Devanagari Numerals and Their Sanskrit Names
Below is a list of the Indian numerals in their modern Devanagari form, the corresponding European (Hindu–Arabic) equivalents, their Sanskrit pronunciation, and translations in some languages.
| Modern Devanagari |
Hindu–Arabic | Sanskrit word for the ordinal numeral (word stem) |
Translations in ten languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ० | 0 | śūnya (शून्य) | sifr (Arabic) |
| १ | 1 | eka (एक) | echad (Hebrew) |
| २ | 2 | dvi (द्वि) | dva (Russian) |
| ३ | 3 | tri (त्रि) | three (English) |
| ४ | 4 | catur (चतुर्) | katër (Albanian) |
| ५ | 5 | pancan (पञ्चन्) | penki (Lithuanian) |
| ६ | 6 | ṣaṣ (षष्) | seis (Spanish) |
| ७ | 7 | saptan (सप्तन्) | şapte (Romanian) |
| ८ | 8 | aṣṭan (अष्टन्) | astoņi (Latvian) |
| ९ | 9 | navan (नवन्) | nove (Italian) |
Since Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, it is obvious (as also seen from the table) that the words for numerals closely resemble those of Greek and Latin. The word "Shunya" for zero was translated into Arabic as "صفر" "sifr", meaning 'nothing', which became the term "zero" in many European languages from Medieval Latin zephirum (Arabic: sifr).
Read more about this topic: Numeric Symbology
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Nor youth, nor strength, nor wisdom spring again,
Nor habitations long their names retain,
But in oblivion to the final day remain.”
—Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)