"He sometimes spoke of "zero" as the symbol of the absolute (Nirguna Brahman) of the extreme monistic school of Hindu philosophy, that is, the reality to which no qualities can be attributed, which cannot be defined or described by words and which is completely beyond the reach of the human mind. According to Ramanujan the appropriate symbol was the number "zero" which is the absolute negation of all attributes."
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Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, on ideas of Srinivasa Ramanujan, as quoted in Crippled Minds: An Exploration Into Colonial Culture (1982) by Susantha Goontilake, p. 317
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system
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Hindu–Arabic numeral system
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