Linkages: Exploring the similarities between the Chinese rod numeral system and our numeral system (Q1096595)

In this paper, the author advances the thesis that the Hindu-Arabic positional number system - zero included - originates in fact in China. To prove this thesis, she quotes literary accounts of Chinese rod numerals from the Spring and Autumn period onwards; moreover, she explains the basic operations of arithmetic performed with computing rods on the basis of translations of relevant passages taken from three well- known Chinese mathematical classics. Then, she concludes that many procedures of multiplication and division found in early Islamic works are remarkably similar to the Chinese procedures previously explained. Such a conclusion seems sound enough; however, other parts of the paper are very unsatisfactory. For example: p. 366, the author writes that in Chinese context ``no special counting boards were required'' but, later on (p. 377), she reasons as if the opposite statement were true; p. 367, she seems to ignore the existence of extremely important documentay sources (Dunhuang mathematical manuscripts) whose analysis - as the reviewer has shown elsewhere [Histoire des mathématiques chinoises (Masson, Paris 1988), especially, p. 190-191] - leads to conclusions incompatible with those of the present paper; p. 370, the connection between Indian sources and the Chinese naming of large numbers is left untouched; last but not least, the crucial problem of the dating of Chinese sources (p. 368) is dealt with in a very incomplete and crude way.