Our Indians have few number symbols other than words, but when they occur (cf. Eells, loc. cit.) they usually take the form of pictorial presentation of some counting device such as strokes, lines dotted to suggest a knotted cord, etc. Indeed, the smaller Roman numerals were probably but a pictorial representation of finger symbols. However, a beautiful concrete instance is furnished us in the Japanese mathematics (cf. Smith and Mikami, Ch. III). The earliest instrument of reckoning in Japan seems to have been the rod, Ch'eou, adapted from the Chinese under the name of Chikusaku (bamboo rods) about 600 A. D. At first relatively large (measuring rods?), they became reduced to about 12 cm., but from their tendency to roll were quickly replaced by the sangi (square prisms, about 7 mm. thick and 5 cm. long) and the number symbols were evidently derived from the use of these rods:
For the sake of clearness, tens, hundreds, etc., were expressed in the even place by horizontal instead of vertical lines and vice versa; thus 1267 would be formed
The rods were arranged on a sort of chessboard called the swan-pan. Much later the lines were transferred to paper, and a circle used to denote the vacant square. The use of squares, however, rendered it unnecessary to arrange the even places differently from the odd, so numbers like 38057 came to be written
instead of
as in the earlier notation.
Somewhere in the course of these early mathematical activities the process has changed from the more or less spontaneous operating that led primitive man to the first enunciation of arithmetical ideas, and has become a self-conscious striving for the solution of problems. This change had already taken place before the historical origins of arithmetic are met. Thus, the treatise of Ahmes (2000 B. C.) contains the curious problem: 7 persons each have 7 cats; each cat eats 7 mice; each mouse eats 7 ears of barley; from each ear 7 measures of corn may grow; how much grain has been saved? Such problems are, however, half play, as appears in a Leonardo of Pisa version some 3000 years later: 7 old women go to Rome; each woman has 7 mules; each mule, 7 sacks; each sack contains 7 loaves; with each loaf are 7 knives; each knife is in 7 sheaths. Similarly in Diophantus' epitaph (330 A. D.): "Diophantus passed 1/6 of his life in childhood, 1/12 in youth, and 1/7 more as a bachelor; 5 years after his marriage, was born a son who died 4 years before his father at 1/2 his age." Often among peoples such puzzles were a favorite social amusement. Thus Braymagupta (628 A. D.) reads, "These problems are proposed simply for pleasure; the wise man can invent a thousand others, or he can solve the problems of others by the rules given here. As the sun eclipses the stars by its brilliancy, so the man of knowledge will eclipse the fame of others in assemblies of the people if he proposes algebraic problems, and still more if he solves them" (Cajori, Hist. of Math., p. 92).