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20 Numbers and Numerals
We now come to the numerals that are used in Europe and the
AmeriCas today, as well as in certain parts of Asia and Africa and
regions such as Australasia which were settled by Europeans.
First of all, it is necessary to understand that although our Erxpean
andAmerican numerals are often spoken of as Arabic, they
have never been used by the Arabs. They came to us by means
of a book on arithmetic which apparently was written in India
about twelve hundred years ago, and was translated into Arabic
soon afterward. By chance this book was carried by merchants
to Europe and there was translated from the Arabic into Latin.
This was hundreds of years before books were first printed in
Europe, and this arithmetic book was known only in Manuscript
form. Since it had been translated from Arabic,' the numerals
were supposed to be those used by the Arabs, but this was not the
case. They might be called Hindu-Arabic, but since they took
their present shapes in Europe they.may better be called European
or Modern numerals.
We have seen that our modern numerals 1, 2, and 3 have a
long history. The four as we make it, 4, is not as old as these. It
is first found in fairly common use in Europe about seven hundred
years ago. Among die forms for four in common use in
India two thousand years ago were X and t, but there were and
still are many other forms used in Asia. The origin of the rest of
the numerals is generally unknown. Since in most countries in
early days the priest:: were practically the only educated persons,
and since travel was so difficult that different tribes developed
different languages, the priests simply-inveriied their own letters
and numerals. As travel became easier and as merchants and
rulers felt the need for writing, the numerals of the various tribes
tended to become more alike. Today, international trade has
made the European numerals quite generally known all over the
world, although the Chinese or the Arabic forms are.still the ones
most commonly used by many millions of people.
Our present numerals have changed a great deal from their
original forms. Following are some early Hindu characters, found
in a cave in India and dating from the second or third century