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When viewed in this light, the achievement of the unknown Hindu who some time in the first centuries of our era discovered the principle of position assumes the proportions of a world-event. Not only did this principle constitute a radical departure in method, but we know now that without it no progress in arithmetic was possible.
It is [in India] that the ingenious manner of expressing all numbers in ten characters originated, by assigning to them at once an absolute and a local [positional] value. a subtle and important conception, of which the simplicity is such that we can [only] with difficulty, appreciate its merit.
Paul Erdos has passed on to us Hardy's personal ratings of mathematicians. Suppose that we rate mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, Hardy gave himself a score of 25, Littlewood 30, Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100.
Aryabhata I, wrote his famous astronomical treatise, Aryabhatiya, in 499 CE when he was only 23 years old.
In Persia/Iran, a crore (korur) was equivalent to 500,000 (5 lakhs) rather than 10,000,000 (100 lakhs).