518 ORIENTAL ELEMENTS OF CULTURE IN THE OCCIDENT. 



system which the Tahnud does not yet know. The circle (circellus) is 

 met with in the Old Testament canon when the reading- of the text is 

 supplanted by a Masoretic marg-inal correction, whicli appears in our 

 editions as a footnote. A small circle with neoating force is also 

 known to the Arabic popular script which arose in the period of the 

 Omeyads. The well-known Aral)ic sign of vowellessness, calh^d sukun 

 or jezma, is perhaps not an unimportant connecting link in the histor}' 

 of the zero. It differs, it is true, from the other cases in so far that 

 it negates the vowel, not the consonant, but Noldeke, in his Geschichte 

 des Qorans, page 316, has also adduced an instance of the latter; in the 

 Cuhc codex, Wetzstein, n. s., No. 5, a yellow zero appears as a can- 

 celing mark of a consonant." In addition to the paleographical wit- 

 nesses come also historical ones. 



In a poem composed by a Bedouin during an expedition to Cyprus 

 under the Calif Al-Walid Ibn Yazid (12.5-2(3 A. H.=743 A. D.)V the 

 author deprecated the sea voyage, which he would gladly exchange for 

 a camel's ride, resigning wages and heavenly reward to others — if he 

 had but firm land lieneath his feet, he would at once desert: " Veril}"," 

 he exclaims, "my name at the roll call will receive a circle.''' Positive 

 evidence for the existence of the zero sign in the Occident and its Latin 

 name cifra can be shown onl\" since the twelfth century.' In the six- 

 teenth century a division of meaning takes place so that the word in 

 the form of " Zero" preserved the old signification of null (zero), 

 while in that of " chift're," cipher, it was used for any numeral. ' ^^'hile 

 I readily agree with Krumbacher that the word sipos, which twice 

 made its appearance in the Occident, can onh^ be ij'i/qjo?; (psephos) 

 I know of no phonetic Arabic parallel to the derivation of sifr from 

 tptfq)o{^qjo)picx (pscphophoria). 8ifr occurs in the meaning of '•empty," 

 even in pre-Islamic time.'' We shall therefore have to accept the old 

 explanation-' that Arabic sifr in the meaning of zero is a translation of 

 the corresponding Indian sui^ya.'' As in the case of the sign for no vakie, 

 so also from the Orient comes the sign for the unknown valu(\ Here, 

 too, most desperate attempts were made to show its dei i\ alion from 



" We employ the canceling points at an erased wnid and they relcr tlien to the 

 erasure. 



'^Noeldeke, Delectus veterum carniinum Arabicorum, p. 02, Wellhanscii. Die 

 Kampie der Araber niit den Roinaern in der Zeit der Uniaijiden, p. 32. 



^Comp. Karl Krumbacher, Wohher stamnit das Wort Ziffer (chiHre)? in Psichari, 

 foudes de philologie neo-grecqne ( Bihhothr(|n(' de I'Ecole des hautes ctudt's, <)2) 

 Paris, 1892, p 347. 



''Kruml)acher, op. cit., p. 348. 



''Comp. Halim, ed. Sc^hultheas, 31, 9, comp. also salira M-wituhu Inn uu1i|Ikiis. \hi- 

 wardt 7, 3, Ibn ai-Athir, i, p. 379. 



./ Woepcke. op. cit. , p. 522. 



'/A good survey of this (juestion is given by Hermann Scluibert, Ziilden und Zahl: 

 Virciiow-IIoltzendorfl'sche Vortriige, Neue Folge, 2d series, part 13, Hamburg, 1887. 



