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:
“We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our “white mythology.” Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.”
—Ihab Hassan (b. 1925)