No one attempts to examine any detail in the history of ancient India without being struck with the great dearth of reliable material.[[52]] So little sympathy have the people with any save those of their own caste that a general literature is wholly lacking, and it is only in the observations of strangers that any all-round view of scientific progress is to be found. There is evidence that primary schools
existed in earliest times, and of the seventy-two recognized sciences writing and arithmetic were the most prized.[[53]] In the Vedic period, say from 2000 to 1400 B.C., there was the same attention to astronomy that was found in the earlier civilizations of Babylon, China, and Egypt, a fact attested by the Vedas themselves.[[54]] Such advance in science presupposes a fair knowledge of calculation, but of the manner of calculating we are quite ignorant and probably always shall be. One of the Buddhist sacred books, the Lalitavistara, relates that when the Bōdhisattva[[55]] was of age to marry, the father of Gopa, his intended bride, demanded an examination of the five hundred suitors, the subjects including arithmetic, writing, the lute, and archery. Having vanquished his rivals in all else, he is matched against Arjuna the great arithmetician and is asked to express numbers greater than 100 kotis.[[56]] In reply he gave a scheme of number names as high as 1053, adding that he could proceed as far as 10421,[[57]] all of which suggests the system of Archimedes and the unsettled question of the indebtedness of the West to the East in the realm of ancient mathematics.[[58]] Sir Edwin Arnold,
in The Light of Asia, does not mention this part of the contest, but he speaks of Buddha's training at the hands of the learned Viṣvamitra:
"And Viswamitra said, 'It is enough,
Let us to numbers. After me repeat
Your numeration till we reach the lakh,[[59]]
One, two, three, four, to ten, and then by tens
To hundreds, thousands.' After him the child
Named digits, decads, centuries, nor paused,
The round lakh reached, but softly murmured on,