[INDOLOGY] Once again on the origin of zero: the date of the Bakhshali manuscript (or manuscripts?)

Sun Sep 17 20:50:57 UTC 2017

great news!  I've had similar struggles to Camillo, and was sad that such a
fabulous tool was apparently out of reach.

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
,
University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:

sas.ualberta.ca

On 16 September 2017 at 03:31, Oliver Hellwig via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear Camillo,
>
> I would not try too hard to get the executable of Indoskript to work. We
> (H. Falk and I) are currently preparing an web version of Indoskript, which
> will go online in the next months.
>
> Best, Oliver
>
> ---
> Oliver Hellwig, SFB 991, Universität Düsseldorf
>
> *From:* Walter Slaje <slaje at kabelmail.de>
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 16, 2017 11:03 AM
> *To:* Camillo Formigatti <camillo.formigatti at bodleian.ox.ac.uk>
> *Cc:* Andrea Acri <andrea.acri at ephe.sorbonne.fr> ; Indology List
> <indology at list.indology.info> ; Oliver Hellwig <hellwig7 at gmx.de>
> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] Once again on the origin of zero: the date of
> the Bakhshali manuscript (or manuscripts?)
>
>
> Dear Dr Formigatti,
>
> 
>
> thank you for your detailed and indeed very welcome elucidation!
>
> I think, however, there is a need to dispel a possible misunderstanding:
> The only umbrage I was taking at was the scientist’s zero discovery claim
> and the lack of any Indological expertise in this sensationalist broadcast,
> which would
> perhaps have 
> be
> en
> justified for the radiocarbon dating. It is reassuring to learn about the
> actual background of the whole undertaking, for which the research team
> deserves unreserved congratulations, and I would
> be 
> the last person not to applaud
>  to their efforts
> .
>
> 
>
> What you say about “the reason why Hayashi is not mentioned in the
> Guardian article–nor is any of us from the team (...) is that this is an
> article (...) written for the broader public”, invites one to think why a
> broader public and Indological knowledge should be seen as mutually
> exclusive?
>
>
> The technical problems with INDOSKRIPT you have pointed out, the advantage
> of which are its sets of paleographically comparable data, could only be
> satisfactorily answered by Oliver Hellwig, the programming mastermind
> behind INDOSKRIPT.
>
>
> A final remark on layers of birch-bark manuscripts: I have documented MSS,
> where damaged leaves of a text had been supplemented materially by single
> leaf layers of the same text taken from intact leaves of other MSS (see,
> e.g., my catalogue of the Viennese MSS collection, 1990, no. 42 (p. 91),
> no. 53 (p. 103), no. 60 (p. 11)). Such widespread practice would result in
> a complete text, however with textual overlapping from possibly different
> strands of transmission (!). While the material layering is still visually
> recognizable in the first generation of conflated texts of that kind, this
> would no longer be the case in the copies made by one scribal hand from
> this exemplar. If the process was carried on for centuries, only a
> philological analysis could uncover what lies beneath
> an apparently homogeneous surface.
>
>
> Perhaps the Bakshāli, too, is itself a product,
>  at the beginning or
> somewhere 
> in the middle
> ,
> of
> a 
> repeated process of material layer conflations
> 
> .
>
>
>
> Kindly regarding,
>
> WS
>
>
>
>
> 2017-09-16 1:39 GMT+02:00 Camillo Formigatti <camillo.formigatti at bodleian.
> ox.ac.uk>:
>
>> Dear Prof. Slaje,
>>
>> Many thanks for your reply to my message on the radiocarbon dating of the
>> Bakhshali manuscript, I was hoping to read your comments and opinions on
>> the results. I feel that I have to clarify some points and I hope that this
>> reply will help you at least a little bit to dissipate some of your
>> legitimate doubts. I also hope that you will forgive me if I might sound a
>> bit on the defensive, but I have spent the last months doubting myself the
>> results of the radiocarbon dating, only to have to slowly revise my
>> opinions and be more open to possibilities.
>>
>> I have greatly profited from your wonderful 1993 book on the Śāradā
>> script when I was still a PhD student working on Kashmirian manuscripts,
>> then when I was I cataloguing the Śāradā manuscripts in the Cambridge
>> collections, and more recently when I was completing a survey of the
>> birch-bark manuscripts in the Bodleian collections to assess their
>> conditions (I was surprised to find five uncatalogued birch-bark
>> manuscripts belonging to what I call the Leitner collection, which are
>> actually mentioned in the introduction of the catalogue by Winternitz and
>> Keith, but that had escaped my attention so far; anyway, this is yet
>> another story). I am fully aware that I am a beginner in the field of the
>> paleography of the Śāradā script. Moreover, I know very well that I am
>> certainly not the most qualified scholar who could assess the implications
>> of these results for the palaeography of North Indian scripts, and
>> certainly not at all for the history of Indian mathematics. Nevertheless, I
>> have been asked to assist during the whole project of radiocarbon dating
>> the Bakhshali manuscript in my role as the curator of the Sanskrit
>> manuscripts in the Bodleian Libraries. I have tried to do my best and to do
>> my homework properly, so to say, if you allow me this rather prosaic simile
>> with the job of school students. I have taken care of all Indological
>> aspects and implications of this project very closely since its outset. In
>> our team we are all well aware of Takao Hayashi's work on the Bakhshali, in
>> fact we have been in contact with him and Agathe Keller before the start of
>> the project, and the only reason why we haven't communicated the results to
>> them in advance and before the press release is because of decisions coming
>> from higher above us in the food chain (if you allow me again a prosaic
>> metaphor). In fact, I have read and used Hayashi's 1995 edition very
>> intensively in the last few months, alongside Kaye's first edition,
>> Hoernle's article, and several other articles and books on the topic of
>> zero and the history of mathematics in India (many thanks to Kim Plofker,
>> without her wonderful contributions to the history of Indian mathematics I
>> would have been lost), as well as Lore Sander's palaeographical studies,
>> your own 1993 book, and several other publications on the palaeography of
>> Indian scripts (obviously starting with the one by our great forefather
>> Georg Buehler). The reason why Hayashi is not mentioned in the Guardian
>> article–nor is any of us from the team, by the way, except for Prof. du
>> Sautoy–is that this is an article in a newspaper and hence written for the
>> broader public. As one of my Bodleian colleagues pointed out to me today
>> when I wrote to him that I was disappointed that none of us from the team
>> was even mentioned in the Guardian article (above all because two of us are
>> EU citizens, and I believe I don't need to say more): we cannot control
>> what the press chooses to do and publish. The Guardian was allowed the
>> exclusive on this news (together with the BBC) and provided with the names
>> of all members of the team that I mentioned in my first message. They chose
>> to interview and quote only Prof. du Sautoy and the Bodley's Librarian
>> Richard Ovenden, who both have a high profile and an own Wikipedia page. If
>> this is what Bodleian Communications thinks it's better to do to have a
>> wider impact on the broader public, well I can't certainly influence their
>> decision. I surely agree with you that it would have made a hell of a lot
>> more sense to interview Takao Hayashi and ask him his opinion, but we all
>> know how these things go, don't we?
>>
>> Finally, I am well aware of the existence of INDOSKRIPT and I have used
>> this wonderful tool before, but I am sorry to say that at the moment I do
>> not fully agree with the statement "The individual *akṣara*s of the
>> Bakshāli MS can be consulted in their extracted forms and [...] compared to
>> their paleographic environment *most conveniently* [italics mine] by
>> using the tools of INDOSKRIPT." The reason why I do not agree is merely
>> a technical one. I used to consult INDOSKRIPT regularly when I was running
>> a PC with Windows XP. When I switched to Linux/Ubuntu I then installed a
>> pirate copy of Windows XP on a Virtual Machine only to be able to use
>> INDOSKRIPT (this was back in 2007). Soon it turned out to be too taxing for
>> the RAM of my computer and also it was pretty cumbersome to switch from
>> Ubuntu, on which I was running Emacs for my work, to the VM to consult the
>> INDOSKRIPT database. When in 2011 in Cambridge I was given as project
>> laptop a MacPro, again I tried to install INDOSKRIPT, this time using the
>> Wine emulator program. Much to my dismay, this time INDOSKRIPT didn't start
>> at all. I did not want to install again a VM and install on it a Windows
>> system, because I did not have access to any pirate copy of Windows XP
>> (probably I could have easily downloaded one, I know) and I did not want to
>> buy Windows only to run INDOSKRIPT. I have just followed the link to the
>> INDOSKRIPT webpage that you provide and I cannot find any further
>> implementation of the INDOSKRIPT database to run it on a Linux or Mac OS X
>> system. If I am missing it, I kindly ask you to point me to it, as I
>> certainly do not want to reinvent the wheel and if I can easily install
>> this wonderful database on my Mac OS X or my Lubuntu machine to comfortably
>> compare the akṣaras of the Bakhshali manuscript, I will do it for sure,
>> instead of slaving to extract and modify akṣaras from the pictures of the
>> Bakhshali I have or from images of manuscripts I have downloaded from the
>> IDP website.
>>
>> (As a side note, I actually prefer to use the facsimile in Kaye's
>> edition, since we are not allowed to photograph the Bakhshali anymore due
>> to its poor condition and I have been told that when Hayashi asked
>> permission to use in his own edition the reproductions used for Kaye's
>> edition, it turned out that the original takes got lost, so the facsimile
>> in Hayashi's edition is based on photographs of the printed version of
>> Kaye's facsimile.)
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Camillo Formigatti
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Walter Slaje [slaje at kabelmail.de]
>> *Sent:* Friday, September 15, 2017 8:01 AM
>> *To:* Andrea Acri
>> *Cc:* Indology List
>> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] Once again on the origin of zero: the date of
>> the Bakhshali manuscript (or manuscripts?)
>>
>> I fully concur with what Dr Acri has to say in this matter. Moreover, the
>> initial statement of the interviewed mathematician „The most exciting thing
>> is that we’ve identified a zero“ is presumptuous, as the „identification“
>> claimed here is actually decade-long common Indological knowledge easily
>> traceable in the relevant literature on the subject. I wonder why no
>> Indologist with a profound disciplinary knowledge was asked to give
>> qualified statements.
>>
>>
>> A reproduction together with a transliteration of this famous manuscript
>> was brought to the public in 1995:
>>
>> Takao Hayashi, The Bakshali Manuscript. Groningen 1995.
>>
>>
>> The individual *akṣara*s of the Bakshāli MS can be consulted in their
>> extracted forms and, in the possible attempt of a fresh dating, compared to
>> their paleographic environment most conveniently by using the tools of
>> INDOSKRIPT (http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/falk/):
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> WS
>>
>> -----------------------------
>> Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
>> Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
>> D-99425 Weimar
>> Deutschland
>>
>> Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
>> studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et provecturum
>> non sordidi lucri causa nec ad vanam captandam gloriam,
>> sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua salus
>> humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
>> Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.
>>
>> 2017-09-15 2:41 GMT+02:00 Andrea Acri via INDOLOGY <
>> indology at list.indology.info>:
>>
>>> Dear Camillo
>>>
>>> thank you for sharing this news, and especially for your (in)valuable
>>> work on this most important document. Let me point out at the very outset
>>> that all I know about this manuscript derives from the Guardian article and
>>> Wikipedia (disclaimer: I have no access to a library right now!), so please
>>> forgive me for being so naive.
>>>
>>> If the manuscript (however fragmentary it may be) is thought to contain
>>> a single, unitary text, then the date of its copying (and/or composition?)
>>> must be the 9th-10th century. I fail to see what is so sensational about
>>> this apart from the fact that it shows how writing supports that were
>>> centuries older might have been (re)utilized. (By the way: is an
>>> analysis of the ink technically possible?). The earliest attestation of
>>> the written zero would still be the 8th-century Southeast Asian
>>> inscriptions (and not the Gwalior temple, as incorrectly reported in the
>>> article).
>>>
>>> But in your message, when you speak about different stratas and tables
>>> of ak.saras, you clearly imply that this/these manuscript(s) contain(s) a
>>> composite/heterogeneous text indeed, and that part of it might date back to
>>> the 3rd-4th century. May I ask you to anticipate/synthesize some of your
>>> key findings here, or at least clarify this point? And, what is the
>>> relationship between folios 16 and 17? Do all these folios contain the 0?
>>>
>>> Further: I'm not steeped in mathematics either, so I fail to grasp the
>>> full implications of this statement (especially the second sentence):
>>>
>>> "In the fragile document, zero does not yet feature as a number in its
>>> own right, but as a placeholder in a number system, just as the “0” in
>>> “101” indicates no tens. It features a problem to which the answer is zero,
>>> but here the answer is left blank".
>>>
>>> Hopefully some of our learned colleagues will be able to clarify this
>>> point.
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> Andrea Acri
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On 14 Sep 2017, at 17:15, Camillo Formigatti via INDOLOGY <
>>> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’m pleased to be finally able to share this exciting news with you:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/14/much-ado-abo
>>> ut-nothing-ancient-indian-text-contains-earliest-zero-symbol
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I imagine that some of you might probably raise their eyebrows after
>>> reading this article. The results came as a big surprise to us too, and to
>>> me were literally jaw-dropping. I realize that these results have several
>>> implications not only for the history of mathematics, but also for our
>>> field of study, and I know that the article in The Guardian surely doesn’t
>>> answer the many questions you might be asking yourselves now. I will try to
>>> briefly anticipate some of them.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The decision and implementation of radiocarbon dating the Bakhshali
>>> manuscript took several months of preparation on the part of the team of
>>> colleagues with which I collaborated. The team included colleagues from the
>>> Bodleian Libraries and other University of Oxford departments: David Howell
>>> (Bodleian Libraries’ Head of Heritage Science), Dr Gillian Evison (Head of
>>> the Bodleian Libraries' Oriental Section & Indian Institute Librarian),
>>> Virginia M Lladó-Buisán (Bodleian Libraries’ Head of Conservation and
>>> Collection Care), Dr David Chivall (Chemistry Laboratory Manager at the
>>> School of Archaeology of the University of Oxford), and Prof. Marcus du
>>> Sautoy (Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science
>>> and Professor of Mathematics at the Oxford University). We decided to take
>>> samples from three folios in order to be sure to have a sensible margin of
>>> certainty for the results. I chose folios 16, 17, and 33, and the analysis
>>> was conducted by Dr Chivall at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. The
>>> results of the calibrated age (95.4% confidence interval / cal AD) are as
>>> follows:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Folio 16:               224 (95.4%) 383calAD
>>>
>>> Folio 17:               680 (74.8%) 779calAD
>>>
>>> 790 (20.6%) 868calAD
>>>
>>> Folio 33:               885 (95.4%) 993calAD
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We did not expect such a big difference in the date range of the three
>>> folios. I am currently preparing an article in which I provide the
>>> background for the choice of these three specific folios, tables of all
>>> akṣaras from the three folios as an aid to assign the extant folios to the
>>> different strata of the manuscript (including selected aksaras of other
>>> dated and undated manuscripts in similar scripts for comparison), and a
>>> first palaeographical appraisal of the results.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Camillo
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dr Camillo A. Formigatti
>>>
>>> John Clay Sanskrit Librarian
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bodleian Libraries
>>>
>>> The Weston Library
>>>
>>> Broad Street, Oxford
>>>
>>> OX1 3BG
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Email: camillo.formigatti at bodleian.ox.ac.uk
>>>
>>> Tel. (office): 01865 <01%20865> (2)77208
>>> www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *GROW YOUR MIND*
>>>
>>> in Oxford University’s
>>>
>>> Gardens, Libraries and Museums
>>>
>>> www.mindgrowing.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> INDOLOGY mailing list
>>> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>>> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
>>> committee)
>>> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options
>>> or unsubscribe)
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> INDOLOGY mailing list
>>> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>>> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
>>> committee)
>>> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options
>>> or unsubscribe)
>>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20170917/58a7d0cd/attachment.htm>