Thoughts And Trivia

Number counting system is so basic to civilization, that we tend to not realize that, this was the first major step, learnt by Homo-sapiens towards civilization.
There are still some tribes, in South America - whose counting vocabulary is limited to 1; 2 and Many!
Its clear that initially humans stumbled from 1; to 20, without forming any number system - since each of these numbers have unique name uptill twenty. 'Eleven' for 11; not 'ten-one'. (Exception is Sanskrit which starts calling 11; as 'one and Ten' -"Eka-Dash").
Even now in remote villages, illiterate persons do all their counting with numbers till twenty. 136 is '16 and 6-twenties'. Evidently it gets difficult after 420;.
Beyond twenty we start using the positional number system (developed much later) based on Units, Tens, hundreds etc. So 21; is Twenty-One. 121; is One-Hundred and Twenty-one. The digits are read out from left to right for hundreds, tens and units.
With the invention of positional number system, counting could go beyond 20; upto 100 and even beyond.
German and Sanskrit are however stuck with an intermediate system (which is a precursor of positional numbering system) for counting between 21; to 99;.
Both in German and Sanskrit, digits are read from right to left - and not left to right - i.e. units (right digit)first and then Tens (digit on the left)- in numbers from 21; upto 99; . This system was good enough, till the positional numbering system invented Hundreds and beyond - by reading out digits from left to right for Hundreds, Tens and Units in sequence.
However being too long an established a system, both these languages retained their right to left reading of digits upto 99; but superposed it on left to right reading of digits for hundreds and above.
In both these languages, reading out digits is weird - Hundreds digit from left, then unit digit from extreme right and then the middle Tens' Digit.
122; is read as "ein-hundert; zwei und zwansig" or as translated; "one hundred, two and twenty" instead of straight-forward and logical "one hundred twenty-two". In Sanskrit"Aik Shambhar Dwai-DwaDash".
This weird system of counting, from 21; to 99;, is such a squashed fly - that this proves that both languages must be copies of same proto-Indo-Germanic language.
I suspect that German is the older sister - since it retains the older "and" between units and Tens - while Sanskrit. which came later, does away with 'and' (like other later languages). So 22 is 'zwei und zwansig' in German; but 'Dwai-Dwadash" in Sanskrit.
This conforms to the accepted history that Aryans came to India from north.
Both cultures have other similarities - like use of "swastika" symbol - though there are minor differences, in the symbol, in Sanskrit and German cultures. In India swastika is written, with its arms vertical/horizontal and in anti-clockwise fashion. In Germany it was written with arms at 45 deg and in clockwise fashion.

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Thursday, March 17, 2005