Devanagari Numerals and Their Sanskrit Names
Below is a list of the Indian numerals in their modern Devanagari form, the corresponding European (Indo-Arabic) equivalents, their Sanskrit pronunciation, and translations in some languages.
| Modern Devanagari |
Hindu-Arabic | Sanskrit word for the ordinal numeral (wordstem) |
Translations in some languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ० | 0 | śhūnya (शून्य) | sifr (Arabic) |
| १ | 1 | éka (एक) | echad (Hebrew) |
| २ | 2 | dvi (द्वि) | dva (Russian) |
| ३ | 3 | tri (त्रि) | tre (Italian) |
| ४ | 4 | chatúr (चतुर्) | katër (Albanian) |
| ५ | 5 | panch (पञ्च) | penki (Lithuanian) |
| ६ | 6 | ṣáṣh (षष्) | seis (Spanish) |
| ७ | 7 | saptá (सप्त) | şapte (Romanian) |
| ८ | 8 | aṣhṭá (अष्ट) | astoņi (Latvian) |
| ९ | 9 | náva (नव) | 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: Indian Numerals
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)