Zero as a number
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta (628 CE) is the earliest known text to treat zero as a number in its own right, with rules for adding, subtracting and multiplying with it.
India first (well documented)Mathematics & astronomy
Indian claim
India gave the world zero as a number: Brahmagupta wrote down rules for calculating with zero in 628 CE.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta (628 CE) states that a number plus or minus zero is unchanged and that a number times zero is zero.
- He also gives rules for zero combined with positive and negative numbers ('fortunes' and 'debts').
- His rule that 0 ÷ 0 = 0 is wrong by modern standards; Bhaskara II (12th century) later described a number divided by zero as infinite (khahara, ananta).
- The word shunya and the dot or circle sign spread from India through Arabic writers to Europe.
Commonly credited to
Babylonian, Greek and Maya astronomers already used signs for an empty place or empty value, so zero was not one culture's invention.
Evidence for the other claim
- Babylonian scribes used a sign for an empty place in their base-60 numbers centuries before the Common Era (MacTutor).
- Ptolemy (2nd century CE) used a small circle for an empty value in astronomical tables, and the Maya used a zero sign in their calendar counts.
- None of these earlier systems wrote rules for doing arithmetic with zero as a number.
What historians and scientists say
Historians credit India with zero as a number with its own arithmetic. Placeholder signs existed elsewhere earlier, but Brahmagupta's 628 CE rules are the first known treatment of zero as a number, and the modern zero descends from the Indian one.