"Ancient Indian culture has regarded the science of numbers as the noblest of its arts … A thousand years ahead of Europeans, Indian savants knew that zero and infinity were mutually inverse notions. In short, Indian science was born out of a mystical and religious culture and the etymology of the Sanskrit word used to describe numbers and the science of numbers bears witn The early passion which Indian civilization had for high numbers was a significant factor contributing to the discovery of the place-value system, and not only offered the Indians the incentive to go beyond the calculable physical world, but also led to an understanding much earlier than in our civilization of the notion of mathematical infinity itself."