302^ On the Systems of Numerical Signs 



Suanpan represent the higher or lower groups of a numeral 

 system, whether tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, or, in the 

 sexagesimal division, degrees, minutes, and seconds. The 

 manner of calculating is always the same. The pearls or 

 beads again are the indicators of the groups, and an empty 

 file indicates a cypher, consequently the empty sunya (sansu), 

 slfr, or properly sifron, sihron (Arabic, according to Meninski 

 prorsus vacuum). 



I am not able to prove in a strict historical manner, that the 

 Indian system of nine figures, indicating different values by 

 the places they occupy, has been invented in the way I have 

 indicated, but I believe I have discovered the way in which 

 this invention may have been gradually brought about. That, 

 perhaps, is as much as can be done : for the history of the 

 first steps in the development of the mental faculties, and of 

 the scale of civilization, is involved in darkness ; and com- 

 monly imparts to us nothing more than the knowledge of 

 possibilities. But it is for that very reason that this part of 

 history is so interesting. 



Only a short extract of the Essay read by me in the Aca- 

 d6mie des Inscriptions has been published, and that in a place 

 where it hardly will be sought for*. The manuscript itself is 

 in the hands of M. Champollion, who intended to publish it, 

 with some new and important facts respecting the different 

 methods of the Egyptian figures discovered by him in Turin. 

 Since that time I have continued, from time to time, to render 

 my first work more complete ; but as I have no hope left to 

 find the necessary leisure for publishing it in its whole extent, 

 I intend to put together in this essay the most important re- 

 sults. Perhaps this is also a favourable time for doing it ; for, 

 now that the researches respecting languages and monuments 

 have taken a different and more useful direction, and that 

 olir intercourse with the nations inhabiting the southern and 

 eastern countries of Asia is on the increase, it may be of some 

 utility to bring into discussion problems, which are in close 

 connexion with the intellectual march of the human mi^(l;, and 



* Gay Lussac et Arago, Annales de Chimie et tie Physique, t. idL, p. 93, 

 amoiig the Monthly Notices of the Transactions of the Institute. Humboldt, 

 £ssais Pol. sur la ^ouvelle ^spague (2d. edit.), t. iii., p. I22--'124, 



