Nightshift – Kurzgesagt after Dark
Nightshift – Kurzgesagt after Dark
INDIA EXPORT SOURCES
We thank the following experts for their comments:
Prof. Edward Alpers
Research Professor, UCLA Department of History
Prof. Sheldon Pollock
Arvind Raghunathan Professor of Sanskrit and South Asian Studies,Columbia University
Dr. Luigi Rogora
Postdoc Researcher Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia
An invaluable source for the research in this script was William Dalrymple's amazing book “The Golden Road” that we wholeheartedly recommend.
Intro
The ground shakes as thousands of Mauryan elephant riders thunder toward the coastal kingdom of Kalinga. It’s 261 BCE. Emperor Ashoka already rules most of India and now moves on to crush Kalinga and seize their ports.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1241/elephants-in-ancient-indian-warfare/
https://itihaas.ai/en/events/kalinga-war/
The Kingdom of Kalinga was located in modern-day Odisha (Orissa).
#Naik, Jimuta and Naik, Jimuta, Topic: Historical Geography of Kalinga (April 21, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2254458
“The geographical boundary of this territory was never a static one throughout the ancient period. But originally it was a small territory bordering on the Bay of Bengal by South Orissa and north Andhra. Its power was felt for and wide and its empire for sometimes embraced almost the whole of traditional Orissa as well as India.”
“Pliny indicates that Kalinga had extended from the mouth of the Ganges to the mouth of the Godavari in 261 B.C.E when Ashoka conquered it.”
The Kalingans arm themselves to defend their home with swords, javelins and war elephants of their own. But they are outnumbered and don’t realize how badly until it’s too late. A trumpeting avalanche rolls toward them. Blades on tusks cut through bodies while the rest is crushed underfoot. Those who survive run for the Daya river. But on the far bank, Mauryan cavalry is already closing in. Panic spreads and soldiers jump in the water, only to be met by arrows raining down from Mauryan archers. The water turns red as the slaughter continues leaving 100,000 dead and even more forcibly deported. Families are erased and villages destroyed.
Yet, this devastation does not fuel more war. Instead of violence, a different kind of power rises, built on knowledge and reason, spreading outward in ripples that still reach us today.
The Kalinga wars were fought across the territory of Kalinga, but it is traditionally believed that the battles were fought on the Dhauli Hills, next to the Daya River. Here is where some of the Ashoka Edicts were found. Dhauli Hills later became an important Buddhist center.
Dhauli – Thus Spoke Ashoka | Puratattva.
“Dhauli Hill or Dhauligiri is located on the left banks of river Daya, a tributary of Mahanadi, and situated about 10 km from Bhubaneswar. It is believed to be the location of the famous Kalinga war, where the banks of Daya would have provided a natural boundary line between the two armies.”
Ashoka himself recorded his conquest of Kalinga and the madness of the battle in the Major Rock Edict No. 13, a stone (or several stones) with carved inscriptions in Greek (found in Kandahar) and in Prakrit and Brahmi script.
#13th Major Rock Edict. Translation by E. Hultzsch (1857-1927). Published in India in 1925. Inscriptions of Asoka p.43. Public Domain.
In the Major Rock Edict XIII, Ashoka states that:
“When King Devanampriya Priyadarsin had been anointed eight years, (the country of) the Kalingyas was conquered by (him). One hundred and fifty thousand in number were the men who were deported thence, one hundred thousand in number were those who were slain there, and many times as many those who died.”
Note: Devanampriya Priyadarfiin is an honorific title of Ashoka (r.269-233 BCE). Devanampriya means "Beloved of the Gods", Priyadasi, means "He who regards others with kindness", "Humane". https://books.google.de/books?id=9_48AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA42&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
The exact date when Ashoka was crowned is not known, but it is calculated to be around 268 BCE, and could be +/- 1-3 years according to several scholars.
“Assuming that the Sri Lankan tradition is correct, and assuming that the Buddha died in 483 BCE – a date proposed by several scholars – Ashoka must have ascended the throne in 265 BCE.”
“The Puranas state that Ashoka's father Bindusara reigned for 25 years, not 28 years as specified in the Sri Lankan tradition. If this is true, Ashoka's ascension can be dated three years earlier, to 268 BCE. Alternatively, if the Sri Lankan tradition is correct, but if we assume that the Buddha died in 486 BCE (a date supported by the Cantonese Dotted Record), Ashoka's ascension can be dated to 268 BCE.”
The date of Kalinga wars is calculated around 260-261.
#History of International Relations - A Non-European Perspective. 2019
https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-24805/page/n63/mode/2up?q=kalinga
“Yet he eventually came to regret his behavior. Above all, the spectacular bloodshed which took place at the battle of Kalinga in 260 BCE, in which, reputedly, no fewer than a quarter of a million soldiers died, made him change his ways.”
In Golden Road, referenced to Olivelle’s “Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King”.
#Olivelle, Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King, p. xxi.
“By 261 BCE, around 250 years after the death of the Buddha, Ashoka’s lands stretched, with varying degrees of authority, from Kandahar to the Deccan. Ashoka then decided to wage war on his most formidable rivals. The Kalinga kingdom was based in modern Odisha and stretched down the prosperous east coast of India. The prolonged and bloody campaign to crush the Kalingas was militarily successful and led to Ashoka exercising overlordship over a larger area of the Indian subcontinent than anyone else before British colonial rule; but it also resulted in terrible carnage and destruction.”
Ashoka’s reign was between 268 and 232 BCE.
Patrick Olivelle, Ashoka. Roi philosophe
“La figure du roi indien Ashoka (Aśoka), qui régna entre 268 et 232 av. n.è. environ…”
The army of Ashoka was made up of sword fighters, archers, elephants, and cavalry.
A Standard-bearer on horseback (mid-2nd century bce) can be seen in the Bharhut sculpture.
Bharhut sculpture | Description & Facts | Britannica
The Great Stupa (also called stupa no. 1) was originally built in the 3rd century bce by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka. Elephants and horses can be seen here.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Great-Stupa-Buddhist-monument-Sanchi-India
Monasteries and Merchants
When the Kalinga war ends, the Mauryans control nearly all the land between the Himalayas and and the ocean, home to roughly a third of the world’s population at the time. The successful conquest of emperor Ashoka pushes his rule to the eastern coast, but the triumph comes at a cost. Confronted with the scale of the suffering he caused, Ashoka is overwhelmed with guilt and sorrow. For months he is desperate to repent, until he encounters Buddhism.
Ashoka converted to Buddhism after the Kalinga war.
#History of International Relations - A Non-European Perspective. 2019
https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-24805/page/n63/mode/2up?q=kalinga
“Yet he eventually came to regret his behavior. Above all, the spectacular bloodshed which took place at the battle of Kalinga in 260 BCE, in which, reputedly, no fewer than a quarter of a million soldiers died, made him change his ways. “
Is also mentioned in Golden Road, referencing Olivelle
“The dating is unclear, and scholars are divided as to the exact chronology of much of Ashoka’s reign. While the debate will no doubt continue, it is interesting to note that in his recent biography, widely regarded as authorative, Patrick Olivelle goes with the traditional narrative of Ashoka’s conversion coming as a reaction to the bloodshed of the Kalinga campaign: Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King.”
100.000 men died in the Kalinga battle, 150.000 are deported and many more died afterwards, as stated in the 13th Major Rock Edict from Ashoka.
#13th Major Rock Edict. Translation by E. Hultzsch (1857-1927). Published in India in 1925. Inscriptions of Asoka p.43. Public Domain.
“One hundred and fifty thousand in number were the men who were deported thence, one hundred thousand in number were those who were slain there, and many times as many those who died.”
At the time, it’s still a small movement carried along roads by begging monks who speak of non-violence and tolerance as a release from suffering. Ashoka converts and becomes a patron, spreading belief without enforcing it. Pillars are carved with his edicts on kindness, religious tolerance and social welfare. They read like ancient good-life quotes: To do good is difficult. One who does good first does something hard to do.
Buddhism began to spread peacefully thanks to Ashoka.
#Vivek Kumar. Asokan inscriptions: A bird-eye view. Int J Hist 2022;4(1):23-26. DOI: 10.22271/27069109.2022.v4.i1a.125
Asokan inscriptons: A bird-eye view
“Thus Asoka, with his indomitable zeal, made a local religion a universal religion. But his indomitable enthusiasm towards this religion did not make him cruel or intolerant towards other religions. He never tried to force his religion on anyone.”
From Golden Road (and Olivelle’s work):
“The Emperor Ashoka was one of the most remarkable figures in all Indian history. He was also the man who helped raise Buddhism from what was still effectively a relatively small, even local cult, into one of the world’s great religions.”
“Patrick Olivelle in his excellent new biography of Ashoka makes a case for Buddhism being more widely spread around India and even Sri Lanka by the time of Ashoka, but the evidence seems fragmentary at best. See Chapter Three of Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King (New Delhi, 2023).”
The pillars of Ashoka are a series of monolithic columns dispersed throughout the Indian subcontinent, inscribed with edicts (themes: Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism, the description of his efforts to spread Buddhism, his moral and religious precepts, and his social and animal welfare program) and built at Buddhist monasteries, sites from the life of the Buddha, or places of pilgrimage.
Brief Overview of Fourteen Major Rock Edicts of King Ashoka
“To do good is difficult…” Is found in Edict V
The Edicts of Ashoka the Great - World History Encyclopedia.
Ashoka practices what he preaches. He upgrades imperial roads, plants shade trees and builds wells for travelers and cattle. These roads double as trade routes, linking inland markets to ports bound for Southeast Asia. Caravans carry vast amounts of Indian riches like ebony, sandalwood, cotton and pepper. Buddhism also starts taking off and monks crowdsource support to cut caves into cliffs for simple monasteries. They offer shelter to travellers and position themselves as guardians of the trade.
This resonates with a rising merchant class which donates generously, gaining both protection and spiritual merit.
In the Major Rock Edict II, it is mentioned that Ashoka arranged for: Medical treatment for humans and animals, planting medicinal herbs, digging wells, and planting trees along roads.
Edicts of Ashoka – Rock Edict II | Puratattva.
Also in Pillar Edict VII, mango and banyan trees are mentioned, as well as rest-houses along roads.
Edicts of Ashoka – Pillar Edict VII | Puratattva.
#Vivek Kumar. Asokan inscriptions: A bird-eye view. Int J Hist 2022;4(1):23-26. DOI: 10.22271/27069109.2022.v4.i1a.125
Asokan inscriptions: A bird's-eye view
“Asoka started a variety of programs such as processions of elephants, Agnijwala, Deepmalika etc.”
“Asoka was also a great constructor. The Buddhist tradition credits him with the construction of 84 thousand stupas. He had enriched the stupa of Kanakmuni and had got the caves made for the Aajivikas by cutting down the hills evenly. His inscription pillars are excellent examples of architecture. He also got the establishment of two cities named Srinagar in Kashmir and Devpatan in Nepal.”
#Kiron, M. A. K. (2025). Emperor Ashoka, the Chief Patron of Buddhism: A Review. Dhammacakka Journal of Buddhism and Applied Buddhism, 1(1), 75–79. https://doi.org/10.3126/djbab.v1i1.76166
Some of the Akosha edicts, such as the Minor Rock Edict, were found near an ancient Mauryan trade route.
“The ASI has mentioned in their information board that this place was once the trade route in Mauryan Age.”
Later on, starting on the second century BCE, monasteries were increasingly created and strategically positioned along the trade routes, and served both religious and mercantilistic functions.
#MONASTIC CONNECTIONS AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITY: THE FUNCTION OF BUDDHIST SANGHAS IN MAURYAN ADMINISTRATIVE COHESION. (2025). Lex Localis - Journal of Local Self-Government, 23(S4), 3234-3247. https://doi.org/10.52152/rkkw7180
“This study contends that sanghas were not only beneficiaries of royal patronage, but acted as proactive actors of state authority, serving as centres for interaction, financial administration, and ideological validation. Utilising epigraphic evidence from Ashokan edicts, archaeological information about monastic connections, and Buddhist textual practices, the study illustrates that monasteries were strategically positioned along trade routes and near administrative centres, facilitating their role as mediators among the state and the local population.”
At the Chanti stupa, some inscriptions list the donors.
#John Marshall; Alfred Foucher; N. G. Majumdar. The Monuments Of Sāñchī, Vol. 3. 1982
“Banker” can be seen here:
#Five Unnoticed Donative Inscriptions and the Relative Chronology of Sanchi Stūpa II.
Five Unnoticed Donative Inscriptions and the Relative Chronology of Sanchi Stūpa II
“The mercantile presence at stūpasites in Madhya Pradesh is unsurprising given the hundreds of other donative inscriptions with references to merchants, various craftsmen, and guilds.”
Donative inscriptions were found in Buddhist monasteries and temples in ancient South India, mentioning both merchants and nuns. Donations were seen as a virtue to be cultivated, and monks and nuns who had given up most material possessions relied heavily upon the generosity of the laity.
#Dr Matthew D. Milligan
Donative Epigraphy in Ancient South Asia | Sahapedia
“Dating to around the late second century BCE and the early first century BCE, the large vedika and torana gateways from Bharhut bear more than 200 inscriptions, many of which are dedicatory. Some of the donors belong to the monastic community while others identify as lay donors or parts of the mercantile community.”
The Buddhist monasteries grow bigger. Now not just spiritual centers but engines of wealth. Monks manage land and run mines and mills.
They lend money to farmers who invest in trading voyages. Basically, monasteries become the first banks of South Asia. It’s a perfect system: faith funding trade, trade carrying faith.
The Mauryan empire collapses a century after Ashoka, but the monasteries endure and merchants keep moving.
They turn westwards, where a new superpower is stretching its limbs with a growing demand for Indian goods.
Rock-cut Buddhist monasteries held and accumulated wealth, using it to purchase resources and services. Monasteries in South Asia owned and managed land or water facilities on behalf of the lay.
#Rees, G. (2021). Buddhism and trade: Interpreting the distribution of rock-cut monasteries in the Western Ghats mountains, India using least-cost paths. Archaeological Research in Asia, 28, 100307.
“Wealth was held and accumulated individually and collectively by monastic communities and used to purchase resources and services Prasad (2008), Schopen (2004c). Monasteries elsewhere in South Asia owned and managed land or water facilities on behalf of the laity.”
“Merchants were motivated to adopt, support or cooperate with Buddhism for several reasons: social, Buddhist monasteries offered opportunities for participation and status to merchants who were disenfranchised by the varna (Caste) system; practical, travel was fundamental to both groups and the activity was inimical to Brahminical traditions; and economic, monasteries took an active role in trade, providing services or purchasing goods.”
At the beginning, monks and their closest family and friends were the ones financing their Buddhist entrepreneurial efforts.
#MATTHEW D. MILLIGAN, PhD. Monastic Investment Bootstrapping:
An Economic Model for the Expansion of Early Buddhism. 2019
Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies: E-journal, Vol 2.2, Milligan
https://matthewdmilligan.academia.edu/research#papers
Monks rented land, sold expensive clothes, and lent money, as recommended by donors.
#Gregory SCHOPEN. The Business Model of a Buddhist Monasticism: Acquiring Productive Assets
University of California, Los Angeles
schopen@humnet.ucla.edu
Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies: E-journal, Vol 2.2, Schopen
“What we see here in our text might appear to us as a major innovation: the economic exploitation of gifted land by renting it out for a share. It would not be surprising that this might have been felt as a deviation from the ideal, and some indication of this might be seen in—once again—how our redactors told the story of how it came to be. The monk redactors told their fellow monks that the idea of renting out monastery land did not come from them, but from the donor, in this case the king. It is the donor who first presents the idea, and indirectly expresses his expectations, when he asks why the monks have not done so. We frequently find this kind of narrative displacement in this Vinaya in accounts that present other economic innovations or developments: in the account of how monks and nuns came to lend money on interest it was the donors who suggested that they do so; in the account of how monks came to be sellers of expensive fabrics, it was once again the donor who presented the idea.”
Monasteries engaged in a wide range of economic activities to become less dependent on external support and to care for orphans and servants living in the monastery alongside the monks.
“There are stories about how the Buddha came to authorize lending money on interest by both monks and nuns, how he came to authorize the acceptance of cash by monks from deposits made by donors with merchants; stories about the monastery running a granary and selling rice under market value, about it selling space in the monastic complex, or certain kinds of luxury cloth received as donations, about monastic auctions to liquidate the estates of dead monks or to convert other donations into cash; stories about organized fund drives and publicly advertised image processions meant to generate ‘donations’, and this enumeration is only a sample: it is nothing like a comprehensive list.”
In the Buddhist enclave of Mes Aynak, dating from the early centuries AD and located southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan, Buddhist monks might have managed and exploited a copper mine.
From Golden Road (p. 125)
“Powered by the proceeds of the copper mine that the monks managed and apparently worked for profit, the Buddhist enclave of Mes Aynak was a major centre of early Indic culture, from which Indian ideas, religion, art, philosophy and learning had spread out across the Hindu Kush.”
Mes Aynak: Afghanistan's Buddhist buried treasure faces destruction | History books | The Guardian.
“The valley, emphasised Marquis, was an important centre of copper mining in antiquity. In one place he pointed out an ancient centre of crushing, refining and smelting, where the diggers had found a blanket of fused copper slag 12m (40ft) high. Marquis believes the copper workings to be central to understanding the ruins. Given the unusual grandeur of the Buddhist temples and palaces in the settlement, Mes Aynak might once have been a theocracy like Tibet, with the monks exploiting the copper reserves as a source of power and profit, not unlike the Cistercian monks who dominated the pre-industrial economy in many parts of medieval France and England.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mes_Aynak
The Mauryan Empire lasted from about 321 to 185 BCE.
Mauryan Empire | Definition, Map, Achievements, & Facts | Britannica.
“The last ruler, Brihadratha, was killed in 185 bce by his Brahman commander in chief, Pushyamitra, who then founded the Shunga dynasty…”
During the post-Mauryan period (approximately 2nd century BCE to 3rd century CE), the significance of the commercial routes connecting the East and the West expanded substantially.
“In the Post-Mauryan period, particularly during the Kushana reign, India emerged as a central hub in transcontinental commerce. The Kushanas controlled territories from Central Asia to northern India, making them crucial intermediaries in East-West trade. They also promoted Buddhism, which spread through monastic institutions along the route, strengthening India's religious and cultural influence across Asia.”
Buddhism spread to the West. After the Mauryan empire, trade routes remained active conduits for goods like silk and spices as well as religious ideas, allowing Buddhist monks to travel widely and propagate their teachings beyond India into Central Asia and China. Buddhist institutions adapted to new regional powers and trade networks.
#Ingo Strauch. Buddhism in the West? Buddhist Indian Sailors on Socotra (Yemen) and the Role of Trade Contacts in the Spread of Buddhism.
“It is well-known that along the Silk Road, Buddhism spread eastwards. Buddhist merchants and pilgrims used the trade routes to propagate Buddhist ideas and to establish Buddhist institutions. Rulers along the“Silk Road” converted and promoted Buddhism in their territories.”
The Golden Age of Trade
6000 kilometers west, Roman dominance has been rising through marching legions and territorial takeover. In 30 BCE, having conquered Cleopatra’s Egypt, the empire grips the Red Sea ports. This opens a direct corridor to the Indian world and the ship traffic increases. It helps that the Indian peninsula sits inside a massive wind machine. For half the year, the monsoon blows toward the Arabian sea, and for the other half, it flips direction. This predictable rhythm lets Indian sailors ride the wind straight across the ocean and glide safely home months later.
Emperor Augustus added Egypt to the Roman Empire in 30 BCE.
Ancient Egypt - Roman, Byzantine, 30 BCE-642 CE | Britannica.
“ “I added Egypt to the empire of the Roman people.” With these words the emperor Augustus (as Octavian was known from 27 bce) summarized the subjection of Cleopatra’s kingdom in the great inscription that records his achievements.”
Indian and Chinese goods reached the Mediterranean by the red Sea ports.
Map of the Trade Links between Rome & the East - World History Encyclopedia.
“By the early centuries of the Common Era, Chinese silk reached Roman markets through Parthian intermediaries; Indian pepper and textiles circulated from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea; and Buddhist monks, missionaries, and scholars traveled alongside caravans from Gandhara and Taxila into Central Asia and China.”
In Berenike, a port on the Red Sea, evidence of the trade in pepper and exotic animals was found.
Ports in the past: Berenike (Egypt) as a place of barter and business | PortCityFutures
The monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean enabled the regular transport of goods through sea routes from the East on ships.
Indian monsoon | Meteorology, Climate & Effects | Britannica.
THE RECEPTION AND CONSUMPTION OF EASTERN GOODS IN ROMAN SOCIETY | Greece & Rome | Cambridge Core.
Riding the Monsoons | The Indo-Roman Pepper Trade and the Muziris Papyrus | Oxford Academic
“In terms of the pepper trade, this meant that while the Roman pepper carriers had to leave India by 13 January, the ships of the medieval pepper trade could stay in India for all of February and part of March.”
Pliny the Elder, writes that ships left Egypt in July, caught the monsoon, and reached India directly.
#Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.
“Passengers generally set sail at midsummer, before the rising of the Dog-star, or else immediately after, and in about thirty days arrive at Ocelis28 in Arabia, or else at Cane,29 in the region which bears frankincense. There is also a third port of Arabia, Muza30 by name; it is not, however, used by persons on their passage to India, as only those touch at it who deal in incense and the perfumes of Arabia. More in the interior there is a city; the residence of the king there is called Sapphar,31 and there is another city known by the name of Save. To those who are bound for India, Ocelis is the best place for embareation. If the wind, called Hippalus,32 happens to be blowing, it is possible to arrive in forty days at the nearest mart of India, Muziris33 by name.”
They build enormous and tough ships that can easily carry 1000 people or a few hundred tons of cargo. In Rome, Indian goods sell for up to a hundred times their original price. If you’re lucky the profit from a single voyage can buy 2000 acres of the best Egyptian farmland or pay 10,000 Roman soldiers for a year. In this trade, a successful merchant doesn’t just get rich. They can rival the wealth of senators.
Ships had several tons of capacity.
THE RECEPTION AND CONSUMPTION OF EASTERN GOODS IN ROMAN SOCIETY | Greece & Rome | Cambridge Core
“In particular, the sea routes that utilized the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean enabled a significant volume of goods to be imported from the East on ships that may often have been of several hundred tons' capacity.”
According to Pliny, commodities from India were sold at Rome at a hundred times the original price.
#Pliny, (Hist. Natur. l. vi. c. 23, lxii. c. 18.)
Chapter VI: Death Of Severus, Tyranny Of Caracalla, Usurpation Of Marcinus.—Part IV.
The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago/Chapter 3 - Wikisource, the free online library.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India’, Pen & Sword, (2014)
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
“Pliny confirms that over 100 million sesterces of Roman bullion was exported from the Empire every year by businessmen involved in eastern trade.”
“The world changed when Rome annexed Egypt and gained access to the Red Sea shipping-lanes that led into the Indian Ocean. Within a decade, there were over a hundred Roman ships sailing to India and the Mediterranean markets were xviii The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean suddenly inundated with goods from across the eastern world.3 These imports included products such as incense, spices, gemstones and silks.”
From Golden Road:
“Pliny mentions that goods purchased in India could be sold for one hundred times the price in the Roman Empire.”
Ships could carry a few hundred tons of cargo.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India’, Pen & Sword, (2014)
“These ships should have a capacity of at least 50,000 modii (350 tons), or several, each with a capacity at least than 10,000 modii (70 tons)”
#Arthur de Graauw. Ancient Merchant Ships.
Ancient Merchant Ships | Ancient Ports - Ports Antiques.
“Exceptional ships like the Isis, 55 x 14 m, could carry 1200 tons with around 4.5 m draught, but normal ships ranged between 20 and 50 m for 100 to 500 tons of cargo with up to 3.5 m draught. “
One voyage could plausibly generate ~9 million sesterces profit.
-Ten thousand Roman soldiers cost 9-10 million sesterces/year.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India, Pen & Sword, (2014)
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
“5,000 Legionaries paid 900 sesterces annually = 4.5 million.”
#Arthur de Graauw. Ancient Merchant Ships.
Ancient Merchant Ships | Ancient Ports - Ports Antiques.
One soldier received 1.000 sesterces/year, times 10.000 = 10.000.000 sestercers.
“...annual salary of a 1st century soldier or worker of 1000 sesterces/year…”
-The total calculated value of a cargo is 9.2 million sesterces.
“The Muziris Papyrus (ca. 150 AD) is a fragmentary document found in 1985[21]. On its verso side, it provides a list of cargo which has been reconstructed as follows: 544 tons of pepper, 76 tons of malabathron (cinnamomum tamala leaves), 3 tons of ivory tusks and 0.5 ton of ivory fragments, 2 tons of tortoise shell, and 80 boxes of Gangetic nard (possibly 1 or 2 tons)[22]. That is a payload of ca. 628 tons, requiring a very large Roman ship (this one was called the Hermapollon). The total value of this cargo reaches a stunning amount of 9.2 million Roman sesterces, which is around 90 million modern Euros[23].”
With one voyage’s profits, you can buy 2000 acres of the best Egyptian farmland
In the best case, you could make 9-10 million sesterces with one ship cargo.
2,000 acres of fertile Egyptian land before AD 165 would had a mean price of 939,117 sesterces that could be easily paid with one voyage’s profit.
-Price of fertile land in Egypt during the Roman Empire
#Harper K. People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: The Evidence from Egypt. The Journal of Economic History. 2016;76(3):803-839. doi:10.1017/S0022050716000826
“In the prices that can be definitively dated before AD 165, the mean price is 319.3 drachmai/aroura; the 10:90 trimmed mean (n = 20) is 320.5 drachmai/aroura.”
One drachma = 1 sesterces (Egyptian)
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India’, Pen & Sword, (2014)
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
“Egyptian silver drachma: 1 sesterce.”
One aroura of land = 2,756.25 sq. meters
The Cares of This World | Religious Studies Center
“aroura of land (2756.25 sq. meters) an area of a square 52.5 meters on each side, roughly half the size of the playing area of an American football field).”
Our calculations:
2,000 acres is equal to about 8.09 million square meters.
Therefore,
One arora of land = 2,756.25 square meters = about 0.681 acres.
319.3 sesterces per 0.68 acres
939,117 sesterces per 2000 acres
Even after paying the high taxes, merchants were able to make good profit, because wealthy Roman citizens were willing to pay the price for the goods that would give them status.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India’, Pen & Sword, (2014)
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
“Rome imposed a quarter-rate customs tax on all foreign goods crossing the imperial frontiers known as the tetarte. In Egypt this meant that Alexandrian merchants paid the imperial government a costly dividend to transfer eastern merchandise from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. These goods were taxed as soon as they entered Roman authority, so merchants could not evade the high dues that government agents levied on this economic activity. Merchants paid the tax at the frontier, but they could recoup this expense with profits made by selling these goods at high prices to affluent consumers throughout the Mediterranean. During the Imperial period competitive spending on eastern goods became synonymous with fashion and status throughout Roman territory and people from across the Empire with surplus money to spend would willingly pay for
attractive foreign commodities.”
A Roman senator had a minimum capital value of landed property of around 1 million sesterces. A merchant could have more profit than the whole wealth of the senators, although some senators had more wealth than the minimum required to be a senator, and the less affluent senatorial families started having financial difficulties.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India’, Pen & Sword, (2014)
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
“Seneca confirms the value of the most expensive imports when he writes, ‘I see tables and pieces of wood valued at the price of a senator’s estate (1 million sesterces) and these are all the more precious when the surface is twisted with the outline of tree knots.’”
“Cash spent on exotic and expensive commodities therefore brought influence and increased reputations that could guarantee greater opportunities for political advancement. Some of the less affluent senatorial families found their personal fortunes exhausted by this competition for status and high office. To maintain their own political survival, these men tried to restrict the ways that wealth could be used to determine elite social position. There was a call for new sumptuary laws to restrict excessive spending at banquets and limit costly consumerism amongst the nobility, including the wearing of silk. These ‘moderate’ senators wanted social position to be determined by the prestige of family and ancestors, rather than by costly consumer-driven display.”
Above all, the Indians bring pepper. It pours into the markets and rewires Roman taste itself. Nearly 80% of their recipes now demand it. Even soldiers freezing at Hadrian’s Wall order pepper, to make their rations edible. Words like pepper, ginger and sugar travel with the spice, moving from Sanskrit into Latin and almost every European language. But the biggest ships aren’t loaded with spice. They are animal transports, vast floating stables carrying elephants, tigers, leopards, even occasional rhinoceros. All kept alive through an almost 2 month journey for Rome’s gladiator games.
Indian merchants were regular visitors of the Roman Empire. Pepper, cinnamon, other species and exotic material like ivory or turtle shells, were usual cargos of the merchant ships during the early centuries AD in the Roman Empire.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India’, Pen & Sword, (2014)
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
“Indian merchants travelled to Roman Egypt aboard their own ships and businessmen from the subcontinent were regular visitors to Alexandria. Indian pottery has been found at Myos Hormos including fragments of fine tableware and ordinary cooking pots. A few of these pieces are marked with Prakrit letters, which was a common form of the Indian language Sanskrit. Others were labelled with Tamil-Brahmin script, the preferred writing system in southern India.”
“The main cargo removed from the Hermapollon consisted of Indian spices as the Periplus reports, ‘ships in these ports of trade (Muziris) carry full loads because of the volume and quantity of pepper and malabathrum’.32 The Muziris Papyrus lists a commodity that must be pepper because it was priced at 771 talents and 4,632 drachmas (4,630,632 sesterces) and weighed 135 tons. This means that the product had a customs value of 16 sesterces per pound, which is the price Pliny gives for pepper.33 A further commodity removed from the Hermapollon is probably malabathrum (cinnamon) because it was valued at 220 talents (1,320,000 sesterces) and weighed over 83 tons. This is consistent with relatively ordinary cinnamon which sold in Roman markets at about 8 sesterces a pound.34”
“The trade situation is complex, but the cargo figures for the Hermapollon can be ‘scaled-up’ to suggest the quantity of goods from India entering the Roman Empire every year. Assuming a fleet of 120 merchant ships, Roman Egypt could be receiving: 16,000 tons of pepper and cotton, 10,000 tons of malabathrum and other spices, 7,000 boxes or 50 tons of nard, 360 tons of turtle-shell and 576 tons of ivory (over 14,000 tusks), per annum.37 Trade on this scale is feasible because the Romans were dealing with countries and populations that were as large as their entire Empire.”
Roman society changes, and exotic species and goods are highly valued.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. (see above)
“The grain dole ensured the provision of a basic, stable diet for the male citizens of Rome and their closest dependants. But it also enabled people to afford other, non-essential items that could be purchased with their surplus income, including eastern products available in new food flavourings, perfumes and remedies. In Rome many people began to spend their surplus wealth on eastern spices, incense, ivory, gems and pearls. Tacitus describes how ‘the consumption of edible luxuries reached substantial new levels in the century between the close of the Actium War and the struggle which placed Servius Galba on the throne’ (31 BC–AD 69).60 Other eastern commodities imported during this era created fashions for popular new forms of jewellery, ornaments and clothing. Pliny confirms that ‘pearls came into common use in Rome after Alexandria came under our power’ (30 BC).61 Throughout this era, the most fashionable, desirable and expensive items available to Roman consumers were the eastern goods delivered to Rome through the Red Sea trade.”
Pepper was included in 80% of recipes of the roman cookbook of Apicius.
From Golden Road:
“By the end of the first century, Indian pepper became almost as readily available as it is today. Eighty per cent of the 478 recipes included in the Roman cookbook of Apicius included pepper, and it appears regularly even in the pudding section. It was still, however, an expensive treat. The first-century Spanish poet Martial grumbles that the amount of pepper his cook included in his recipe for wild boar was likely eventually to bankrupt him.”
LacusCurtius • Apicius — De Re Coquinaria
Also, ordinary people, like soldiers, were using pepper in their food.
From Golden Road:
“Such was the scale of the goods traded in both directions that Indian exports reached not just the Roman elite of Italy and Sicily, but ordinary people at the far end of the Empire. One such was Gambax son of Tappo, a Roman auxiliary soldier stationed at Vindolanda on the outer fastness of the Empire at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. Gambax’s writing tablet records a modest order of Indian pepper worth two denarii.”
# Ernst Emanuel Mayer. Tanti non emo, Sexte, Piper: Pepper Prices, Roman Consumer Culture, and the Bulk of Indo-Roman Trade.
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 61, No. 4 (2018), pp. 560-589
“We cannot know whether [Gambax’s] two denarii bought him a selibra or c. 160g of black pepper at the Empire’s Scottish frontier; but the fact that a common Roman soldier could get his hands on a small amount of Indian spice in Northern Britain is remarkable, and attests not only to the wide availability but also to the affordability of pepper.”
Words like pepper, ginger and sugar travel with the spice, moving from Sanskrit into Latin and almost every European language.
From Golden Road:
"The Tamil and Sanskrit words for sugar, ginger, pepper, sandalwood, beryl, cotton and indigo all made their way into Latin, and hence to modern English: 'pepper' and 'ginger' are both loan words from Tamil – pipali and singabera respectively."
#Uchibayashi M. [Etymology of ginger]. Yakushigaku Zasshi. 2001;36(1):58-60. Japanese. PMID: 11776998.
[Etymology of ginger] - PubMed.
“The English term ginger originates from Sanskrit sringavera (sringam=horn+vera=body), which was transformed to Latin gingiber and to Old French gingibre, which resulted in ginger in English.”
List of English words of Sanskrit origin - Wikipedia
Merchant ships also bring exotic animals to the Roman arenas.
From Golden Road:
"Rome imported sizeable numbers of wild animals to fight in the Colosseum and other Roman arenas: tigers, leopards, panthers and the occasional unruly rhinoceros. The ships which sailed the Red Sea route were unusually large, particularly the enormous elephant transports, which needed much wider harbour berths than were required by ships working the Mediterranean shipping routes."
#Raoul Mclaughlin. (see above)
“Most Roman imports from the distant east concerned food products and other perishable consumables that are not well attested in archaeological remains. The extent of the problem is indicated by a Roman legal text describing goods subject to import tax at Alexandria. The passage reads: Types of goods liable to tax: cinnamon; long pepper; white pepper; pentasphaerum leaf; barbary leaf; costum; costamomum; nard; stachys; Tyrian cassia; cassia-wood; myrrh; amomum; ginger; malabrathrum; Indian spice; galbanum;
asafoetida juice; aloe; lycium; Perian gum; Arabian onyx; cardamom; cinnamonwood; cotton goods; Babylonian hides; Persian hides; ivory; Indian iron; linen; all sorts of gem; pearl, sardonyx, ceraunium, hyacinth stone, emerald, diamond, sapphire, turquoise, beryl, tortoise stone; Indian or Assyrian drugs; raw silk, silk or half-silk clothing; embroidered fine linen; silk thread; Indian eunuchs; lions; lionesses; pards; leopards; panthers; purple dye; also African wool; dye; Indian
hair.” “Meroitic traders were also able to offer incense from Somalia and exotic live animals from inner Africa, including leopard and lion cubs. These creatures were exported across the Empire to be exhibited in crowded Roman arenas. The profits made in this business are revealed in Diocletian’s Price Edict which lists thousands of prices paid for ancient items. The edict values a live lion as the most expensive commodity available in Roman society and this could be purchased at a price greater than a worker could earn in sixteen years.”
Indian imports into Egypt surge past 1.3 billion a year in today’s dollars. And Roman tax collectors skim off over a quarter of that flow. Enough to finance a third of the empire’s budget. Older accounts emphasized the overland Silk Road from China, but when historians re-examined maritime trade, the volumes of goods travelling along these routes told a different story. Goods do travel overland from China, but the Silk Road is slow, costly and hard to control. Most Chinese goods reach Roman markets through Indian sea trade networks. All this makes India Rome’s largest trading partner.
Indian products that came through Egypt produced several billion sesterces per year.
From Golden Road:
“Working up from these figures and other customs receipts
from the period, scholars have estimated that by the first century CE
Indian imports into Egypt were worth over a billion sesterces per
annum, from which the tax authorities of the Roman Empire were
creaming off no less than 270 million.”
#Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.
“It will not be amiss too, on the present occasion, to set forth the whole of the route from Egypt, … and is here published for the first time. … in no year does India drain our empire of less than five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces, giving back her own wares in exchange, which are sold among us at fully one hundred times their prime cost.”
Indian imports into Egypt surge past 1.3 billion a year in today’s dollars.
It is difficult to find an exact equivalence between a Roman sesterce and current USD values, because Roman economics differed from today's.
There are also different ways of measuring the equivalence of a sesterce to current currencies. If we consider the average wage for a worker, we have:
In Rome (1st century) daily average wage for a worker was around 4 sesterces.
How did the Roman economy function? | Römer in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Today, the average daily wage in Europe is between 10 and 50 Eur (11,79 USD to 58,95 USD)
Wages and labour costs - Statistics Explained - Eurostat.
If 4 sestertii ≈ $35, then:
1 sestertius ≈ $35 / 4 = $8.75
And if we consider that imports into Egypt were worth over a billion sesterces:
Then we have:
1,000,000,000 sestertii ≈ 1,000,000,000 × $8.75 = $8,750,000,000
So 1 billion sestertii ≈ $8.75 billion (USD) today.
If we consider the lower value of the average wage: 4 sestertii = 11 USD, then:
1 sestertius = $11 ÷ 4 = $2.75
1,000,000,000 sestertii = 1,000,000,000 × $2.75 = $2,750,000,000
So 1 billion sestertii (annual imports into Egypt)l ≈ $2.75 billion (USD).
Tax collected from the Indian imports would be enough to finance a third of the empire's budget.
The Empire budget was 1 billion sestertii/year.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. (see above)
“Modern estimates for Roman State spending (1,000 million sesterces per
annum)”
Taxes from India imports were 275 million, plus 25 million from taxes to exported goods, could cover between a quarter and a third of the Roman empire's budget.
Roman taxes would have keep at least 25% of the total value of the trades.
#Raoul Mclaughlin. (see above)
“A quarter-rate tetarte tax on Indian imports worth 1,000 million sesterces would have raised annual revenues worth 250 million sesterces for the Roman
regime. However, many of these goods would be taxed again when they were exported from Alexandria to Rome or other Mediterranean cities. A single Mediterranean portoria tax (one-fortieth) on goods worth 1,000 million sesterces would have produced further revenues worth perhaps 25 million sesterces per annum. This meant that Roman authorities imposed a double tax on Egypt’s trade with India. Strabo confirms that ‘large fleets are sent as far as India and the extremities of Africa and the most valuable cargoes are brought to Egypt. From Egypt they are sent forth again to all other regions and as a consequence, double duties are collected on both imports and exports’. Together the one-fortieth portoria and the quarter-rate tetarte tax could have raised 275 million sesterces for
the Roman State. Added to this figure was the quarter-rate customs-tax collected on Roman goods exported to the distant east. Pliny reports that Rome exported over 100 million sesterces of bullion to India, Arabia and China, but this wealth probably passed through different customs stations in separate regions (Egypt: Coptos, Palestine: Gaza and Arabia: Leuke Kome).15 It is possible that total Roman exports from Egypt to India, including goods and bullion, were valued at more than 100 million sesterces and produced more than 25 million sesterces of revenue. This is because Han texts suggest a tenfold price difference between Roman exports to India (100 million sesterces) and Indian imports (1,000 million sesterces).“
India was one of the trade partners of the Roman Empire, and according to some authors, including Pliny the Elder, Indo-Roman trade was likely the largest single component of Rome’s Indian Ocean trade.
#Pliny the Elder, Natural History 12.41
“At the very lowest computation, India, the Seres (China), and the Arabian Peninsula, withdraw from our empire one hundred millions of sesterces every year—so dearly do we pay for our luxury and our women.”
For more than 300 years, the system works. Until the Roman Empire starts to weaken. Commerce slows, fleets shrink and ports fall silent one by one. Indian merchants redirect their massive ships toward Southeast Asia’s rising kingdoms. And with them travel ideas that will reshape how humans understand the universe itself.
In the third century AD, there was a period of disorder and calamity between the murder of Alexander Severus (235 AD) and the accession of Diocletian (284 AD), commonly called "the Military Anarchy."
#E., C. Particularism in the Roman Empire during the Military Anarchy. The American Journal of Philology, 51(4), 343-357. https://doi.org/10.2307/289894
https://ancientromelive.org/severusalexander/
https://ancientromelive.org/diocletian/
Major ports in Egypt detached from centralized Rome during this period.
The Crisis of the Third Century: A Pivotal Era of Ancient Rome - World History Encyclopedia.
“In 260, the regional governor of Upper and Lower Germania, Postumus (reign 260-269), broke away to create the Gallic Empire comprised of Germania, Gaul, Hispania, and Britannia, and circa 270, Queen Zenobia of Palmyra (reign 267-272) in the east formed her own empire – the Palmyrene – which stretched from Syria down through Egypt.”
There is a decline in Indian trade with Roman ports
#Anjana Reddy. L. Looking From Arabia To India: Analysis Of The Early Roman ‘India Trade’ In The Indian Ocean During The Late Pre- Islamic Period (3rd Century Bc - 6th Century Ad)
“The Roman influence in this trade seemed to decline after the 2nd century AD, as Indian evidence shows. Much of this could be attributed to historical changes in
West Asia and the eastern Mediterranean as well as those regions of India connected with the trade. This could include the greater participation of India traders in supplying goods to Alexandria or India’s involvement in the trade with Central Asia may have led to tapping of new resources as well as a decrease in fashion or
necessity for Yavana items of trade. From West Asia, the decline of the Red Sea as a major artery would have had to do with a transfer to other routes, particularly with the increasing importance of Byzantium (Thapar 2005: 39). A great revival of commerce and communications is in evidence from the fourth through the fifth centuries, as the port site of Berenike remained the pre-eminent Byzantine emporium throughout the late Roman period.”
Trade fuels prosperity across the subcontinent. By the 4th century, most of it is ruled by the Gupta Empire. Wealth flows into art and science fueling a boom in centers of learning. Among them rises Nalanda, the elite MIT of ancient India. 10,000 monks from across Southeast Asia live and study there, crowned by a vast nine-storey library known as the Sea of Jewels.
The Gupta Empire ruled over north-eastern and parts of central and western India, from 320 - 647 CE.
Gupta dynasty | History, Achievements, Founder, & Map | Britannica.
“Gupta dynasty, rulers of the Magadha (now Bihar) state in northeastern India. They maintained an empire over northern and parts of central and western India from the early 4th to the late 6th century ce.”
Smarthistory – The Gupta Period.
“During the Gupta period (c. 320 – 647 C.E., named for the Gupta dynasty) there were tremendous advances in poetry, prose, and drama as well as important discoveries in mathematics and astronomy.”
Nalanda, one of the world's oldest universities and a revered center of learning, had a library of nine stories called the “Sea of Jewels”, and students across the ancient world came to study here.
Stairway, Nalanda - World History Encyclopedia
“Nalanda was one of the oldest universities of the world and a revered center of learning. It was located in Magadha, modern day Bihar, India and was operational between c. 300-1200 CE. It received patronage from the Gupta Empire and also King Harshavardhana (c. 590–647 CE). The university’s library consisted of three large buildings, namely Ratnasagara ("Ocean of Jewels"), Ratnodadhi ("Sea of Jewels") and Ratnaranjaka ("Adorned with Jewels"). Ratnodadhi was a nine storey high edifice and housed priceless manuscripts of Buddhist and Brahmanical studies. Apart from the locals, students from Tibet, China, Central Asia, and Korea used to visit the place to quench their thirst for knowledge.”
Nalanda could host thousands of residents.
#Lars Fogelin. An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism
(PDF) An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism
“Where the earliest monasteries likely housed no more than 100 monks, later monasteries like Nalanda in the Gangetic Plain had resident populations in the thousands.”
The Seventeen Pandits of Nalanda Monastery - Mandala Publications.
“Nalanda Monastastic University was the greatest center of Buddhist learning in India’s glorious past. With upwards of 30,000 monks and nuns including 2,000 teachers living, studying and practicing there during its heyday, Nalanda was unmatched.”
India begins to build one of the richest mathematical traditions on Earth. Scholars start writing nine numerical symbols in a radically new way. A digit’s position now defines its value. In “26,” the “2” becomes twenty because it sits in the tens place, while the “6” stays six in the ones place. Zero has not arrived yet, but its shadow already exists, marked as a small dot waiting to become something powerful.
Indian mathematical sciences started to flourish during the first millennium BCE and is known as one of the richest scientific traditions worldwide.
#Kim Plofker. Mathematics in India
(PDF) Kim Plofker Mathematics in India. Princeton University Press (2009)
“In the first millennium BCE, Sanskrit texts began to show more sophisticated techniques in geometry for religious ritual and in the computations of mathematical astronomy; the latter subject may have been influenced by knowledge of Mesopotamian astronomy transmitted from the Achaemenid empire. Mathematical methods for commerce and other purposes continued to develop in India through the start of the current era, and a mature decimal place value arithmetic was established well before the middle of the first millennium CE.
…
Over the next thousand years or so, the Indian mathematical sciences flourished as one of the richest and most fascinating scientific traditions ever known. Using rules composed mostly in Sanskrit verse and detailed prose commentaries on them, and without the formal deductive proof structure that we now routinely associate with mathematics, Indian mathematicians brilliantly explored topics in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, numerical approximations, combinatorics, series (including infinite series and infinitesimal methods), and a host of other fields. Mathematical subjects were closely linked with the discipline of mathematical astronomy; the professional lives of its practitioners were generally organized around family traditions of scholarship, court patronage, and informal collegial networks rather than official institutions of learning and formal credentials. Before the end of the first millennium CE, Indian mathematics and astronomy had influenced scientific traditions in Islamic West Asia, much of Southeast Asia, and China.”
Indian scholars began using decimal place-value arithmetic before the middle of the first millennium CE.
#Kim Plofker. Mathematics in India
(PDF) Kim Plofker Mathematics in India. Princeton University Press (2009)
“Mathematical methods for commerce
and other purposes continued to develop in India through the start of the current era, and a mature decimal place value arithmetic was established
well before the middle of the first millennium CE.”
Indian mathematics | Ancient History, Vedic Texts, Contributions, & Facts | Britannica.
“ These centuries around the turn of the millennium also left some physical evidence concerning the forms of written numerals. The abovementioned allusion to interchangeable tokens in counting pits suggests a form of decimal place value. However, inscriptions on monuments and deed plates reveal that early Indian numeral systems (e.g., the Brahmi numerals; see figure) were not place-valued; rather, they used different symbols for the same multiple of different powers of 10.”
Around 628, the mathematician Brahmagupta takes on a revolutionary idea. Turning nothing into something you can calculate. He defines zero, lays out its rules and gives it real power. They call it sunya - the void. It draws directly from the Buddhist idea that emptiness is not absence but something meaningful. Suddenly, any arbitrarily large natural number can be expressed with just ten symbols.
Bramhagupta:- A Poineer of Indian Mathematics
“The Indian Hindu culture had a positional number system implementing the base ten. In these early counting systems, the placeholder has not been considered a number with its own properties. Comprehension of zero's concept significance and its properties, developed first during the seventh century A.D. In India. In the year 628 A.D. Brahmagupta wrote a treatise called Brahmasphutasid-dhanta (translated as "The opening of the Universe"). Brahmagupta actually realized, that mathematics needs a new number. Consequently, in the treatise he introduced one of the fundamental discoveries in mathematics the concept of the number zero. Brahmagupta called the new number súnya, which in Sanskrit means "void" or "empty". Hindu mathematicians Aryabhata born in 476 A.D. and Brahmagupta born in 598 A.D. are believed to be the first mathematicians who formally described the modern decimal number system.”
In the year 628 A.D. Brahmagupta wrote a treatise called Brahmasphutasiddhanta (translated as “The opening of the Universe"), where he introduced one of the fundamental discoveries in mathematics - the concept of the number zero. Brahmagupta called the new number sunya, which in Sanskrit means "void" or "empty".
#Monica Feliksiak. Brahmagupta and the concept of Zero
Brahmagupta and the concept of Zero – ScienceOpen
“The Bakhshali manuscript is an early ancient mathematical document discovered in a eld in 1881 by a farmer, near the village of Bakhshali in the vicinity of Peshawar, at that time in British India. The manuscript is written in ink on a birch bark, which was usual for manuscripts in North-Western India. It displays some Sanskrit numerals, in which in the place of zero is placed a small dot.”
By the 7th century, Buddhism remains a powerful intellectual tradition but has faded from everyday life. The Gupta Empire backs Hinduism instead, a faith that celebrates warrior kingship at a time of northern invasions. Against this backdrop, Buddhism’s pacifism becomes a poor fit for the ambitions of rulers. So many monks pack their manuscripts and flee. Most turn north and east, drawn by new patrons for Indian monastic knowledge.
Archaeological evidence from sites like Bhaja, Bedsa, and Karla shows that Buddhist monasteries continued to function and expand until at least the 7th century, evolving from temporary retreats into organized centers of worship and learning supported by royal patronage. Initially, the Gupta dynasty embraced Buddhism, and King Asoka declared Buddhism as the official religion. Later rulers like Chandragupta, who reigned c. 380–c. 415 CE. were Hinduists, but tolerated other religions. The Gupta Empire began to decline and shrink in size around the 6th century CE.
Chandragupta II | Gupta Dynasty Emperor, India’s Golden Age | Britannica.
“Chandragupta II was a devout Hindu, but he also tolerated the Buddhist and Jain religions.”
Gupta dynasty | History, Achievements, Founder, & Map | Britannica.
“By the mid-6th century, when the dynasty apparently came to an end, the kingdom had dwindled to a small size.”
#Raj Kumar. A Historical Review of the Origin and Growth of Buddhism in India
https://ijels.com/upload_document/issue_files/115IJELS-102202589-AHistorical.pdf
Buddhism was no longer the dominant religious force it had been earlier; it coexisted with Brahmanical traditions and was increasingly challenged socially and politically, but continued to influence education and ethical thought within Indian society. According to Xuanzang (the Chinese Buddhist monk who stayed in Nalanda around 633 and recorded the reality of India at that time), there were many brahmanic centres, and some monasteries had only a few monks. By this time, the Gupta Empire had already collapsed.
Xuanzang's Record of the Western Regions.
“There are about 100 convents in this country and some 6000 priests. They mostly study the rules of the Great Vehicle. The stupas and sangharamas are of an imposing height, and are built on high level spots, from which they may be seen on every side, shining in their grandeur (parity). There are some ten temples of the Devas, and 1000 or so of heretics (diferent ways of religion); there are naked ascetics, and others who cover themselves with ashes, and some who make chaplets of bones, which they wear as crowns on their heads.”
“At present the number of priests is about 100; so irregular are they morning and night in their duties that it is hard to tell saints from sinners.”
Full text of "The great Tang Dynasty record of the western Regions"
“Since ancient times masters who wrote commentaries and theoretical treatises in India, such as Narayanadeva, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Dharmatrata, Manoratha, Par$va, and so on, have been born in this country. There were more than a thousand monasteries but they are now dilapidated and deserted, in desolate condition. Most of the stupas are also in ruins. There are about a hundred deva temples inhabited by various heretics.
Buddhist monks traveled East as pilgrims.
#Shanker Thapa, Ph.D.
View of Indian Savants, Historical Silk Road and Exodus of Buddhism to China
“Buddhism started cultural exchange with China in the 1st century CE with the travel of missionary monks towards the Northern countries. The date of first contact of China to Buddhism has been assumed as 2 BCE. The first monks were the Tokharians. Since then a large number of monks from Central Asian region (Parthia, Sogdian, Kuchean) and South Asia [India] visited China for missionary purposes. Similarly, hundreds of Chinese monks made pilgrimages in India in the ancient and the medieval times. It has been the main aspect of cultural exchange between India and China.”
After the collapse of the Gupta Empire, new patrons for Indian monastic knowledge emerged primarily from regional and local powers rather than a centralized imperial authority. The Pala empire (8th–12th century CE) was a new patron of Buddhism and led to the expansion of Indian cultural influence beyond its borders, reaching Tibet and Southeast Asia.
#Dr. Manoj Kumar. The Enduring Legacy Of The Pala Empire: A Renaissance Of Culture, Knowledge, And Heritage
https://www.granthaalayahpublication.org/Arts-Journal/ShodhKosh/article/view/4419/3991
Pala dynasty | Indian Empire, Buddhist Monarchs, Bengal Region | Britannica.
Northern Hun invasions leave many Buddhist monasteries in ruins.
Mihirakula, second and final Huna (Hun) king of India, (502-530 CE) was a persecutor of Buddhism.
During his reign, over one thousand Buddhist monasteries throughout Gandhara are said to have been destroyed.
Mihirakula | Indian Emperor, Conqueror, Warrior | Britannica.
https://archive.org/details/empireofsteppes00grou/page/70/mode/2up
https://books.google.de/books?id=_3O7q7cU7k0C&pg=PA249&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Xuanzang (around 630) reported that Buddhism had drastically declined in India, and that most of the monasteries were deserted and left in ruins.
Full text of "The great Tang Dynasty record of the western Regions".
#Grousset, René, 1885-1952. The empire of the steppes; a history of central Asia
https://archive.org/details/empireofsteppes00grou/page/70/mode/2up
Monasteries were abandoned at the beginning of the second millenia.
#Fogelin, Lars, 'The Consolidation and Collapse of Monastic Buddhism: c. 600–1400 ce', An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism (New York, 2015; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Mar. 2015)
The Consolidation and Collapse of Monastic Buddhism: c. 600–1400 ce.
Invasions of the Indian subcontinent between 1197 and 1206 (CE) led by Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji, caused mass flight and massacres of monks, most notably the destruction of Nalanda.
#Hartmut Scharfe. Handbook of Oriental Studies, Volumen 16
https://books.google.de/books?id=7s19sZFRxCUC&pg=PA150&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
ANCIENT NALANDA UNIVERSITY’S RUINS | District Nalanda, Government of Bihar | India.
#Anand Singh. Destruction' and 'Decline' of Nālandā Mahāvihāra: Prejudices and Praxis
'Destruction' and 'Decline' of Nālandā Mahāvihāra: Prejudices and Praxis
Beyond the Himalayas, in China, a single woman is watching and waiting. She knows new cultural currents are coming and she intends to ride them.
Trade fuels prosperity across the subcontinent. By the 4th century, most of it is ruled by the Gupta Empire. Wealth flows into art and science fueling a boom in centers of learning. Among them rises Nalanda, the elite MIT of ancient India. 10,000 monks live and study there, crowned by a vast nine-storey library known as the Sea of Jewels.
India begins to build one of the richest mathematical traditions on Earth. Scholars start writing nine numerical symbols in a radically new way. A digit’s position now defines its value. Around 628, the mathematician Brahmagupta takes on a revolutionary idea. He defines zero, lays out its rules and gives it real power. Suddenly, any number, no matter how big, can be expressed with just ten symbols. They call the new number sunya - the void. It draws directly from the Buddhist idea that emptiness is not absence but something meaningful.
#William Darymple: The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, 2024
“Many of these advances took place under the rule of one of India's most celebrated dynasties, the Guptas, who presided over large swathes of the Gangetic plain of north India from the early fourth to the late sixth century CE. This was a moment of supreme self-confidence in Indian civilisation, when its arts, philosophy and learning were most widely admired."
By the 7th century, Buddhism is still tightly linked to scholars and new ideas but has faded from everyday life. The Gupta Empire backs Hinduism instead, which celebrates warrior kingship at a time of northern Hun invasions that leave many Buddhist monasteries in ruins.
#Martin Lehnert, ‘Tantric Threads between India and China’,in Heirman and Bumbacher (eds), The Spread of Buddhism
#Anirudh Kanisetti, Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas (New Delhi, 2022)
#Lars Fogelin, An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism (Oxford, 2015)
So Buddhist communities pack their manuscripts and flee, drawn by new patrons for Indian monastic knowledge.
#Xuanzang, The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions, trans. Li Rongxi (Berkeley, 1996), p. 62.
In China, Indian monks and scholars help the first and only female emperor, Wu Zetian, to rise to power.
Monasteries flourish throughout the empire and Indian culture comes into fashion. For more than a decade, Buddhism even becomes a state religion.
#Stanley Weinstein, ‘Buddhism under the T’ang,’ Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2008).
#Harry Rothschild, Emperor Wu Zhao and her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities and Dynastic Mothers, Columbia University Press (New York, 2015)
South of China, across the Bay of Bengal, Buddhism is absorbed into the local culture. Stone temples rise, while religious texts and literature take shape in Sanskrit. Across Southeast Asia, local traditions are blended with Indian culture, creating a vast and powerful Indosphere of influence.
But the final expansion of Indian ideas turns west. From the 7th century, Arab and Persian merchants expanded the Indian Ocean routes, linking South Asia and the Middle East by sea. Over the next century these networks converge in Bagdad, the heart of the Abbasid Caliphate – and what travels there is not faith or culture, but something more practical.
4: The Journey of Numbers
In the 8th century, a young Islamic world stands between Europe and India. From Baghdad, a family of administrators called the Barmakids helps run the caliphate. Their bloodline runs from Buddhist scholars who once led Central Asia’s greatest monastery. And that legacy doesn’t vanish, even embedded in a different culture.
The Barmakids where a family of rulers and governors of the 7th century in Baghdad under the Abbasid Dinasty. They have ancestor roots in the administrators of the Buddhist monastery “New Monastery” or “Nava Vihāra” located in northern Afghanistan, and are considered to have done a series of translations of texts from Sanskrit to Arab.
#van Bladel, Kevin (2011). "The Bactrian Background of the Barmakids". In Akasoy, A.; Burnett, C.; Yoeli-Tlalim, R. (eds.). Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes. London: Ashgate. pp. 43–88.
(PDF) The Bactrian Background of the Barmakids
“This study shows that one particular family was responsible for a substantial number of these early Arabic translations of Sanskrit works, indeed almost all of them, and moreover that their background in Tokharistan, a country whose cuture and history are increasingly coming to light through new discoveries, explains their interest in Sanskrit learning. The Barmakid family is fairly well known to historians. They include some of the most powerful secretaries and governors under the Abbasid dynasty during its first half-century (750-803).”
They establish the House of Wisdom, designed to rival India’s Nalanda. By commissioning translations and gathering manuscripts, the Barmakids fill libraries with Indian texts. First paper mills follow, enabling mass manuscript production. Over the next two centuries, Arab scholars translate, copy and carry Indian knowledge west toward the far edge of the Arab world. When the manuscripts reach Spain, Europe is deep in the Middle Ages.
The House of Wisdom was not only a centre for academic exchange, but also acted as a translation centre, an education centre and a resource centre, among other roles, and drove the scientific and cultural progress of the period.
# CaiyanWang. 2024. The House of Wisdom: Intellectual Achievements of the Abbasid Caliphate
View of The House of Wisdom: Intellectual Achievements of the Abbasid Caliphate
“The House of Wisdom in the capital, Baghdad, was at the heart of the intellectual boom of the age, not only as a library but also as a centre of cultural exchange, attracting scholars from all over the world to engage in intellectual exchanges such as translations, debates and research. The rulers of that era, particularly Caliph Al-Ma’mun, exhibited significant support for scientific and scholarly endeavours, thereby fostering the advancement of the House of Wisdom. The House of Wisdom, meanwhile, developed into a centre of knowledge that led to the development of science and culture at the time, driven by a combination of political, economic and socio-cultural values.“
The Arab World in the 8th century covered parts of the world from southern Spain to the borders of India.
“From the 7th century to the following one or two hundred years, the Arabs initially established a world-wide empire spanning Asia, Africa and Europe from the Spanish Pyrenees in the west to the western borders of Datang and the Sindh region of India in the east - the Arabian Empire. The Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 AD) was the second hereditary dynasty of the Arabian Empire, an era of unprecedented scientific and cultural prosperity.”
Indian scriptures were translated here into Arab.
Baghdad's House of Wisdom: Uniting East and West to pursue knowledge.
“The Abbasid caliphs’ appetite for knowledge was such that an entire body of classical scientific literature - including works by Aristotle, the Greek physician Galen and the Indian surgeon Sushruta - was translated into Arabic, thanks to the House of Wisdom.”
One of the most important foundations built during the Fatimid period was the construction of Dar al-Hikmah (The house of wisdom) or Dar al-'Ilm (house of knowledge), founded by al-Hakim in 1005 AD as a waqf-based library, center and spread of extreme Shi’ite teachings.
# Abdillah Arif Nasution, et al. The House of Wisdom as a Library and Center of Knowledge
The House of Wisdom as a Library and Center of Knowledge
“It was during this time of Makmun that science and intellectuals reached their peak. At this time, Baitul Hikmah was used more advanced, namely as a storage place for ancient books obtained from Persia, Byzantium, even Ethiopia, and India. In this institution, al-Ma’mun employs Muhammad ibn Musa al-Hawarizmi, an expert in al-gebra and astronomy and one of the great teachers at Baitul Hikmah. Other Persians were also employed at Baitul Hikmah. At that time the director of Baitul Hikmah was Sahl Ibn Harun. Under the rule of al-Ma’mun, Baitul Hikmah functioned as a library and as a center for astronomical and mathematical study and research activities. In 832 AD, al-Ma’mun made Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad the first academy, complete with binoculars, a library, and a translation institute. The first head of this academy was Yahya ibn Musawaih (777-857), a student of Gibril ibn Bakhtisyu, then Hunain ibn Ishaq, Yahya’s student, was appointed as the second chairman (Mahmud Yunus, 2008).”
Knowledge from the House of Knowledge reached medieval Europe primarily through a series of intercultural exchanges involving translation, trade, and conquest. Key routes included the translation movement in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) and Sicily, where Arabic texts on science, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy were translated into Latin by scholars and translators.
# Habibullah Haqparast et al.
“The scientific accomplishments of Muslims profoundly influenced the Renaissance and the awakening of Europe. At a time when reason and knowledge were confined by the Church, it was Muslim scientists who not only translated the science and philosophy of the Greeks into Arabic but also preserved, developed, and expanded these intellectual pursuits. Following the Crusades, Muslim knowledge and technology permeated the Western world through interactions in Spain, Sicily, and Italy involving merchants, soldiers, and translators, laying the groundwork for the European Renaissance and intellectual awakening.”
#Darek Hans. The Golden Age of Islam and Its Impact on European Technology: A Historical Analysis
“...various technological innovations, such as advancements in mathematics, astronomy, engineering, and medicine, originated from the Islamic world and were instrumental in European technological progress. The study highlights specific instances of knowledge transfer, such as through the translation movement in Al-Andalus and the Crusades, which introduced Europe to a wealth of Islamic scholarly works and inventions.“
The next centuries see Europe shaped by growing kingdoms, population growth and a hunger for knowledge. But merchants still struggle through trade with clunky abacuses and every multiplication is a slow-motion disaster with Roman numerals. Until now, Indian maths lives mostly in monasteries and early universities but doesn’t reach the street. But change is on the way.
Spanish catholic monks in the 9th century wrote the Codex Vigilanus, one of the earliest records of arabic numerals (without the indian zero still), in the western world.
#GEORGES IFRAH. From One to Zero_ A Universal History of Numbers
(PDF) From One to Zero_ A Universal History of Numbers-
“The earliest known European manuscript containing the first nine Hindu-Arabic numerals is the Codex Vigilanus, dating from 976.”
# GEORGES IFRAH.The universal history of numbers. p.362
https://archive.org/details/universalhistory0000ifra_y2b9/page/n3/mode/2up?q=Vigilanus
But mathematical calculations were still rudimentary, limited and mostly done by scholars and monks, and the roman abacus was widespread in medieval Europe.
#GEORGES IFRAH. From One to Zero_ A Universal History of Numbers. p.512
(PDF) From One to Zero_ A Universal History of Numbers-
“Practical arithmetic was essentially limited to writing numbers in Roman numerals (which did not permit written computation and were used only for noting the results of
computation done by concrete means), the system of finger counting transmitted notably by Isidore of Seville (d. 636) and the Venerable Bede (d. 735), and the use of the Roman abacus.”
Multiplication was a real complicated process with the roman abacus.
# GEORGES IFRAH.The universal history of numbers. p.122-123 (?)
https://archive.org/details/universalhistory0000ifra_y2b9/page/n3/mode/2up?q=Vigilanus
“Let us take the example of multiplying 720 by 62 on the simplified Roman abacus. We begin by forming the multiplicand, 720, and the mul-tiplier, 62, as shown in figure 8-6A. Next, by the 7 of the multiplicand (which has the value of 700), we multiply the 6 of the multiplier (value of 60); we find 42,000 and we now place two counters in the fourth
column and four in the fifth (fig. 8-6B). By the 7 of the multiplicand (which still has the value of 700), we multiply the 2 of the multiplier and indicate the result, 1400, on the abacus by placing four counters in the third column and one in the fourth (fig. 8-6C), then we eliminate the 7 of the multiplicand. Next we multiply the 6 of the
multiplier (value of 60) by the 2 of the multiplicand (value of 20) and indicate the result, 1200, on the abacus by placing two counters in the third column and one in the fourth (fig. 8-6D). We multiply the 2 of the multiplier by the 2 of the multiplicand (value of 20) and place four counters in the second column (fig. 8-6E). Finally, by reducing the counters we obtain the result of multiplying 720 by 62: 44,640 (fig. 8-6F).”
Around the 9th and 10th century, several monks exchanged and copied books between Muslim Spain and Italy.
# THOMAS FREUDENHAMMER. 2021 Gerbert of Aurillac and the Transmission of Arabic Numerals to Europe - Gerbert von Aurillac und die Übermittlung der arabischen Ziffern nach Europa.
“Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) was the first one to use the Arabic numerals in Western Europe.55 While Bernelinus still recorded these numbers with the Tironian replacement for “3”, the genuine Arabic “3” was already used on several abacus boards and in the treatise “Geometria II”. Most likely, the complete series of Arabic numbers had been found among Gerbert’s private notes after his death in 1003. In the aftermath, Gerbert’s Tironian “3” had gradually become obsolete and was eventually replaced with the Arabic “3” in later copies of Bernelinus’ “Liber abaci”. Gerbert had received his information about the Arabic numbers through a transmission from Muslim Spain.”
In 1225, Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, arrives in Pisa. He is part ruler, part nerd, part showman. He speaks five languages, debates math and philosophy with Arab scholars and thinkers of every kind. Muslim bodyguards in turbans flank him, followed by a procession of exotic animals and wagons stacked with manuscripts. To some in Europe, his open mind is deeply unsettling.
Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor, carried with him a parade of exotic animals, books and birds to his visits around italy.
#Abulafia, David. Frederick II : a medieval emperor. p.254
https://archive.org/details/frederickiimedie0000abul/page/254/mode/2up?q=pisa
Frederick was famous for processions to welcome guest or impress enemies.
#Jeff Bowersox, Astrid Khoo, and Alexia Yates.
Frederick II impresses with his processions (ca. 1230s) – Black Central Europe.
Frederick II had muslim friends and guards, which raised discontent among the clergy.
# First Council of Lyons - 1245 A.D.
“he is joined in odious friendship with the Saracens; several times he has sent envoys and gifts to them, and receives the like from them in return with expressions of honour and welcome; he embraces their rites; he openly keeps them with him in his daily services; and, following their customs, he does not blush to appoint as guards, for his wives descended from royal stock, eunuchs whom it is seriously said he has had castrated.”
He could speak Italian, Greek, Latin, German and Arabic.
#Abulafia, David. Frederick II : a medieval emperor. p.108
https://archive.org/details/frederickiimedie0000abul/page/108/mode/2up?q=languages
He’s here to meet Fibonacci, the mathematician who has just written The Book of Calculation on the nine Indian numerals and the strange new symbol the Arabs call zephir. Frederick encourages him to expand the book, transforming abstract knowledge into practical tools for merchants. It’s an instant bestseller. It shows how to convert currencies, calculate profit and interest but mostly replace the abacus with pencil and paper. Indian numerals spread across Europe, adopted by bankers funding explorers and voyages.
Leonardo de Pisa (Fibonacci) wrote Liber Abaci in 1202, and revised it in 1228. He offered a copy to Frederick II as a gift around 1226, and kept correspondence with selected members of Frederick’s court.
The second edition of the book of Fibonacci was dedicated to Frederick II.
#Jens Høyrup. Peeping into Fibonacci’s Study Room
https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/sites/default/files/P510.pdf
“The text following after the prologue, however, is addressed to vestra maiestate, gloriosissime princeps Frederice, that is, once again to the Emperor.”
“Given the previously strained relation between the Emperor and Pisa, it seems likely that the gift was made not too long before Frederick’s stay in Pisa in 1226.”
Liber Abaci is one of the most important books on mathematics of the
Middle Ages. Its effect was enormous in disseminating the Hindu number system and the methods of algebra throughout Europe.
#Translated with Notes by Laurence Sigler. 2002. Fibonacci's Liber Abaci. A Translation into Modern English of Leonardo Pisano's Book of Calculation
https://www.mifami.org/eLibrary/Fibonacci-LiberAbaci-QuadClass-2pp.pdf
“He (Fibonacci) developed contacts with scientists throughout the Mediterranean world. He became proficient in Euclid's Elements, and the Greek mathematical method of definition, theorem, and proof. He learned from the Arabic scientists the Hindu numbers and their place system, and the algorithms for the arithmetic operations. He also learned the method of algebra principally found in the work of al-KhwarizmI [K]. Through his study and travel and learned disputations with world scientists, he became a very superior creative mathematician. He participated in the academic court of Frederick II who sought out and recognized great scholars of the thirteenth century. Leonardo
with his scientific knowledge saw clearly the advantages of the useful mathematics known to the Muslim scientists, principally their Hindu numerals and decimal place system, their calculating algorithms, and their algebra. Knowledge of the Hindu numerals began to reach Europe in the second half of the tenth century through the Arabs by way of Spain, however their usage was still not a general practice at Leonardo's time. Leonardo resolved to write his encyclopedic work, Liber abaci, to bring to the Italian people the world's best mathematics in a usable form.”
Liber Abaci not only introduced the zero (zephir) to the numerical system, but includes much of the known mathematics of the thirteenth century on arithmetic, algebra, and problem solving.
#Translated with Notes by Laurence Sigler. 2002. Fibonacci's Liber Abaci. A Translation into Modern English of Leonardo Pisano's Book of Calculation
https://www.mifami.org/eLibrary/Fibonacci-LiberAbaci-QuadClass-2pp.pdf
“In addition to teaching all of the necessary methods of arithmetic and algebra, Leonardo includes in Liber abaci a wealth of applications of mathematics to all kinds of situations in business and trade, conversion of units of money, weight, and content, methods of barter, business partnerships and allocation of profit, alloying of money, investment of money, simple and compound interest. The problems on trade give valuable insight into the mediaeval world.”
Liber Abaci was the first book to introduce hindu-arabian numerals including Zero to normal people in Europe, and inspired other books and the advances in science and accounting of the following centuries.
#Translated with Notes by Laurence Sigler. 2002. Fibonacci's Liber Abaci. A Translation into Modern English of Leonardo Pisano's Book of Calculation. Chapter 1, p.17
https://www.mifami.org/eLibrary/Fibonacci-LiberAbaci-QuadClass-2pp.pdf
“The nine Indian figures are:
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 which the Arabs call zephir any number whatsoever is written...“
#Keith Devlin. MAA. 2019
How double-entry bookkeeping changed the world – Mathematical Association of America.
“But there is a reason why people hardly ever give any thought to just how revolutionary, in their time, were numbers (and the associated innovation of money), arithmetic, the Hindu-Arabic representation, the classical arithmetic algorithms, and algebra. Each of those innovations changed human life in such fundamental ways that, once humanity had them we incorporated them (and the products and activities they brought in) into our daily lives to such an extent that we no longer gave them any more thought. Their fundamental role became no more remarkable than the presence of air and water.”
# Keith Devlin. The Man of Numbers. Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution
https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-284/page/n13/mode/2up?q=abacus
“Prior to the thirteenth century, however, the only Europeans who were aware of the system were, by and large, scholars, who used it solely to do mathematics. Traders recorded their numerical data using Roman numerals and performed calculations either by a fairly elaborate and widely used fingers procedure or with a mechanical abacus. That state of affairs started to change soon after 1202, the year a young Italian man, Leonardo of Pisa— the man whom a historian many centuries later would dub Fibonacci ’ — completed the first general purpose arithmetic book in the West, Liber abbaci, that explained the “new” methods in terms understandable to ordinary people (tradesmen and businessmen as well as schoolchildren). While other lineages can be traced, Leonardo’s influence, through Liber abbaci, was by far the most significant and shaped the development of modern western Europe.”
Bankers were flourishing in the 12th century, and the new mathematics. The introduction of the hindu-arabic numerals enabled more efficient and accurate calculations essential for commerce, such as currency conversion, profit allocation, interest computation, and record-keeping, which were critical for expanding trade and economic activity in medieval Italy and beyond, specially among merchants of the time.
#Giovanni Patriarca. A Pedagogical Legacy? Abacus Tradition And Surprising Connections. From The Liber Abaci (1202) To The Economic Education In Early Modern Period
“Fibonacci’s style and contents initiated a pedagogical tradition of masters with their private
educational institutions aimed especially at the merchant class.”
# Keith Devlin. The Man of Numbers. Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution p.31
https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-284/page/n13/mode/2up?q=abacus
“New financial institutions — banks — emerged during the twelfth century, growing in a few short decades from individual entrepreneurs who traveled around the country to the markets and trading fairs, carrying sacks of silver coins, to organized, and invariably wealthy, limited-liability collectives with fixed premises. In the early days, the roaming financiers had laid out their coins on wooden benches or banks — the Latin term was banca — so people started to call them “bankers”. By Leonardo’s day, the banks offered loans and issued letters of credit* Groups of businesspeople and merchants would join forces and pool their resources to form limited-liability companies.”
Leonardo Fibonacci is famous for the “Fibonacci sequence of numbers”, but the impact of Liber Abaci in the economy of the time had a bigger impact.
# William N. Goetzmann. 2004. FIBONACCI AND THE FINANCIAL REVOLUTION
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10352/w10352.pdf
“Evidence in Leonardo's Liber Abaci (1202) suggests that he was the first to develop
present value analysis for comparing the economic value of alternative contractual cash flows. He also developed a general method for expressing investment returns, and solved a wide range of complex interest rate problems. The paper argues that his advances in the mathematics of finance were stimulated by the commercial revolution in the Mediterranean during his lifetime, and in turn, his discoveries significantly influenced the evolution of capitalist enterprise and public finance in Europe in the centuries that followed. Fibonacci's discount rates were more culturally influential than his famous series.”
But as Indian mathematics spreads west, its homeland fell apart. Turkic armies sweep through northern India. Nalanda is destroyed and its great library burned to ash. Old trade routes collapse, scholars scatter and waves of Persian migrations reshape the north. At court, Sanskrit fades, now replaced by Persian. By the 13th century, the language that carried a thousand years of knowledge begins to slowly disappear from centers of power.
Turkish troops invaded India between the 12th and 13th century.
Turkish Invasion in India - Medieval India History Notes.
“With the rise of the Turks in Central Asia and subsequent invasions of India in the 11th and 12th centuries, they were able to gain a foothold on the northwestern frontiers. Islam could enter India as a result of the plundering raids of Mahmud Ghazni and Muizzuddin Mohammad Ghor. Invasion by Muslim Turks began in the early 11th century with mere plunder and loot by Mahmud Ghazni. It culminated in the late 12th century with the establishment of India's first Muslim state by Muizzuddin Mohammad Ghori.”
“The significant and permanent military movement of Muslims into northern India, however, dates from the late 12th century and was carried out by a Turkic dynasty that arose indirectly from the ruins of the Abbasid caliphate. The road to conquest was prepared by Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna (now Ghaznī, Afghanistan), who conducted more than 20 raids into north India between 1001 and 1027 and established in the Punjab the easternmost province of his large but short-lived empire. Maḥmūd’s raids, though militarily successful, primarily had as their object taking plunder rather than conquering territory.”
“Quṭb al-Dīn displaced the Chauhan chief and made his headquarters at Delhi in 1193, when he began a campaign of expansion. By 1202 he was in control of Varanasi, Badaun, Kannauj, and Kalinjar.
In the meantime, an obscure adventurer, Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī of the Ghūrid army, conquered Nadia, the capital of the Sena kings of Bengal (1202). Within two years Bakhtiyār embarked on a campaign to conquer Tibet in order to plunder the treasure of its Buddhist monasteries, and in 1206 he attacked Kamarupa (Assam) to gain control of Bengal’s traditional trade route leading to Southeast Asian gold and silver mines.”
Buddhist Monasteries were destroyed under turkish invasions in northern India.
# Mustafa Sareer. 2012. Initial Conquest of India by Turks and Their Slaves p5-6
Initial Conquest of India by Turks and Their Slaves
“The opening of the Thirteenth century saw the Turkish forces engaged against the last surviving imperial Rajputs of Bundelkhand (Jejakabhukti) and in 599/1202 Turks attacked Kalinjar the military capital of Paramardideva and conquered it and also its principal forts Mahoba and Khajuraho were then occupied and grouped into a military division under the command of Hasan Arnal. Badaun appears to have been the starting point for further conquests, first in Awadh, and then in Bihar and Bengal, undertaken by Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar (Ikhtiyaruddin) Muhammad Bakhtiyar. A Khaliji troop under the Malik Husammuddin Ughulbak, the commander of Banaras and Awadh division. Proceeding into Magadha, region east of the Karamanasa river he initiated raids into Maner and Bihar and obtained ample resources. Bakhtiyar obtained Aibak‟s commendation for a final attack on the monastery town which must have been Uddandapura Juzjani describes the whole of this fortress and city as a vihara, which he explains, is a madrasa‟ or „place of learning in the Hindwi Language‟ inhabited largely by Shaven-headed brahmans‟, that is by Buddhist monks, which were all slain. Tibetan author of the early seventeenth century, Tarantha, in his „History of Buddhism in India‟, writes that the Stag-gzigs‟, „Turks‟ „overran the whole of Magadha and massacred many ordained monks in Uddandapura. In the account of the Tibetan pilgrim Dharmasvamin, who visited eastern India in the years 1234-36, the vihara of Uddandapura is mentioned twice as the residence of a Turushka military commander.hammad bin Bakhtiyar, having received a robe of honour for his earlier victory from Aibak, again set out for Bihar and then to Nadiya or as Minjah calls it „Nodia‟, a Sena capital, which he took possession of in May 1204, finally driving Lakhsmana Sena to Sankanat (what Juzjani refers to as Sankakot not far from Vikramapura, where Lakshmana Sena‟s descendants are archeologically recorded to have ruled for the next three generations) and Bang, where the latters reign soon came to an end.Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar left Nadiya in desolution, despatching a large part of its accumulated treasure to Aibak, and transferring the seat of Muslim government to Lakhnauti, a northern Sena capital on the Ganges near Gaur in Maldah district. “
Ikhtar-ud-Dīn Muḥammad-ibn-Bakhtiar Khaljī (twelfth century), was a Turkish sultan who conquered Bihar, and is believed to have sacked Nalanda and other monasteries.
Deoghar | Temple City, Hindu Pilgrimage, Jharkhand | Britannica.
Turkish Raiders Destroy Buddhist University at Nalanda | History | Research Starters.
“When the Turkish raids came in 1193, Nalanda was still a highly influential center of learning. It had been under the patronage of the Pāla emperors, who ruled northeastern India from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. However, the Turks did not spare it. Thousands of monks were killed, and the library and other buildings were burned to the ground. The majestic ruins have been excavated and can still be seen today. Other Buddhist universities, such as Vikramasila, suffered the same fate as Nalanda.
Turkish raids continued into the thirteenth century. In 1235, according to an eyewitness report from Dharmasvamin, a Tibetan pilgrim, three hundred Turkish soldiers sacked what little remained of Nalanda. Seventy scholars were forced to flee.”
The sanskrit language remained important, although it suffered from the political situation during the Delhi Sultanate.
#Pollock. 2006. Language of the Gods. p478
https://sheldonpollock.org/archive/pollock_language_2006.pdf
“In the South Asian case there is no reason to believe that Sanskrit communicative competence diminished to any appreciable extent anywhere, even including Southeast Asia (with the exception of Cambodia after the Angkor polity). This was certainly the case for south India during the entire period considered here (800–1500), and it seems to have been largely true for north India as well. Undoubtedly Sanskrit literary culture in the north was challenged by various new or newly intensified sociopolitical developments from about the twelfth to the fifteenth century, such as civil chaos in Kashmir, or disruptions in traditional patronage networks in places like
K1nyakubja and V1r1âasE during the consolidation of the Sultanate.”
The Delhi Sultanate
# Riazul Islam and C. E. Bosworth. THE DELHI SULTANATE
#RICHARD M. EATON. India in the Persianate Age. 1000– 1765
India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765 9780520974234 - DOKUMEN.PUB
Between the 11th and 18th century in India, there was an intense movement across the Indian subcontinent carrying people, knowledge and culture.
#RICHARD M. EATON. India in the Persianate Age. p 380
India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765 9780520974234 - DOKUMEN.PUB
“Pathways leading to and across the subcontinent have carried a wide range of global flows, while migrating populations brought or took away diverse cultural traditions embracing statecraft, architecture, warfare, cuisine, religion and much more. Although some of these flows had very deep
roots in time, they all moved with a quickening pace between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, the period of this book’s concern.
As a subset of these transregional flows, Persian texts and Persian speakers circulated through West, Central and South Asia from the eleventh century in expanding and increasingly dense networks. Artisans, mercenaries, Sufi shaikhs, slaves, poets, scholars, adventurers, diplomats, migrants, pilgrims and merchants all travelled along the
maritime and overland routes that both undergirded and constituted the Persianate world. For most of these peoples, whatever their ethnic background or geographical origin, facility in Persian was an acquired skill. Yet even rudimentary acquaintance with the language exposed them to a stable canon of Persian texts, together with the sensibilities
and norms of sociability they elaborated.”
When a Portuguese ship reaches India in 1498, history closes a cruel loop. India had given Europe the mathematical tools that the West now weaponizes. Navigation uses them to open new sea routes, allowing the Portuguese to violently attack the spice trade. Finance takes over, enabling wealthy London merchants to run the East India Company and turn India into a balance sheet. Other European powers follow and India is gripped tightly within their claws for nearly five centuries.
Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on May 20th, 1498.
Vasco da Gama | Biography, Achievements, Route, Map, Significance, & Facts | Britannica.
“After a 23-day run across the Indian Ocean, the Ghats Mountains of India were sighted, and Calicut was reached on May 20. There da Gama erected a padrão to prove he had reached India.”
#José Francisco Rodrigues. Portuguese mathematical typography: A brief overview from 1496 until 1987
https://web.archive.org/web/20220517214954id_/https://ems.press/content/serial-article-files/17939
Vasco da Gama used mathematical calculations done in Muslim Spain around the thirteenth century to reach India by sea.
#José Francisco Rodrigues. Portuguese mathematical typography: A brief overview from 1496 until 1987
https://web.archive.org/web/20220517214954id_/https://ems.press/content/serial-article-files/17939
“The Almanach perpetuum is a landmark of the beginning of the culture of mathematical sciences in Portugal through the influence and use of the art and knowledge of navigation, namely in the first ocean voyages of Vasco da Gama to India and Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil.”
The Astronomical Navigation in Portugal in the Age of Discoveries
Vasco da Gama’s arrive to India ended in colonialism and the spice wars, and paradoxically, it was Indian Science that allowed him to travel in the first place.
#S. M. Ghazanfar. Vasco da Gama’s Voyages to India: Messianism,
Mercantilism, and Sacred Exploits. p15-40
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1259&context=jgi&utm
“The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama (1460-1524), was the first European to sail from Portugal to India. Accolades for this achievement have long obscured the messianic motivation for the 1498 voyage, “to invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and other enemies of Christ; to reduce them to perpetual slavery; to convert them to Christianity; [and] to acquire great wealth by force of arms from the Infidels,” as sanctified by various Papal Bulls, together called “the Doctrine of Discovery” (Dum Diversas, 1452; Romanus Pontifex, 1455; Inter Caetera, 1493). The other key motive in this enormous undertaking was to displace Arab control of the spice trade and establish, instead, Portuguese hegemony that eventually resulted in colonialism/imperialism. The main instrument in this effort was extreme violence, sanctioned by the Church, inflicted upon the natives, and predicated on the Portuguese Inquisition and earlier crusades.”
“Da Gama succeeded in his mission and thus began an era of eventual European domination through sea power and commerce, and 450 years of Portuguese colonialism that brought wealth and power to the Portuguese crown. As for the success, Hobson (2004) points out that “had it not been for the diffusion and assimilation of Eastern science as well as nautical technologies, Vasco da Gama would not even have got as far as the Cape let alone India. The Portuguese borrowing of Islamic science began in the twelfth
century, and was to an extent initiated by the royal family”
The East India Company was an English company formed for the exploitation of trade with East and Southeast Asia and India, stablished in 1600. Its influenced surpassed monopolistic economic trades and settled British imperialism in India from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century.
East India Company | History, John Company, Battle of Plassey, Definition, & Facts | Britannica.
“The company was formed to participate in the East Indian spice trade. That trade had been a monopoly of Spain and Portugal until England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) gave the English the chance to break the monopoly. Until 1612 the company conducted separate voyages, separately subscribed.”
European control of India began with the Portuguese arrival in 1498, led by Vasco da Gama. The British East India Company emerged in 1600 and gradually expanded its influence through trade and military conquest, gaining significant control after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which marked the start of British political dominance in India.
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, direct governance shifted from the East India Company to the British Crown, initiating the period known as the British Raj (1858–1947), characterized by centralized colonial administration and economic exploitation.
#Dan Paracka. Year of India: Introduction to the Special Issue in India: Globalization, Inclusion & Sustainability. Journal of Global Initiatives. Volume 13, Number 1, 2018
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1259&context=jgi&utm
“For approximately 200 years, the British controlled vast territories of the Indian subcontinent (East India company, 1765-1858; British Raj, 1858-1947).”
British raj | Empire, India, Impact, History, & Facts | Britannica.
Other European powers like the Dutch and French also had trading posts and limited territorial control during the 17th and 18th centuries but were eventually overshadowed by British supremacy.
# Iryna PETLENKO. 2025. India’s Colonial Experience: Chronology And Tools Of Colonial Rule
“...emergence of European interest in India (late XV – XVI centuries) and rivalry of European states for trade privileges in the Indian subcontinent; dominance of the East India Company (1600-1858) – having gained a monopoly in trade, the British East India Company gradually established military administrative control over a significant part of India turning into de facto colonial authorities; establishment of the British Raj (1858-1947) – after suppression of the Rebellion of 1857, the governance of India passed directly to the British Crown, which meant creation of a centralized colonial administration and strict control of the mother country until independence.”
This era ended with Indian independence in 1947, following decades of nationalist movements against colonial rule.
“India’s independence from England was the result of many generations of resistance, culminating in a series of large-scale independence movements from 1919 to the early 1940s led by Mahatma Gandhi.”
Universal Language
At its peak in the late 7th century, the Indian sphere of influence shaped nearly half of humanity. Carried by faith and trade, it embraced curiosity and tolerance. By improving everyday life, Indian culture spread by being both useful and beautiful, enriching every society it touched.
The legacy is still visible. Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, carries India in its name. China now has the largest Buddhist population on Earth. And the Buddhist temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia remains the largest religious structure ever built.
But the most enduring legacy is simpler. A way of counting and calculating, the closest thing humanity has to a universal language. The soft power of Indian knowledge never disappeared. It still helps us measure, understand and reshape reality itself.
At its peak in the late 7th century, Indian cultural influence extended widely across South and Southeast Asia, shaping the civilizations of several countries.
In Southeast Asia, countries such as Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, and parts of the Khmer and Thai regions absorbed Indian elements in religion (notably Hinduism and Buddhism), literature, art, architecture, and language scripts like Sanskrit and Pali.
# Prashant Dhage. Indic Elements in Laos, A Southeast Asian Country: A Historical Perspective
View of Indic Elements in Laos, A Southeast Asian Country: A Historical Perspective
“Over the centuries, various aspects of Indian culture have influenced the lives and civilizations of people living in South East Asia. From the second century onward, the principalities that emerged in the region witnessed the peaceful and non-political penetration of Indian culture. The local elite and people went through a selection and rejection process of Indian elements. Laos represented Indianized culture among South East Asian countries. Laotians have made significant advances in fields such as literature, religion, art, and architecture. Assimilation and diffusion occurred at all levels of society. Cultural elements from various parts of India merged to form local cultural forms. The remainder of the population, including Khmers and Thais, regard India as their primary source of cultural history and contemporary culture. Indic elements pervade their literature, which is written in Sanskrit and Pali scripts. Orissa temples influenced their temple architecture. Their devotion to the Ramayana, Jataka figures like Dadhivahana and Vimalaraja, and so on. It was not a case of Indians subduing Laos and imposing their culture. The Indian cultural superstructure was built on an indigenous foundation. Geographically it is far away from India but culture shortened the distance and made such a relation which can create a platform to fulfill the dream of the world is one family.”
#Sunil Pathak. Influence Of Indian Culture On Indonesia
https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/siginjai/article/view/38730/19500
“The relationship between India and the Indonesian archipelago has spanned thousands of years, reflecting a rich exchange of culture, religion and trade. Since ancient times, Indian traders have been in contact with the Indonesian archipelago, bringing withthem influential commodities and ideas, including Hinduism and Buddhism.“
# DUC, Tran Minh. The Impact Of Indian Culture On Vietnam From The Aspect Of Diplomatic Exchange And Cooperation. 2023
https://oapub.org/soc/index.php/EJPSS/article/view/1511/2088
“More than 2000 years ago, the Southeast Asian native culture class of Vietnam, alongside the Chinese cultural mainstream, is the bold mark of Indian culture. “
#Nguyen Phuong Lan, PhD. Indian Buddhist Heritage in Vietnamese Culture – A Sustainable Basis of Vietnam - India Relations
https://ejtas.com/index.php/journal/article/view/1640/1093
Indian cultural influence on the Roman Empire and the Middle East was primarily indirect and mediated through trade and exchange. The Roman Empire had access to Indian goods, especially spices, through the Indian Ocean trade network, which connected India with Egypt, Arabia, and beyond.
Project MUSE - Provincializing Rome: The Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism.
“In conquering Egypt, the Roman Empire secured direct access to the centuries-old Indian Ocean trade network that in Roman times brought together China, India, Southeast Asia, Parthia, Arabia, and Africa as well as the Roman Mediterranean.”