A Change of Guard

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Sunday 10 August 2014

Did ancient Cambodians invent the zero?

The zero can be seen to the left
The zero can be seen to the left. COURTESY OF AMIR ACZEL
A little way outside Siem Reap, a few sheds and a makeshift office house thousands of ancient relics rarely seen by the millions who pass through the city to see the temples each year. On the ground at the Conservation d’Angkor Centre lie broken Buddha statues and severed stone heads – a Jayavarman VII here, a dusty linga there. Last year, on the January morning that Amir Aczel arrived, the place was empty.
The sixty-something American, a mathematician and author, had come to search for the evidence he had chased for the previous five years: an ancient stone slab on which was inscribed what he believed to be the first numeric zero ever recorded.
Between his fingers Aczel gripped the pencil rubbings and documents he believes prove that Cambodians were among the first people on earth – before the Europeans and Arabs – to use 0 to signify nothingness. Not even the Romans had invented such an advanced system as the one, illustrated by a stone marked “K-127”, that was somewhere in that room.
Finally, after hours of stalking the backs of stones to find one he recognised, Aczel landed on a familiar-looking reddish block. “I recognised the writing and thought: ‘Wow, this is it,’” he recalled in an interview over Skype last week. “It was an amazing moment. I’ll never have another moment like that in my life.”
The writing on the stone is ancient Khmer
The writing on the stone is ancient Khmer. Courtesy of Amir Aczel
Aczel was born, as he likes to tell people, on the high seas. The son of a cruise ship captain, he was raised around an eclectic and transient community and grew up to speak a host of different languages. But his interest in the history of numerals began while studying at the University of California, Berkeley. He went on to write 14 books about mathematics and physics, several of which have become international bestsellers.
His latest, Finding Zero tells the story of his recent search for proof that the concept of the numeric zero was invented in Asia, and possibly Cambodia – a eureka moment he goes so far as to call “the greatest invention of the human mind”. The book will be published by MacMillian early next year.
The story, which sees the author – in the words of the publisher – “doggedly crisscrossed the ancient world, scouring dusty, moldy texts, cross-examining so-called scholars”, starts in India. The first zero was once believed to have been found at the Chatur-bujha temple in the city of Gwalior. “I saw a lot of things there; then somebody told me that there was an earlier zero than the one in India,” said Aczel.
That zero was uncovered by George Cœdès, a 20th-century French scholar who dedicated his life’s work to Southeast Asian archaeology and history. An expert in ancient Khmer script, married to a Cambodian princess, Cœdès transcribed and translated thousands of inscriptions from monuments found in the region then known as Indochina.
At the time, most scholars agreed that the numerical zero was probably either a European or an Arab invention. One of the proponents of this theory was a British scholar named G.R Kaye, who launched searing attacks on Cœdès, who contended that the numeral came not from the West but from the East and, in particular, Cambodia. “It was pretty confrontational – the conflict between them,” said Aczel.
The first known use of a numerical zero in India was dated to the mid-ninth century, an era that coincided with the Arab Caliphate – so Kaye’s theory, which posited that the numeral had passed to the West via Arab traders, stood. “But Cœdès had a feeling that the zero had to come from Asia,” explained Aczel, adding that the researcher was more Asian in his thinking than Western.
It was Cœdès who coined the term “Indianised civilisation” to refer to the countries of Indochina. The phrase is frequently used to describe Angkor. Many of the illustrations on the walls of the ancient temple complex are drawn from the Ramayana and Mahabharata stories.
Amir Aczel, a mathematician and author
Amir Aczel, a mathematician and author. Courtesy of Amir Aczel
During his research, Cœdès heard about a stone among the ruins of a seventh-century Cambodian temple which was said to be inscribed with a numeric zero. In the early 1900s, he hunted it down to Sambor on Mekong, in present-day Kratie, and translated the text on the stone almost in full. On the slab is written a long list of the names of slaves to be given to the king with their children, alongside five pairs of bulls and white rice, by the “respectable people living here”.
But the key phrase is a date marker: “The Chaka era reached 605 in the year of the waning moon.” The date uses a numerical zero, and the Chaka era began in AD78, meaning the inscription was made in AD 683 – placing it a full two centuries earlier than the Indian zero. Cœdès’ paper was published in 1931 and put to rest the theories about European and Arab sources.
“The significance of K-127 to Cambodia is that it indicates that at present knowledge, the first zero – the most important number – is an ancient Khmer invention,” said Aczel. “Someone may find an earlier zero in India, but I personally bet against it.”
As for the stone, it was moved to the National Museum of Cambodia and then, in the late 1960s, to the Conservation d’Angkor. But when Aczel arrived, on the trail of Cœdès nearly four decades later, there was no guarantee the stone had survived the turbulent events of the preceding years.

During the nearly four years the Khmer Rouge was in power, the ultra-Maoist regime enslaved and plundered the country. Thousands of ancient artefacts were destroyed. In the aftermath of the regime, looting continued to plague the country’s ancient sites – the Conservation d’Angkor was among the targets.
When Aczel arrived in Phnom Penh in search of K-217, Hab Touch, the director of the National Museum, could confirm it had been there, but whether or not it remained there was unknown.
In a twist of fate, immediately after Aczel re-discovered it among the debris, the stone was removed by a pair of students who took it to a laboratory for restoration.
“From out of the blue, two women walked in – nobody goes in there! – speaking Italian and I told them about it,” said Aczel.
“One of them, she said, ‘Well, in that case we’ll take it!’”
The mathematician, who believes the stone belongs in a museum, considers its removal a bitter blow. Aczel said he hopes the book will persuade the authorities to take some action to retrieve it.
“Seeing is believing – K-127 can be felt, touched, scrutinised, learned from, admired, celebrated. It is immensely important.”

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very impressive!

Khmer Yeurng

Anonymous said...

it is also said that khmer invented the noodle [ nom banchhok] which was served to a chinese king who visited kampuchea back in the olden days... the chinese king liked it so much that after returning to his country , he ordered his cooks to make them... so now the world believe that it was china who invented noodles [ after marco polo went to china and brought some back to italy which italian copied it and made into spaghetti , linguine etc...]

Anonymous said...

It's great to hear that Khmers were the pioneer in things as great as inventing the "zero" number used by the whole world.

About the noodle, I read that the Chinese king in the 13th century tried Khmer noodle, Nom Banchok, and he liked it so much that he asked the Khmer king to send a Khmer cook to cook Nom Banchok for him.
Now researchers found a group of ancient Khmer people living in southern China who still practiced Khmer culture and speak some Khmer words. These people were thought to be the descendants of the Khmer cook and the elephant mahout Khmer king sent as tributes to the Chinese king in the 13th century.

Anonymous said...

During the pre-Angkor era, due to the lack of refrigeration and long traitorous terrains of battlefields, Khmers created Prahok for their warriors.

Anonymous said...

Oh please, the true power of "0" is the application of the base 10. For example, 10, 100, 1000 and so on.

Khmer counting system is base 5:
muoy pir bei neak chamnuon buon bram
bramuoy brapir brabei brabuon db

When I was in the labor team with 3 Cambodians, I actually learned a little bit of Khmer, say about 40 words.

-Drgunzet-

Anonymous said...

''-Drgunzet-''

with a mouth like you, someday the skinheads or the neo-nazis in germany will skin you alive... karma can be bitch ...

Anonymous said...

Dear Khmer and worldwide readers online,

-Drgunzet- is a former secret Yuon/Vietcong who used to hide in Khmer Rouges uniform during the Killing Fields from 1975 to 1979 along with hundred of thousands of secret Yuon/Vietnamese agents from Hanoi hiding in Khmer Rouges uniforms to fool gullible innocent Khmer people. They (secret Yuon/Vietcong agents and -Drgunzet-) have created secret "Angkar Leur or Cap Tren to scare helpless and voiceless innocent Khmer people and children. That is why a few millions of innocent Khmer people and children have been varnished or put to death before the evil Yuon/Vietcong and -Drgunzet- tried to steal the land of Cambodia and created false history of Vietnam by saying Cambodia belong to Vietnam along time ago including Southern Cambodia/Khmer Kampuchea Krom (South Vietnam), belonging to Vietnam a long time ago or their ancestor. Vietnam is fake, their language was created by French after stealing the Latin alphabets in writing. Vietnam and Vietnamese people are disgusted and hypocrite.

-Drgunzet- and his evil Yuon/Vietnamese agents are so cruel and murderous.

Anonymous said...

Read this:
"However, Old Khmer, or Angkorian Khmer, also possessed separate symbols for the numbers 10, 20, and 100. Each multiple of 20 or 100 would require an additional stroke over the character, so the number 47 was constructed using the 20 symbol with an additional upper stroke, followed by the symbol for number 7.[5] This inconsistency with its decimal system suggests that spoken Angkorian Khmer used a vigesimal system."

In here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_numerals

Oh please, get real. If your race want to be proud, produce someone to challenge me. I have already made my statement: I read a couple thousand books and already know most if not all important subjects in mankind. My learning rate is about 100 times faster than any Khmer I met.

-Drgunzet-

Anonymous said...

-Drgunzet-,

Can you say that the United States of America belong to your ugly race (Yuon or Vietcong/Vietnam) very long time ago?

Or can you say China state belong to your Yuon or Vietnam ancestor very long time ago?

Anonymous said...

-Drgunzet- is trying to bullshitting. Is he drugging himself? LOL

Ken

Anonymous said...

They made a mistake with the date, it should be C.E. for Common Era, not A.D.

Anonymous said...

''Oh please, get real. If your race want to be proud, produce someone to challenge me. I have already made my statement: I read a couple thousand books and already know most if not all important subjects in mankind. My learning rate is about 100 times faster than any Khmer I met.

-Drgunzet-

11 August 2014 4:04 pm''


if you're sooo smart why are you wasting time with a site like this... what exactly have you contribute to the benefit of humankind ....in the like of Einstein , ben franklin , stephen hawkins ?

basically you are just full of hot air... why don't you brag on how much you get paid to troll the internet with your bullshit.... it's more believable coming from a pussy like you.







Anonymous said...

This impressive story of Khmer civilization and Angkorian History have made the Vietnamese weirdo named -Drgunzet- so that this Vietnamese weirdo (-Drgunzet-) start to blah blah blah to falsify Cambodian history to prevent his ugly Vietnam's fake history on the planet.

No one in the world will not by Vietnam's false or fake history as the Vietnamese weirdo -Drgunzet- have been feeling intimidated. This Vietnamese weirdo want to impress their ugly Vietnamese history to Westerners in order to cheat doing businesses to get rich, and then the Westerners will spit and feel disgusted with ugly Vietnam's fake history and will not go back to ugly Vietnam again.