168

HISTORY OP ALGEBRA.

TRACT 33.

Lilavdft is an adjective in the feminine gender, formed by aparticular affix from Lila , sport, play, amusement, wan-tonness, endeavour, research,, and, as the epithet of a work,may be interpreted the Book of Amusement, or the Book ofResearch.— Riga, properly Vijd, signifies a seed, and thencethe source whence any thing springs.— Gdriitd, is the per-fect participle of the root gan, to count, reckon, number,compute, calculate, and is interpreted by counted, reckoned,numbered, computed, calculated.— Bijd-gdmtd then is acompound epithet literally signifying the seed counted, thesource or root calculated. —N. B. The names of books inSanskrit are seldom descriptive of their contents.

It is observable too that the affirmative, or the negativesign, and the coefficient, are always placed on contrarysides of the unknown, not + 2.t y as with us, but Qxy-\-,or ■+ xt/2, ; this latter way is in the Persian , as they readfrom right to left; but the Hindus from left to right,like the Europeans. But, though the Persians write fromright to left, they do not use, or translate the Sanskrit nu-merals backwards; for example, the ms. on algebra is 153

leaves,- and they are regularly numbered up to |C|"'(153):not with Hindu figures, but Persian ; but confessedly bor-rowed from the Hindus , though they now differ from themin shape; a circumstance which renders the opinion veryprobable, that the Persians derived their calculation fromthe Indians, but probably at second hand through the Ara-bians.

Compounds are multipliedas we fill the multiplicationtable : lor example, to mul-tiply — 3.r + 2y — 2 by 4 - 4 y —x + I, they proceed as ip themargin, and afterwards collect the products.

Iri the process of their solutions, there is no distinct ar-rangement of the different steps, as in the modern algebra;

— 3x

+

— 2

+ 4 y

— iZxy

+ s .y.y

- Sy

— X

4 c 6x“

— 2 xy

4- 2-v

+ 1

— 3x

-Mj /

- 2