ब्राह्मस्फुटसिद्धान्त (ब्रह्मगुप्त - शून्य, कुट्टक, बीजगणित एवं सम्पूर्ण २१ अध्याय सान्वय सटीक)

196 BRAHMAGUPTA AS AN ALGEBRAIST
written algebra, as well as to the circumstance of his
being named by numerous writers as the founder of a
sect, or author of a system in astronomy, and being
quoted at the head of algebraists, when the commen-
tators of extant treatises have occasion to mention
early and original writers on this branch of science, it
is not necessary to seek further for a mathematician
qualified to have been the great improver of the ana-
lytic art, and likely to have been the person by whom
it was carried to the pitch to which it is found to have
attained among the Hindus, and at which it is observ-
ed to be nearly stationary through the long lapse of
ages which have since passed : the later additions being
few and unessential in the writings of Brahmagupta,
of Bhāskara and of Jñānarāja, though they lived at
intervals of centuries from each other.
Āryabhaṭa, Colebrooke rightly says, then being the
earliest author known to have treated of Algebra among
the Hindus, and being likely to be, if not the inventor,
the improver of that analysis, by whom too it was
pushed nearly to the whole degree of excellence which
it is found to have attained among them; it becomes
in an especial manner interesting to investigate any
discoverable trace in the absence of better and more
direct evidence, which may tend to fix the date of his
labours; or to indicate the time which elapsed between
him and Brahmagupta, whose age is more accurately
determined.
Taking Āryabhaṭa, for reasons given, to have preceded
Brahmagupta and Varāhamihira by several centuries;
and Brahmagupta to have flourished more than twelve
hundred years ago, and Varāhamihira, concerning
whose works and age, Colebrooke has given a few
notes, and has placed him at the beginning of the sixth
century after Christ, it appears probable that this
earliest of known Hindu algebraists wrote as far back
as the fifth century of the Christian era; and perhaps in
an earlier age. Hence it is concluded that he is nearly
as ancient as the Grecian algebraist Diophantus, sup-