34 PHILOSOPHICAL TBANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1735. 



date 1390. Part of the room this was found in, was burnt too much to 

 repair again. 



On considering the characters on this plank, and those of the other two 

 dates mentioned above, with the accounts given by learned men of the time 

 when the Arabian figures were first introduced into these parts of the world, 

 and the various forms they have since received, as exhibited in fig. 4, pi. 1. 

 Mr. Ward was at last satisfied, that none of these 3 dates prove they were ever 

 used among us, in less than 100 years after the reading given to the latest 

 of them. 



Most writers, who have treated of the use of these figures, have thought 

 they came first from the Persians or Indians, to the Arabians, and from them 

 to the Moors, and so to the Spaniards, from whom the other Europeans re- 

 ceived them. This was the opinion of John Gerard Vossius, (De Natura Art. 

 lib. iii, cap. 8, § 6,) Mr. John Greaves, (De Siglis Arabum et Persarum Astro- 

 nomicis, p. 2, where the form of them may be seen,) Bishop Beveridge, 

 (Arithmet. Chronolog. lib. i, cap. 5,) Dr. Wallis, (De Algebra, cap. 3, p. 10,) 

 and many others. And the Arabians themselves acknowledge that they had 

 them from the Indians, as both Dr. Wallis (Ibid. p. 9), and Mr. Greaves (De 

 Siglis Arabum, &c.) have shown from their writers. 



But Isaac Vossius thought the ancient Greeks and Romans were acquainted 

 with these figures, and that the Arabians took them from the Greeks, and the 

 Indians from the Arabians, (Observat. ad Pomp. Mel. p. 64). For the proof of 

 this he refers to Tyro and Seneca's Notes, (Vid. Grut. Inscript. vol. ii, ad fin.) 

 and the treatise of Boethius De Geometria, (Lib. i, sub. fin.) But as to the 

 notes of Tyro and Seneca, they seem to have no affinity with these figures, 

 either in the number or nature of them ; for they are not limited to 9, but are 

 many times that number, and all different in form. Nor are they simple signs 

 of numbers, but complex characters of several letters of those numeral words 

 which they stand for in the Roman language, like our short-hands ; and there- 

 fore vary in their shape, as they are designed to express cardinals, ordinals, or 

 adverbs of number. This will appear by the table of characters annexed to 

 these papers, in which are given the first 10 of each. But as to what Vossius 

 says concerning Boethius, Mr. Ward observed in a curious manuscript of that 

 writer, now in the library of Dr. Mead, nine characters, which he says were 

 invented and used by some of the Pythagoreans in their calculations ; while 

 others of them made use of the letters of the alphabet for the same purpose. 

 Boethius calls them apices vel characteres, (Lib. i, sub. fin.) These also are 

 inserted in the table, to show the great affinity between them and the Arabian 

 figures, as these latter were written two or three centuries since. 



