The Arab writers eulogising the Indian Civilization

[Desi tech Baba]

"The Rules of the Indian Arithmetic"

By: Koshiar Al-Geeli



Civilizations have a heritage to be bequeathed to humanity and the heritage of a civilization is what it passes down to humanity in terms of its great achievements. The Indian civilization has great accomplishments in several fields, foremost amongst which is the science of mathematics, which is the corner stone of all other sciences. This science is crucial to all types of research, even the sheer literary studies applied in statistics.



The Indian arithmetic stands high in the history of Mathematics internationally. It was the Indians who discovered the easiest way of writing numbers, using a special symbol for each digit from 1 to9 . They used the same number in the other units- the centi, milli and decimal. They also used the symbol000 to indicate the emptiness of the unit, i.e. denoting that the value of the unit is zero which indicates emptiness. For indicating Zero, they used the symbol of a free circle or a circle with a horizontal or a vertical mark. It was also the Indians who had discovered the approximate value of “pie” 3. 1416for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The Indian Scientist Brahma Gupta (598- 660AD) devised a new rule for finding the area of a square in the circle through the indications of its sides. Furthermore, they made the division a process of reverse multiplication and they knew that a square root had two values, a positive and an absolute. Bhaskara devised an equation to determine the square root of a compound value. The Indians were the first to recognize the absolute quantities considering the positive quantities as assets and the passive ones as debts.



The Arab civilization benefited a lot from the Indian Arithmetic. Arab scholars authored many books on Arithmetic making use of the achievements of the Indian civilization in this area and bearing witness to its greatness. The most important book was "The Principles of Arithmetic" which was authored by Abu El Hassan Koshiar Ibn Laban El-Geeli, who died in 350 Hijri. El-Geeli was an adept engineer and a virtuous astronomer who was lauded by Al Byrouni. Koshiar was the mentor of Ali Ibn Ahmed El-Nasawi, the famous arithmetic scientist. “The Origins of Arithmetic" was one of the books that helped the Arabs appreciate and be greatly interested in the Indian Arithmetic in the Fourth Century Hijri or the Tenth Century AD.



Abu El Hassan Koshiar Ibn Laban El Geeli was one of the greatest scientist in mathematics. He has a book on astronomical maps and another on the rules of stars. He also has an article on arithmetic, and a book on the Astrolab, how it functions and its accurate measurements. Among his other writings, is a paper on dimensions and celestial bodies.



All Oriental scholars accredited the brilliance and genius of Al Geeli, Renoud, Schtaein Schnaider etc. Al Geeli translated the book "The Rules of the Indian Arithmetic” into Hebrew.Many Western scholars lauded this book and Schatein wrote two papers on it in which he said that it is one of the most important books on the Indian Arithmetic. Thus, we can say that "The Rules of the Indian Arithmetic" is one of the most important books which bears witness to the greatness of the Indian civilization.