Indians are certain they invented the zero. But can they prove it?
NEW DELHI — Indian students are taught very early in school that India’s contribution to the world of mathematics is zero.
Way back in the 5th century, an Indian mathematician used zero in the decimal-based place-value system, an achievement that citizens here have always celebrated with pride.
Now, a small but ambitious team of Indian and international scholars called Project Zero wants to go deeper. In the past year, they have been asking the question: What made the invention of zero possible in India?
The initiative is a heady cocktail of academic research and cultural pride, and it coincides with a new wave of hyper-patriotism among Indians that has risen since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Indians are reclaiming their heritage, embracing yoga, promoting the ancient Sanskrit language, buying traditional herbalproducts and celebrating — at timesexaggerating — achievements in history.
At a three-day brainstorming event in New Delhi next month called Camp Zero, several scholars will take stock of what is known about the origin of zero and will commission research to find out what philosophical traditions may have led Indians to come up with the concept.
The mission, the group’s website says,is an “attempt to settle once and for all the continuing controversy in the world as to when, where and why the zero digit was invented.”
The project will also boost “the imagination and the image of India,” said Robinder Sachdev, president of Imagindia Institute, a lobbying firm that promotes India’s image and is supporting the project here.
The origin of zero has been an enduring subject of debate because other cultures, including the Mayans, also claim to have used the zero.
NEW DELHI — Indian students are taught very early in school that India’s contribution to the world of mathematics is zero.
Way back in the 5th century, an Indian mathematician used zero in the decimal-based place-value system, an achievement that citizens here have always celebrated with pride.
Now, a small but ambitious team of Indian and international scholars called Project Zero wants to go deeper. In the past year, they have been asking the question: What made the invention of zero possible in India?
The initiative is a heady cocktail of academic research and cultural pride, and it coincides with a new wave of hyper-patriotism among Indians that has risen since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Indians are reclaiming their heritage, embracing yoga, promoting the ancient Sanskrit language, buying traditional herbalproducts and celebrating — at timesexaggerating — achievements in history.
At a three-day brainstorming event in New Delhi next month called Camp Zero, several scholars will take stock of what is known about the origin of zero and will commission research to find out what philosophical traditions may have led Indians to come up with the concept.
The mission, the group’s website says,is an “attempt to settle once and for all the continuing controversy in the world as to when, where and why the zero digit was invented.”
The project will also boost “the imagination and the image of India,” said Robinder Sachdev, president of Imagindia Institute, a lobbying firm that promotes India’s image and is supporting the project here.
The origin of zero has been an enduring subject of debate because other cultures, including the Mayans, also claim to have used the zero.
“Finding the source of zero is a bit like finding the source of the Nile,” said Dinesh Singh, a mathematics professor at Delhi University and a member of the Indian Society for History of Mathematics. He is not associated with Project Zero. “Nobody has a clue about exactly when and how the zero came into play.”
Scholars at Project Zero say the key may lie in early Hindu and Buddhist philosophical discourses about the concept of “emptiness” and “void,” which began many centuries before the mathematical zero came about.
“Even though zero popped up in different places in different forms, Indians are credited to have given zero to the world. But zero did not appear all of a sudden,” said Annette van der Hoek, a Dutch scholar on Indian studies and coordinator of the Zero Project. “We find the cultural notion of zero-ness or emptiness in philosophy, arts and the architecture much earlier. We want to trace its steps as far back as we can and look for the bridges between philosophy and mathematics. What was the philosophical mind-set that provided a fertile ground for such an invention?”
At Camp Zero, mathematicians, philosophers, astrophysicists, archaeologists and numismatists will frame research questions for PhD scholars and examine manuscripts, coins, stone tablets and seals. The research, they hope, will produce books, inform school textbooks and offer opportunities for doctoral research.
The doctrine of “sunyata,” or “void,” is one of the most profound contributions of philosophy from India, said Sundar Sarukkai, professor of philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore.
“Its possible connection to the mathematical zero is also of great interest, and hopefully this kind of work will draw more students into studying and researching these philosophical and mathematical traditions, which ironically has been neglected within India itself,” Sarukkai said.
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