Indian Antiquary Vol 20

Author(s): John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 63

FEBRUARY, 1891.)
THE BURMESE SYSTEM OF ARITHMETIC.
53
NOTES ON THE BURMESE SYSTEM OF ARITHMETIC.
BY MAJOR R. C. TEMPLE.
PART I. SOME time back, when enquiring into the methods adopted by the Burmese in Upper Burma
in working out their horoscopes and astrological calculations, which are essentially Hindu in every feature, I was led to learn their ideas of arithmetic, and as the subject appears to me to be likely to lead to an interesting series of investigations, I give my notes on it now. I should mention that the system now under discussion is that of the Phongyis or Burmese Buddhist priests, and of the astrologers, who are called Ponnas, i. o., Pupiyas or Brahmans, and are usually considered to have emigrated from Manipur.1
It seems to be certain that the Burmese obtained what mathematical knowledge they possess from their priests and astrologers with their religion and civilization generally, and that it is directly of Hindu origin, whether it came from Ceylon or throngh the hills about Manipur. They have words of their own, of non-Hindu origin, to express numerals, but in their arithmetic they are taught a series of words which are corruptions of the PAli numerals, and it may be noted that, in ordinary life, for ordinals, so far as they express them at all, they .adopt Pali derivatives of a like nature. I have observed also that as surely as a Burman, not
filled with European school learning, is given a problem to do that at all puzzles him, he will, while doing it it in his head, mutter to himself these Pali derivatives and not his indigenous numerals,
Now Mr. Sh. B. Dikshit informs me that a system of arithmetio nearly corresponding to that of the Burmans is still, he believes, in vogue all over India among Hindu astrologers. A similar system is, ho says, at any rate, employed by thom in the districts of the Konkan, Dakhan, Gujarat and Karnatak. At the same time, for mercantile and general purposes a system corresponding to the European has been in use among Hindus from a time long anterior to the era of British rule. On the other hand, nothing of the nature of the Hindu astrologers' method of arithmetic has, so far as I know, ever been adopted in Enrope,
In Burma, however, the method of the astrologers was, I believe, the only one known, until the arrival of the Christian Missionaries and the establishment of a Government Educational Department. If this helief is correct, the Burmese did not share the advance in mathematical science made by the Hindus, when they adopted for secular purposes what we may call the European system of arithmetic, whatever the date of the adoption may have been.
Precisely the same thing appears to have happened in Tibet; for, whatover the truth or the real date may be, there appears to be no doubt that the Tibetans claim to have received their mathematical knowledge directly from India with their religion in the second century B. C., and, when I was about a year ago, explaining the Burmeso arithmetic on a blackboard before the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, Babu Sarat Chandra Das, c. I. E., the Tibetan scholar, at once recognized portions of the Burmese system as still current in Tibet. With the Babu was a Lâma, who further shewed on the board that the system taught him in the indigenous monastic schools in Tibet was much the same.3
1 Some PönnA communities in Mandalay Town still keep up an annual communication with Manipur through 'members of their race, who travel backwards and forwards. They are very particular in retaining purity of blood and family connections.
Mr. Dikshit has been kind enough to favour me with several comparative notes to this paper. These will be found in the footnotes with his initials attached to them.
The absence of any but the astrologers' system in Burma may prove to be an exceedingly interesting point, because it may be discovered that the Barmans procured their arithmetic from India at a date anterior to the secular system now in use, and it is not likely that their knowledge of arithmetic is older than their other knowledge imported from India, i..., it is not likely to be older that the seventh century A. D. If this should turn out to be the trath it would fix a date before which the adoption of the secular system of the Hindus could not have taken place.