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:
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)