Arabic numerals Arabic numerals Arabic numerals, also called Hindu–Arabic numerals, are the ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; or numerals written using them in the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (where the position of a digit indicates the power of 10 to multiply it by). It is the most common system for the symbolic representation of numbers in the world today. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system was developed by Indian mathematicians around AD 500 using quite different forms of the numerals. From India, the system was adopted by Arabic mathematicians in Baghdad and passed on to the Arabs farther
Indian numerals Bakhshali Manuscript, written sometime before the 5th century, also included zero. But it is in Khmer numerals of modern Cambodia where the first extant material evidence of zero as a numerical figure, dating its use back to the seventh century, is found. As it was from the Arabs that the Europeans learned this system, the Europeans called them "Arabic numerals;" the Arabs refer to their numerals as "Indian numerals". In academic circles they are called the "Hindu–Arabic" or "Indo–Arabic" numerals. The significance of the development of the positional number system is probably best described by the French mathematician Pierre Simon