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Comment by jaldhar | Hacker News Reader

A couple of observations

1. Indian advances in Mathematics are several centuries in the future from the period under discussion. And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it.

2. Pali wasn’t a “language of masses” either. It was a trade language of Western India that became the literary language of the sthaviravadi Buddhists. Other sects used Sanskrit or other Prakrits. Shakyamunis mother tongue was Magadhi yet another Prakrit.

3. Sanskrit was the most prestigious language though at this point it didn’t have the monopoly it would later have. No it wasn’t a mass language either but more people had access to it than you might think.

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An observation: Europeans owe quite a bit to interaction with the Indians though patriots might not want to admit it.

The Indian numeric system (often called Arabic in Europe) and the consept of zero (invented in India) enabled both the science revolution and the establishment of modern banks and corporations first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe.

I'm interested in the inventing of zero, so I searched it:

> The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago.

> The symbol changed over time as positional notation (for which zero was crucial), made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks.

> Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-origi...

So the real inventor is Sumerian. Greek spread that to India, and later Arabs take that back to Europe from India.

Although Indian isn't it's inventor, they did their job spreading it.

For 1.

The Taylor series comes from Madhava around 13th century. This was rediscovered in the 1970s. There is no feasible mechanism for Greek influence here.

1. What is the period under discussion? It seems to jump around. From 12 century BC to Al Biruni's time.

2. > And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it.

Yes, it is hand wavy statement without specifying the period of interaction. This is as bad as the "patriots" (who are non existent except as bogeymen in this thread, lol. Maybe this makes sense if you are a Greek patriot. )

I always assumed it is not rude to ask for academic references. (I am even scared to ask for references here lol.)

Eurocentrism is a real thing but I did try to search for any refs.

The period I am referring to is from Alexander’s invasion of India to the height of the Roman Empire.

That the siddhantas are influenced by Greek is obvious to anyone who has examined them. E.g. one is called Romaka Siddhanta. Another, Paulisha Siddhanta is a literal translation of Paulus of Alexandrias’ commentary on the Syntaxis of Ptolemy.

The considerable advances Indians made in mathematics in e.g. Ganesh Daivajna or Nilakantha Somayaji etc. are comparatively later say 13th to 16th century.

There’s an unfortunate tendency amongst some people to get all defensive about the idea that things may not have been invented in India but why? Yes we borrowed from the Greeks but we took their system and made it better. That’s reason enough for pride.

Nowadays I read Sanskrit original sources only so I’m not entirely up to date with the academic literature I’m afraid.

There was no invasion of India by Alexander. He barely crossed modern day Pakistan and parts of Punjab before heading back. Magadha was still untouched and so where all southern kingdoms. India is not Delhi and adjacent areas of Delhi which speak Hindi.

As for rest of your comment, I don’t know enough to comment on it. On cursory reading it seems you are right and thank you for this information.

>There was no invasion of India by Alexander. He barely crossed modern day Pakistan and parts of Punjab before heading back.

Modern day Pakistan was then-day Indian civilization. And he had established several cities there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

>India is not Delhi and adjacent areas of Delhi which speak Hindi.

Don't have to be the whole of India. Just to be part of it. That's like saying someone who went to a tour of New England didn't visited the United States, because "New England is not the US".

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