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A lot of Indians got annoyed that they are double barrelled as Hindu Arabic, when the original source was India. The arabs then took it and created other concep
by amriksohata 8y ago
A lot of Indians got annoyed that they are double barrelled as Hindu Arabic, when the original source was India. The arabs then took it and created other concepts. Its like calling English alphabet English-American.
- jankotek 8y agoEnglish alphabet comes from ancient Rome, there is a reason why it is called Latin script....
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- stevula 8y agoI think there is a distinction between script and alphabet. English, French, and Spanish all use the Latin script but have different alphabets. For example, the German alphabet includes ß, Spanish includes digraphs (ch, rr).
- posterboy 8y agoß is also a digraph (ligatur) of ss, confused with sz, hence its name "esszett". > script and alphabet I don't think there is a notable distinction. But sure enough, the ancient Greeks used several alphabets, some different letters ... and different forms for equal letters, which therefore cannot be called the same letters.
- Sangermaine 8y agoThe English alphabet is a good example of why the Indian complaint doesn't make much sense. The modern English alphabet descends from an ancient Proto-Sinaitic script, which was adopted and transformed over time by the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons, and then underwent some further evolution into the script English speakers use today. Of course, this is extremely simplified and the development wasn't this linear, but it's a rough sketch. Just as it would be odd and inaccurate to call the modern English alphabet Proto-Sinaitic or Phoenician, it's inaccurate to call the modern number system Indian because, as you note the "arabs then took it and created other concepts". What we use today is the modified system, it's not purely of Indian creation.
- godelmachine 8y agoThere's no documented proof that Indian system was descended from another system. The Fountainhead was India. Hence, purely of Indian creation. It's also a well-known fact that Al-Jabr took some mathematical aspects from India and spread them across the Arabic countries. From there they eventually reached the west. That's how Algebra got its name.
- jacobolus 8y ago> well-known fact that Al-Jabr took some mathematical aspects from India and spread them across the Arabic countries Your “Al-Jabr” (Short for Al-kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala, or The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing) was a book, written by Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, who was Persian. Like other scholars writing in Arabic at the time, he read translations of Greek and Indian sources, while also doing significant original work. The book of his which explained and advocated Indian numerals was a different book (not “Al-Jabr”). We have this in Latin translation so the original title is unknown, but Wikipedia speculatively lists Kitāb al-Jam‘ wat-Tafrīq bi-Ḥisāb al-Hind (The Book of Addition and Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation). [Edit: I just read the linked blog post which this discussion is ostensibly about, and noticed that the above was already described there. I assume you didn’t read it. You might want to start with that.] If you want to play a game of “whose culture first invented everything”, we can trace a whole heck of a lot back to the Sumerians (and for what we can’t trace, who knows what still lies on some buried cuneiform tablet). But of course there were then crucial additional advancements made by Akkadians, Egyptians, Hellenes, Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Persians, Italians, French, English, Russians, Germans, Hungarians, Canadians, Japanese, ..... Mathematics is international and spreads easily. No culture can uniquely claim to have “invented” something as massive as “algebra”, even if we limit ourselves to topics taught in secondary school.
- structclass 8y agoAgain, there is no proof, nor even speculation that the Math in Bharat was descended from any other sub culture. Also, I do not know who said, "math is queen of all sciences". >No culture can uniquely claim to have “invented”? No. It can. It should. And It will.
- sidhu1f 8y agoEven calling them Hindu-Arabic would be preferable to the usual custom of labeling them simply Arabic (for e.g. in LaTeX).
- kifachachaf 8y agoThe numerals used by Al Khawarizmi are not the exact ones used in India back then. Now the problem is Al Khawarizmi is Persian he's not Arab. https://cdn.britannica.com/668x448/60/91960-004-42DF23AB.jpg https://cdn.britannica.com/668x448/60/91960-004-42DF23AB.jpg
- empath75 8y agoThey arrived in the west via Arabic books, so they were originally just called ‘arabic’. Calling them Hindu/Arabic is at least an improvement.
- baxtr 8y agoEven caring about this kind of stuff feels like people have an inferiority complex
- yumraj 8y agoSo, if you invent something and tell me about it, you'd be totally fine if I go ahead and claim it as my invention, file a patent, copyright it etc., since you don't suffer from inferiority complex, right?
- baxtr 8y agoI don’t think that is a sound comparison and it’s missing my point Look, I don’t want to insult anyone. That’s just a conclusion I’ve made over the years. My background is also such that my native people always complain about past stuff like that instead of changing the here and now
- Sangermaine 8y agoThat analogy is a terrible one for the historical situation we're talking about. The numeral system is a concept that was vastly changed as it passed through different cultures over time. The current system in use is, demonstrably, not the one used in the ancient Indian subcontinent. It is indeed a Hindu-Arabic system because the form we use today arose among Arab scholars who had adapted the older Indian symbols. It's nationalistic nonsense to fight against both the historical reality and the natural flow of ideas over millennia, and does indeed smack of an inferiority complex. It's not a slight or a slur to acknowledge the complexity of the historical reality, and the achievements of ancient Indian peoples are no less impressive, anymore than the Greek adaptation and expansion of older Babylonian geometric concepts diminishes those.
- thankthunk 8y agoWelcome to humanity. You should read up on the centuries old newton-leibniz calculus debate. But regardless, the modern number system is one of the seminal achievements in human history, along with the wheel, alphabet, paper, etc. It shouldn't be too surprising that people want correct attribution/credit.
- jdtang13 8y agoThis smells exactly like the sort of stuff you'd read in a nationalist-revised history textbook. Hindu Arabic is a fine way to describe it, since, as others have mentioned, it's exactly the Arabic-writing Persians who transmitted the idea to the West. I think this naming is just as permissible as referring to the Latin alphabet as the English alphabet, which is what you just did ;) Also, the word "firangi" means foreigner in Hindi, but it also means "Frankish person". Should Englishmen in India be upset that they are being grouped with the French?
- amriksohata 8y agoLol at anything being nationalist because people want others to know the truth. Comparing something so fundamental as the discovery of the numerical system to a word in the English dictionary is comparing two very different things
- posterboy 8y agoWell, the Sumerians used sexagesimal, which brings us back on topic, because I've read the fact in Don Knuth - TAOCP 4.
- dang 8y agoUnfortunately this comment doesn't contain enough substance to prevent a landslide of nationalistic bickering. All: don't do that on this site, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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