Srivijaya and the first zeros
Anthony Diller’s 1995 article examines Old Malay inscriptions from the 7th-century polity of Sriwijaya, arguing that they preserve the earliest known physical examples of the zero figure in its decimal place-holding function—predating the accepted Indian evidence by nearly two centuries. The article situates this claim within a broader argument about how local Malay textual practices, distinct from classical Indic norms, shaped both the production and the survival of this numerical evidence.
Summary
The article addresses a gap between two scholarly communities: Southeast Asian epigraphers, who had long recognised the Sriwijayan inscriptions as valuable for dating the polity’s history, and historians of mathematics, who had largely ignored the same inscriptions’ significance for the decimal number system. Diller traces the origin of the observation to George Coedes’ 1931 article, in which Coedes cited the Saka-era dates 605, 606, and 608 on Old Malay and Old Khmer inscriptions as early examples of zero in its “keystone” place-holding role, using them to refute G.R. Kaye’s claim that decimal notation in India was a 9th–10th century development. Despite this, Diller notes that standard reference works in the history of science continued to omit or misrepresent the Southeast Asian evidence, a disciplinary insularity he attributes to the article’s publication in a French-language journal of Oriental studies rather than in a mathematics history venue (p. 55).
The core of Diller’s argument moves beyond the simple chronological claim to explain why this evidence survived in Southeast Asia when comparable Indian material apparently did not. He contrasts classical Indic inscriptional conventions—Sanskrit verse, word-symbol chronograms for metrical flexibility, regnal-period dating, and a sacral culture centred on oral recitation—with the Old Malay practices visible in the Sriwijayan corpus: prose form, direct decimal numerals, Saka-era dating, and a distinctive belief in the physical potency of inscribed texts. The Telaga Batu inscription, carved on a naga-canopied stone with a drainage funnel so that ritual water could be poured over the text and “drunk” by appointed governors, exemplifies this sacral-textual sensibility (pp. 60–61). Diller draws on D.C. Sircar’s observation that Cambodian eulogies of the same period regularly recorded accession dates by Saka era, a practice uncommon in contemporary Indian prasasti inscriptions, to support the case for a regional departure from the Indic prototype (p. 61).
The article also situates Sriwijaya within a wider Indian Ocean commercial network, comparing its position to that of the Euphrates crossing at Kenshra, where the Nestorian Bishop Severus Sebokht praised the Indian numerical system in 662 AD. Diller suggests that Sriwijaya’s “multicultural” commercial orientation, attested by the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing, made it a natural nexus for practical decimal notation, and that local court astronomers (hora) may have applied the system to both calendrical and commercial calculations (pp. 59–60). The broader theoretical frame is one of “localisation” or “indigenisation”—Southeast Asian formations contributing subtle but crucial departures from Indic prototypes rather than passively receiving them (p. 55).
Key Findings
- The Kota Kapur inscription (Bangka Island), dated Saka 608 (686 AD), the Keduan Bukit inscription (Palembang), dated Saka 605 (683 AD), and the Talang Tuwo inscription (Palembang), dated Saka 606 (684 AD), all contain the zero figure in decimal place-holding dates, predating the Gwalior inscription of 876 AD—the accepted first extant Indian example of physical zero—by nearly two centuries (pp. 54, 59).
- The Khao Rang inscription (Thai-Khmer border area), dated Saka 561 (639 AD), provides the earliest known inscriptional use of the word-symbol (chronogram) method in Southeast Asia, using “senses-tastes-moon” (5-6-1) to encode the date (p. 57).
- The Mi-son Stele of Champa, dated Saka 609 (687 AD), represents the central zero in the date by the word amvara ‘atmosphere’, confirming the zero function in a neighbouring polity within the same decade (p. 57).
- The Pancasiddhantika of Varaha-Mihira (traditionally dated 505–587 AD) contains multiple instances of sunya ‘void’ used as a decimal place-holder in calculations, suggesting the conceptual basis for zero existed in Indian mathematical-astronomical literature before the Sriwijayan inscriptions, but without surviving physical epigraphic evidence of the numeral itself (p. 58).
- The Gurjara grant plate, bearing a decimal date of Vikramasamvat 346 (594–5 AD), has been proposed as the first decimal notation in India, but Diller follows Kaye in questioning its authenticity, noting the figures appear in a text-peripheral position suggesting later addition (p. 59).
- By 856 AD, Indic conventions of Sanskrit verse and word-symbol chronograms had been adopted in Old Javanese inscriptions, indicating that the Old Malay practice of prose with decimal numerals was a transient local configuration that fell out of use within a century (p. 62).
Conclusion
Diller’s definitive claim is that, until comparable 7th-century Indian evidence is uncovered, Sriwijaya can validly lay claim to the first surviving material zeros in their present form and function. He attributes the skewed distribution of the surviving record not to any unique invention in Southeast Asia but to local Old Malay sacral-textual practices—the belief in the physical potency of inscribed stones, the ritual installation of texts at sacred sites, and the numinous aura that caused some inscription sites to retain their potency even after the advent of Islam—which enhanced the preservation prospects of these particular documents relative to their Indian counterparts (pp. 62–63).
Context
- The article draws primarily on the inscriptions published in the MBRAS Monograph 20 (1992), the Coedes-Damais anthology edited by Manguin and Sheppard, alongside secondary literature in the history of mathematics (Datta and Singh, Kaye, Joseph) and Southeast Asian epigraphy (Sircar, de Casparis, Wolters).
- Historiographically, the article bridges the gap between Southeast Asian epigraphy and the history of science, challenging the standard narrative that locates zero’s material origins exclusively in India and demonstrating how disciplinary boundaries had obscured evidence already available since 1931.