The Indian Number System: At the Center of the Mathematical World

By Rao Prasada Ganti

This book presents well-established modern methods of representation and quantitative evaluation for a variety of entities, constants, functions, vectors, random quantities, fuzzy sets, and abstract entities such as relationships, cooperation, dependence, etc. and reveals striking similarities between these modern concepts and the Hindu-Arabic Decimal Number System. We regularly work with them without realizing these similarities perhaps because the centuries old Indian Number System became so commonplace today that these connections are not evidenced either by citations in the literature. It is hoped that this book will serve to throw some new light on the INS which is held in high esteem by great minds. The size of this book, its presentation in simple terms devoid of mystifying jargon, and its capture of the basic elements of the vast subject of mathematical concepts, especially in the field of systems and signals, are expected to be attractive to both teachers and students. 
Review 
“Considering Ganti Prasada Rao's book “Indian Number System (INS)- At the Center of the Mathematical world” I remember his visit in Berlin in 2003. He was guest of our Research Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology (FIRST) of the Fraunhofer Society /German National Research Center for Computer Science and gave a lecture with his historical view on number systems in mathematics and natural sciences up to their use in computer technology. Now I read his comprehensive book on this topic. It describes all the ideas and findings in the history of numbers and his experience as expert in systems theory of linear systems and self-organized systems. The book is a comprehensive description of the different number systems with special focus on the Indian number system and ended with mentioning functions and transformation. The book reflects Ganti Prasada Rao's wide field of interests and knowledge in the basics of mathematics and engineering and his novel insight into their connections with the Indian Number System. I recommend this worthwhile book to all scientists and students with interest in the basics of mathematics.”
- Achim Sydow,
“This book is a masterpiece and a treasure house, data mining of number systems world over, unraveling the knowledge inherent in the ancient Hindu number system, the Vedic scriptures, and associating it to the multitude of present day mathematical concepts. We all know elementary mathematics and the Indian Number System (INS), but very few of us realize the original structure, its difference from the number systems of the rest of the world, and the hidden power in it. In this book the author has explained vividly the origin of the ancient Hindu number system, the origin of 1,2,3,.. and the radix 10. He also brought out the advantages of the INS over the other number systems. INS was originally known as the Hindu-Arabic system, since the Arabs were responsible mainly in spreading it to the western World, where the developments have taken place mostly. The author has also brought out clearly and amazingly, how many modern mathematical concepts such as scalars, vectors, functions f(t), representations as power series, orthogonal series, correlation, convolution, Integral Transforms, etc., up to the mathematics of Linear Dynamical Systems, ALL with examples, can be brought into the fold of the INS. He called the special feature of the INS as “Array Pair Structure” which is shown to be common between the INS and many mathematical modern mathematical concepts of representation and evaluation. Thus, the field of Mathematics is highly influenced by the INS. I consider this as the real contribution of this book and we adore the intellect and novelty of the author's presentation. 
– B.L. Deekshatulu,

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BSP BOOKS
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9789395038461

Book preview

THE INDIAN NUMBER SYSTEM

At the Center of the Mathematical World

THE INDIAN NUMBER SYSTEM

At the Center of the Mathematical World

Ganti Prasada Rao

Professor Emeritus, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

THE INDIAN NUMBER SYSTEM: At the Center of the Mathematical World

by Ganti Prasada Rao

© 2023, by Publisher, All rights reserved.

No part of this book or parts thereof may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any language or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author.

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ISBN: 978-93-95038-46-1 (E-ISBN)

Contents

Dedication

This work is dedicated in loving memory to my father

Ganti Venkatappadu (1914-1998)

Preface

I have been in the field of education all my life. I went through institutional education as a student and researcher for 22 years starting from 1947, the year of entry into a primary school in the small town Parvatipuram, now in Vizianagaram District of Andhra Pradesh in India. I took my final earned degree of Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1969. Then, I entered my teaching career first at the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India for two years and moved to IIT Kharagpur in 1971 from where I retired voluntarily in 1997 as I had to take up an assignment as a research advisor in the Engineering Systems Division of the Water and Electricity Department (WED) of the Government of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Having been involved in research on the control of seawater desalination plants in Abu Dhabi for three years, I took up a consultative position in the UNESCO-EOLSS Project in its inception in 1996. Since then I have been actively involved in the development of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS: www.eolss.net).

This has been a long period in which I have been travelling extensively on academic missions since 1975 which include Commonwealth Postdoctoral Fellowship to England and many visits to Germany since 1982 as Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. I have been attending many international conferences connected with my field of research in System Identification. My wife Meenakshi accompanied me to all the events. In these conferences, I made many friends with whom I still maintain contact. The conferences were all exciting with informal meetings with scholars from various parts of the world at coffee breaks, lunches and dinners. Apparently, due to the good impressions I made in the minds of the participants in these conferences, people used to join us at these events for continued discussions. In addition to answering questions of general nature, my wife and I were happy to share our thoughts on India, and our vegetarian culture and my wife used to enlighten them on the culinary aspects of our food. My friends used to appreciate the colourful silk sarees worn by my wife and informally initiate invitations to us to their countries for future conferences; thus expanding my circle of international friends.

The most important parts of these informal talks in various conferences are queries I used to face on some academic matters from international scholars. These questions were centred on Indians and their contributions to mathematics in ancient times. Many are aware of the comments of admiration from some of the famous mathematicians and scientists in the West.

"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers using ten symbols each symbol receiving a value of the position and an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease it lent to our computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the great men produced by antiquity."- Pierre-Simon Laplace

"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discoveries could have been made." Albert Einstein

All of them heard about the Indian contributions of ZERO and NUMBERS and such quotes from the great people of the West. They were curious to know more personally from an Indian whom they assumed to be a mathematician; they were probably misled by my conference presentations and publications that carried a lot of mathematical equations. I am not a mathematician; I simply use some mathematics in my work on electrical engineering, systems and control.

I too heard in my country about zero and the numbers. These seemingly simple questions were quite challenging to me at that time, especially as a scholar facing scholarly audiences. A few people who visited India around that time saw writings on the passing trucks on the roads: 'Mera