There is, however, considerable ground for interesting speculation with respect to these first three numerals. The earliest Hindu forms were perpendicular. In the Nānā Ghāt inscriptions they are vertical. But long before either the Aśoka or the Nānā Ghāt inscriptions the Chinese were using the horizontal forms for the first three numerals, but a vertical arrangement for four.[[101]] Now where did China get these forms? Surely not from India, for she had them, as her monuments and literature[[102]] show, long before the Hindus knew them. The tradition is that China brought her civilization around the north of Tibet, from Mongolia, the primitive habitat being Mesopotamia, or possibly the oases of Turkestan. Now what numerals did Mesopotamia use? The Babylonian system, simple in its general principles but very complicated in many of its details, is now well known.[[103]] In particular, one, two, and three were represented by vertical arrow-heads. Why, then, did the Chinese write
theirs horizontally? The problem now takes a new interest when we find that these Babylonian forms were not the primitive ones of this region, but that the early Sumerian forms were horizontal.[[104]]
What interpretation shall be given to these facts? Shall we say that it was mere accident that one people wrote "one" vertically and that another wrote it horizontally? This may be the case; but it may also be the case that the tribal migrations that ended in the Mongol invasion of China started from the Euphrates while yet the Sumerian civilization was prominent, or from some common source in Turkestan, and that they carried to the East the primitive numerals of their ancient home, the first three, these being all that the people as a whole knew or needed. It is equally possible that these three horizontal forms represent primitive stick-laying, the most natural position of a stick placed in front of a calculator being the horizontal one. When, however, the cuneiform writing developed more fully, the vertical form may have been proved the easier to make, so that by the time the migrations to the West began these were in use, and from them came the upright forms of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and other Mediterranean lands, and those of Aśoka's time in India. After Aśoka, and perhaps among the merchants of earlier centuries, the horizontal forms may have come down into India from China, thus giving those of the Nānā Ghāt cave and of later inscriptions. This is in the realm of speculation, but it is not improbable that further epigraphical studies may confirm the hypothesis.
As to the numerals above three there have been very many conjectures. The figure one of the Demotic looks like the one of the Sanskrit, the two (reversed) like that of the Arabic, the four has some resemblance to that in the Nasik caves, the five (reversed) to that on the Kṣatrapa coins, the nine to that of the Kuṣana inscriptions, and other points of similarity have been imagined. Some have traced resemblance between the Hieratic five and seven and those of the Indian inscriptions. There have not, therefore, been wanting those who asserted an Egyptian origin for these numerals.[[105]] There has already been mentioned the fact that the Kharoṣṭhī numerals were formerly known as Bactrian, Indo-Bactrian, and Aryan. Cunningham[[106]] was the first to suggest that these numerals were derived from the alphabet of the Bactrian civilization of Eastern Persia, perhaps a thousand years before our era, and in this he was supported by the scholarly work of Sir E. Clive Bayley,[[107]] who in turn was followed by Canon Taylor.[[108]] The resemblance has not proved convincing, however, and Bayley's drawings
have been criticized as being affected by his theory. The following is part of the hypothesis:[[109]]
| Numeral | Hindu | Bactrian | Sanskrit |
| 4 |
|
| chatur, Lat. quattuor |
| 5 |
|
| pancha, Gk. πέντε |
| 6 |
|
| ṣaṣ |
| 7 |
|
| sapta |
| (the s and ṣ are interchanged as occasionally in N. W. India) | |||
