
Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Samsung and Amazon all have
offices in Bengaluru, along with home-grown heroes like
Infosys and Wipro.

The sleek airport and shiny signs are the first indicators
of transformation. Before the IT industry came to
Bengaluru, it was called Bangalore, and was known as Garden
City. Now it's Bengaluru and is known as the Silicon Valley
of India.

What started in the 1970s as a single industrial park,
Electronic City, to expand the electronics industry in the
state of Karnataka, has paved the way for today's boomtown.
The city now boasts many IT parks and is home to nearly 40%
of the country's IT industry. Bengaluru may even overtake
Silicon Valley, with predictions suggesting it could become
the single largest IT hub on Earth by 2020, with two
million IT professionals, six million indirect IT jobs and
$80 billion in IT exports.

It's binary numbers that make this possible.

Modern-day digital computers operate on the principle of
two possible states, 'on' and 'off'. The 'on' state is
assigned the value '1', while the 'off' state is assigned
the value '0'. Or, zero.

"It is perhaps not surprising that binary number system was
also invented in India, in the 2nd or 3rd Centuries BCE by
a musicologist named Pingala, although this use was for
prosody," said Subhash Kak, historian of science and
astronomy and Regents Professor at Oklahoma State
University.

Lalbagh Botanical Gardens is at the cultural and
geographical centre of Bengaluru, a symbol of 'old
Bangalore' and the first must-see place locals recommend.
Originally designed in 1760 with many later additions, it
has a distinctly Victorian feel to it, featuring 150 types
of roses and a glass pavilion made in the late 1800s and
patterned after London's famous Crystal Palace. Lalbagh is
a treasure in a city that is one of the fastest growing in
Asia, and a charming reminder of the days when Bengaluru
was a favourite spot for retired British civil servants
during the days of the Raj. They built quaint cottages with
large gardens and quietly whiled away their retirement
years enjoying the temperate climate and ideal growing
conditions of the sleepy town.

But old Bangalore is disappearing beneath much-needed
infrastructure construction and the city's ambitious
expansion. In the 10 years from 1991 to 2001, Bengaluru
grew a whopping 38%, and it's now the 18th most populous
city in the world with 12 million people. The traffic is
arguably the worst in India, as infrastructure planning has
not kept pace with the development of the many IT parks and
the never-ending influx of IT workers.

The chaos and congestion that's the hallmark of India's
metropolises reaches something of a zenith in Bengaluru,
where it can take an hour to drive 3km. Nevertheless, the
inhabitants carry bravely on, living as close to the high-
tech campuses as possible -- and even on them in some cases
-- creating start-ups, designing software and supplying the
world with IT products and know-how. It's hard to imagine
the number of computer chips and bits and programs that
have come from Bengaluru, the number of computers and
devices built and powered. And even more impossible to
imagine is the number of binary-system zeroes it has all
taken.

And yet all of this started in India... from nothing.
Writer: Mariellen Ward

Dhanyavaad for posting the article.

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi Om Shanti http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

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