"The numerals had existed, without the zero, for several centuries; they had been well known in India; there had been a continued interchange of thought between the East and West; and warriors, ambassadors, scholars, and the restless trader, all had gone back and forth, by land or more frequently by sea, between the Mediterranean lands and the centers of Indian commerce and culture. Boethius could very well have learned one or more forms of Hindu numerals from some traveler or merchant."
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The Hindu-Arabic Numerals
The Hindu-Arabic Numerals by David Eugene Smith and was published in 1911 to, as mentioned in the preface of the book, "bring together the fragmentary narrations and to set forth the general problem of the origin and development of these numerals."
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