"It has long been recognized that the common numerals used in daily life are of comparatively recent origin."
"The Indian use of subscript dots to indicate the tens, hundreds, thousands, etc, is established by a passage in the Kitaab al-Fihrist (987 AD) The numeral forms given are those which have usually been called Indian, in opposition to ģobaar In this document the dots are placed below the characters, instead of being superposed The significance was the same"
"The Egyptians... had three systems of writing, with a numerical notation for each; the Greeks had two... sets of numerals, and the Roman symbols... changed... from century to century."
"[T]he probability [is] that it was the trader rather than the scholar... [who] carried these numerals from their original habitat to various commercial centers... we shall never know when they first made their inconspicuous entrance into Europe."
"The numerals had existed, without the zero, for several centuries; they had been well known in India; there had been a continued interchange of thought between the East and West; and warriors, ambassadors, scholars, and the restless trader, all had gone back and forth, by land or more frequently by sea, between the Mediterranean lands and the centers of Indian commerce and culture. Boethius could very well have learned one or more forms of Hindu numerals from some traveler or merchant."
"Whitney places the whole of the Veda literature, including the Vedas, the Brahmanas, and the Sutras, between 1500 B.C. and 800 B.C., thus agreeing with [Albert] Bürk who holds that the knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem revealed in the Sütras goes back to the eighth century B.C."
"The power of the Goths, who had held Spain for three centuries, was shattered at the battle of Jerez de la Frontera in 711, and almost immediately the Moors became masters of Spain and so remained for five hundred years, and masters of Granada for a much longer period Until 850 the Christians were free as to religion and holding political office, so that priests and monks were not infrequently skilled in Latin and Arabic, acting as official translators [W]hile it lasted the learning and the customs of the East must have be come more or less the property of Christian Spain At thie time the gobaar numerals were probably in that country, and these may well have made their way into Europe from the schools of Cordova, Granada, and Toledo"