Indian numerals Indian numerals Indian numerals are the symbols representing numbers in India. These numerals are used in the context of the decimal Hindu–Arabic numeral system, and are distinct from, though related by descent to Arabic numerals. Below is a list of the Indian numerals in their modern Devanagari form, the corresponding Western Arabic equivalents, their Hindi and Sanskrit pronunciation, and translations in some languages. Since Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, the words for numerals closely resemble those of Greek and Latin. The word "Shunya" for zero was translated into Arabic as "صفر" "sifr", meaning 'nothing' which became the term "zero" in
Arabic numerals via Alexandria, but this theory is not accepted by scholars. Some popular myths have argued that the original forms of these symbols indicated their numeric value through the number of angles they contained, but no evidence exists of any such origin. In 825 Al-Khwārizmī wrote a treatise in Arabic, "On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals", which survives only as the 12th-century Latin translation, "Algoritmi de numero Indorum". "Algoritmi", the translator's rendition of the author's name, gave rise to the word "algorithm". The first mentions of the numerals in the West are found in the "Codex Vigilanus" of 976. From the