Bakhshali Manuscript

The Bakhshali Manuscript is a mathematical manuscript written on birch bark which was found near the village of Bakhshali in 1881. It is notable for being "the oldest extant manuscript in Indian mathematics."

The manuscript was discovered in 1881 by a peasant in the village of Bakhshali, which is near Peshawar, now in Pakistan. The first research on the manuscript was done by A. F. R. Hoernlé. After the death of Hoernle, it was examined by G. R. Kaye, who has edited the work and published it as a book in 1927.

The extant manuscript is incomplete, consisting of seventy leaves of birch bark. The intended order of the 70 leaves is indeterminate. It is currently housed in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford (MS. Sansk. d. 14) and is said to be too fragile to be examined by scholars.

The manuscript is a compendium of rules and illustrative example. Each example is stated as a problem, the solution is described, and it is verified that the problem has been solved. The sample problems are in verse and the commentary is in prose associated with calculations. The problems involve arithmetic, algebra and geometry, including mensuration. The topics covered include fractions, square roots, arithmetic and geometric progressions, solutions of simple equations, simultaneous linear equations, quadratic equations and indeterminate equations of the second degree.

The manuscript is written in an earlier form of Śāradā script, which was mainly in use from the 8th to the 12th century, in the northwestern part of India, such as Kashmir and neighbouring regions. The language is the Gatha dialect (which is a combination of the ancient Indian languages of Sanskrit and Prakrit).

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