hand we might properly feel that everything points to the numerals as being substantially indigenous to India. And why should this not be the case? If the king Srong-tsan-Gampo (639 A.D.), the founder of Lhāsa,[[123]] could have set about to devise a new alphabet for Tibet, and if the Siamese, and the Singhalese, and the Burmese, and other peoples in the East, could have created alphabets of their own, why should not the numerals also have been fashioned by some temple school, or some king, or some merchant guild? By way of illustration, there are shown in the table on page 36 certain systems of the East, and while a few resemblances are evident, it is also evident that the creators of each system endeavored to find original forms that should not be found in other systems. This, then, would seem to be a fair interpretation of the evidence. A human mind cannot readily create simple forms that are absolutely new; what it fashions will naturally resemble what other minds have fashioned, or what it has known through hearsay or through sight. A circle is one of the world's common stock of figures, and that it should mean twenty in Phœnicia and in India is hardly more surprising than that it signified ten at one time in Babylon.[[124]] It is therefore quite probable that an extraneous origin cannot be found for the very sufficient reason that none exists.
Of absolute nonsense about the origin of the symbols which we use much has been written. Conjectures,
however, without any historical evidence for support, have no place in a serious discussion of the gradual evolution of the present numeral forms.[[125]]
Table of Certain Eastern Systems
| Siam | |
| Burma[[126]] | |
| Malabar[[127]] | |
| Tibet[[128]] | |
| Ceylon[[129]] | |
| Malayalam[[129]] |
We may summarize this chapter by saying that no one knows what suggested certain of the early numeral forms used in India. The origin of some is evident, but the origin of others will probably never be known. There is no reason why they should not have been invented by some priest or teacher or guild, by the order of some king, or as part of the mysticism of some temple. Whatever the origin, they were no better than scores of other ancient systems and no better than the present Chinese system when written without the zero, and there would never have been any chance of their triumphal progress westward had it not been for this relatively late symbol. There could hardly be demanded a stronger proof of the Hindu origin of the character for zero than this, and to it further reference will be made in Chapter IV.