Arabic numerals in its entry in the "Oxford English Dictionary", which helps to distinguish it from "Arabic numerals" as the Eastern Arabic numerals. Alternative names are Western Arabic numerals, Western numerals, Hindu–Arabic numerals and Unicode calls them digits. The decimal Hindu–Arabic numeral system with zero was developed in India by around AD 700. The development was gradual, spanning several centuries, but the decisive step was probably provided by Brahmagupta's formulation of zero as a number in AD 628. The system was revolutionary by including zero in positional notation, thereby limiting the number of individual digits to ten. It is considered an important
Sinhala numerals have a zero and they also did not have zero concept holder. They included separate symbols for 10, 40, 50, 100, 1000. These numerals were also regarded as "Lith Lakunu" or ephemeris numbers by W. A. De Silva in his "Catalogue of Palm leaf manuscripts in the library of Colombo Museum". This set of numerals was known as "Sinhala illakkam" or Sinhala archaic numerals. Sinhala numerals or "Sinhala illakkam" were used in the Kandyan convention which was signed between Kandyan Chieftains and the British governor, Robert Brownrig, in 1815. Eleven clauses were numbered in Arabic numerals in the English part