ut a vertical arrangement for four.[101] Now where did China get these
forms? Surely not from India, for she had them, as her monuments and
literature[102] show, long before the Hindus knew them. The tradition is
that China brought her civilization around the north of Tibet, from
Mongolia, the primitive habitat being Mesopotamia, or possibly the oases of
Turkestan. Now what numerals did Mesopotamia use? The Babylonian system,
simple in its general principles but very complicated in many of its
details, is now well known.[103] In particular, one, two, and three were
represented by vertical arrow-heads. Why, then, did the Chinese write {29}
theirs horizontally? The problem now takes a new interest when we find that
these Babylonian forms were not the primitive ones of this region, but that
the early Sumerian forms were horizontal.[104]

What interpretation shall be given to these facts? Shall we say that it was
mere accident that one people wrote "one" vertically and that another wrote
it horizontally? This may be the case; but it may also be the case that the
tribal migrations that ended in the Mongol invasion of China started from
the Euphrates while yet the Sumerian civilization was prominent, or from
some common source in Turkestan, and that they carried to the East the
primitive numerals of their ancient home, the first three, these being all
that the people as a whole knew or needed. It is equally possible that
these three horizontal forms represent primitive stick-laying, the most
natural position of a stick placed in front of a calculator being the
horizontal one. When, however, the cuneiform writing developed more fully,
the vertical form may have been proved the easier to make, so that by the
time the migrations to the West began these were in use, and from them came
the upright forms of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and other Mediterranean lands,
and those of A['s]oka's time in India. After A['s]oka, and perhaps among
the merchants of earlier centuries, the horizontal forms may have come down
into India from China, thus giving those of the N[=a]n[=a] Gh[=a]t cave and
of later inscriptions. This is in the realm of speculation, but it is not
improbable that further epigraphical studies may confirm the hypothesis.

{30}

As to the numerals above three there have been very many conjectures. The
figure one of the Demotic looks like the one of the Sanskrit, the two
(reversed) like that of the Arabic, the four has some resembl