The Overland Monthly Can you do better than to take THE OVERLAND MAGAZINE of California and the Pacific West? Here are One Thousand Pages of the fresh, strong work of the men and women of the West, writers who have lived the life of which they write, and seen and felt the things they describe, and FIVE HUNDRED PICTURES the work of the most talented artists of a region that has produced many such, and is producing them all the time. ALL FOR ONE DOLLAR. BIBLIA A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH IN ARCH EOLOGY, ETHNOLOGY, LITERATURE, RELIGION, HISTORY, EPIGRAPHY, GEOGRAPHY, LANGUAGE, ETC. THE OFFICIAL MEDIUM FOR PUBLISHING COMMUNICATIONS OF THE PALESTINE EXPLORATION FUND, THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND, THE ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF EGYPT, AND THE GRECO ROMAN BRANCH. Biblia, now in its 14th year, gives the latest imformation in regard to the work of the various explorations in Palestine. Egypt, Belgium, Greece, Etc. There has been no more important revelations during the present century than that of the discoveries in Oriental lands. A literature has been recovered, which already far exceeds in compass the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures, and the later history of the Old Testament no longer stands alone. The records already discovered confirm, explain, and illustrate the Scripture records, and the historical portions of the Bible are now read with an entirely new interest. Among the regular contributors are: Jas. S. Cotton, M. A. (Oxford), Late Editor of the London Academy; N. L. G. Davies, M. A., B. O., of the Archaological Survey; Geo. St. Claire, F. G. S.; J. J. Tylor, F. S. A.; Rev. Win. C. Winslow, D. D., LL. D., Vice-President of the Egypt Exploration Fund for the United States; Prof. Thos. S. Wright, Hon. Sec. of the Palestine Exploration Fund; F. L. Griffith, M. A., F. S. A., Etc., Etc. Send for Sample Copy. Price, $1.00 Per Year. PUBLISHED AT MERIDEN, CONN., BY THE BIBI IA PUBLISHING CO. THE American Antiquarian VOL. XXII. SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 1900. No. 5. NUMERAL CHARACTERS: THEORY OF ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. BY CROWDER B. MOSELEY. The simple characters so easily made that a knowledge of them is acquired so early that we seem never to have had to learn them have been the agents of good to the race so vastly great as to warrant a more thorough search than has yet been made to discover their origin and make known their history. As indicated by the name "Arabic Numerals" so commonly applied to them, they were thought by Europeans to be of Arabian origin from the fact of their having been brought in with Eastern mathematics at the time of the Mohammedan invasion. If not for the first time at least in a way to make their use so general as to justify the names for the figures to the minds of those who gave it. But later and more extended intercourse between the East and the West discovered the fact that the ciphers were introduced into Arabia from India along with the knowledge of Hindu Algebra. The question then that remains to be answered is "How did the Indian system originate? The aim of this paper is (1) to unfold a theory for the development of the digits out of a system still in use by the Chinese and neighboring peoples, and (2) to suggest in what way our system of written numbers has become so widespread in its use. Before proceeding with the discussion it is thought best to introduce for inspection a table showing the changes that occur in writing the characters as the best means of indicating the method to be pursued. There are four things to be borne in mind when considering such a development of our numerals: (1) That when writing their characters the Chinese and the Japanese, who make use of the Chinese ideographs, almost always make the otherwise horizontal line to slant upwards, so that the characters for one, two, three and others are made often at about an angle of forty-five degrees, or nearly so, and are not made to set horizontally or straight across the page. (2) When written rapidly with the brush-as with these Eastern peoplethe lines are almost of necessity, connected. The brush is not lifted clear of the paper and then put down again to make the next stroke, but is moved rapidly from the finishing point of one stroke to the starting point of the next. (3) And the third is the constant habit of abbreviating many of the characters as much as possible to yet leave them recognizable by the expert. It is quite usual in the cursive writing to give the merest hint of the original form. (4) A fourth thing which it is necessary to consider is the effect of writing downward instead of across the page, and with a soft brush instead of a stiff instrument. Now I take it that the figure one, when it came to be written with a stiff instrument, as the stylus, was made by a stroke downward as being more convenient than the upwardslanting stroke. And in this way of writing it the natural |