Bakhshali manuscript: oldest recorded use of the zero symbol(theguardian.com) |
Bakhshali manuscript: oldest recorded use of the zero symbol(theguardian.com) |
"Housed" is a nice soft word for stealing. The English plundered all kinds of treasure from the lands they invaded and annexed. This and even the Rosetta Stone from Egypt.
(saying this as an Indian).
[EDIT: Why the downvotes? by 1900 the English, French and Dutch had invaded and colonized 90% of Africa and Asia. Source: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/colo... ]
Seeing this manuscript "housed" in the UK is just sad. Seeing people continuing to support this situation just shows what really lies beneath the surface of "western civilization".
To assume it's all racial is just as sad.
Related: India pushes for return of its “Kohinoor” Diamond Back from Britain => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11542689
I find it interesting that expensive physical artifacts loom larger than impalpables such as language and political system.
(The 'Pirates of the Caribbean' were pikers compared to Hume and Locke ...)
For example can you think of the rules to multiply XVIV with XXV or can you quickly calculate what the result of that will be without translating to a decimal number system ? Exactly!
With the use of zero and the the development of rules for decimal arithmetic (Brahmagupta), the hindu numeral system became superior to the roman numeral system and thus led to its wide adoption (The decimal number system was promoted by Fibonacci in the west and some people consider that to be his greatest achievement).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Biography-Dangerous-Charles-Seif...
Tangential note: This is what I don't like about the so-called hackers not upvoting stuff unrelated to the Western world.
http://www.actforlibraries.org/the-importance-of-zero-in-mat...
Namely, I think you don't give poor zero quite enough respect. Zero is one of the biggest advancements to mathematics. Anyone can count to one, and even count multiple sets of one. The idea that nothing is something is underrated.
Poor zero is often not given due credit.
Well, very likely the Romans had some tricks to do that (and besides very likely they did use an abacus), the fact that it appears difficult to us (having been immersed in positional notation) does not mean much.
This algorithm (making use of halving and doubling) doesn't look so bad:
http://rbutterworth.nfshost.com/Tables/romanmult
and it can be used also with our "positional" numbers.
http://www.phy6.org/outreach/edu/roman.htm
The abacus (the Chinese "suanpan" or a derivative of it, as it is still used in some eastern countries) is - in the hands of someone used to it - very fast, I have seen people be on par or outperform a "westerner" trying to do the same operation on a pocket calculator, I wouldn't be surprised if the Romans abacus was as fast as that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus
the base as decimal (or actually bi-quinary) is the same.
All I was trying to say was the article is very superficial and does not capture the "real value" zero eventually provided.
Unfortunately I know only about the diamond. But I believe you that there is much more than just that.
And what property rights are you even referring to? The relic in question is a physical item that can be moved without affecting those that continue to possess the stolen item in any way. It's certainly not something those who possess the item have earned. It's not even land that you have long settled, which may be much harder to part with.
Continuing to hold on to it just says, "Yeah our ancestors were a bunch of bandits. We don't apologize for it". Why would anyone move on when one of the parties holds such an attitude? Let alone the aggrieved party.