India’s impressive Concept about Nothing
- Jadavpur University Science Club
- Jun 16, 2021
- 3 min read
- Abhishek Pathak
Production Engineering, UG1
The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics, engineering, and much of modern technology possible. But what was it about Indian culture that gave rise to this creation that’s so important to modern India - and modern the world?
Tracing back in history, our map hits the beautiful city of Gwalior. Gwalior Fort is one of India’s largest forts, but look among the soaring cupola-topped towers, intricate carvings, and colorful frescoes and you’ll find a small 9th-Century temple carved into its solid rock face. This Chaturbhuj temple is much like many other temples in India- except that ‘this is ground Zero for Zero.’ It’s famous for being the oldest example of zero as a written digit: carved into the temple wall is a 9th- Century inscription that includes the clearly visible number ‘270’.
Dr. Peter Gobets, Secretary of the Netherland based ‘ZerOrigIndia Foundation, or the Zero Project, which researches the origin of the zero digits, noted in an article on the invention of Zero that “Mathematical Zero (‘Shunya’ in Sanskrit) may have arisen from the contemporaneous philosophy of emptiness or Shunyata.”
Nothing from Nothing
There is a very famous story about Alexander the Great’s visit to India. While his visit, he met what he called a ‘gymnosophist’- a naked, wise man, possibly a Yogi,- sitting on a rock and staring at the sky, and asked him, “What are you doing?”
The gymnosophist replied, “I’m experiencing Nothingness. What are you doing?”
“I am conquering the world”, Alexander said.
They both laughed: each one thought the other was a fool and was wasting their life.
This story takes place long before that first zero was inscribed on Gwalior’s temple wall, but the gymnosophist meditating on nothingness does in fact have a connection to the digit’s invention. Indians, unlike people from many other cultures, were already philosophically open to the concept of Nothingness. Systems such as Yoga were developed to encourage meditation and the emptying of the mind, while both the Buddhist and Hindu religions embrace the concept of nothingness as part of their teachings.
Although Gwalior has long been thought to be the site of the first occurrence of the zero written as a circle, an ancient scroll called the Bhakshali manuscript, which shows a placeholder dot symbol, was recently carbon-dated to the 3rd or 4th Centuries. It is now considered the earliest recorded occurrence of zero. We now know that it was as early as the 3rd century that mathematicians in India planted the seed of the idea that would later become so fundamental to the modern world. The findings show how vibrant mathematics has been in the Indian sub-continent for centuries.
But equally interesting are the reasons as to why the zero wasn’t developed elsewhere. Although the Mayans and the Babylonians (and many other civilizations) may have had a concept of zero as a placeholder, the idea is not known to have developed as a number to be used in mathematics anywhere else. One theory is that some cultures had a negative view of the concept of nothingness. For example, there was a time in the early days of Christianity in Europe when religious leaders banned the use of zero because they felt that, since God is in everything, a symbol that represented nothing must be satanic. So maybe there is something to these connected ideas, to the spiritual wisdom of India that gave rise to meditation and the invention of zero.
The concept of zero is essential to a system that’s at the basis of modern computing: binary numbers. Modern-day digital computers operate on the principle of two possible states, ‘on’ and ‘off’. The ‘on’ state is assigned the value ‘1’, while the ‘off’ state is assigned the value ‘0’. Or, zero.
And all of this started in India… from nothing.
Sources
Comments