Bakhshali manuscript
Topic: Gupta Empire and the Classical Age · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Bakhshali manuscript is an old Indian book of mathematics. It is written on birch bark, the thin bark of a birch tree. It was found in 1881 at the village of Bakhshali, near Peshawar, in present-day Pakistan. It uses a dot to stand for zero inside a place-value number system. That makes it important for the history of zero. In 2017, radiocarbon dating suggested that some of its leaves may be as old as c. 3rd–4th century CE, while other leaves are much later. Scholars still debate these dates.
Example
The manuscript works out problems in arithmetic and algebra, including equations and square roots. In its numbers, a dot marks an empty place. For example, a dot after a digit shows that the number has moved up to the next place, just as we write "0" today.
Don't confuse with
- Aryabhatiya: a book on astronomy and mathematics written by Aryabhata at Kusumapura in c. 500 CE. The Bakhshali manuscript is a separate, anonymous book of practical mathematics.
Related concepts
- Aryabhata
- Aryabhatiya
- Hindu-Arabic numerals
- Surya Siddhanta
- Varahamihira
- Bhaskara I
- Virahanka
- Kalidasa
- Abhijnanashakuntalam
- Meghaduta