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From Accounting To Negative Numbers: A Signal Contribution Of Medieval India To Mathematics, Richard Mattessich

Accounting Historians Journal

The major object of this paper is to present evidence for arguing that the highly developed Hindu accounting tradition, beginning with Kautilya's Arthasastra about 300 b.c., or even earlier, may have had a part in the more receptive attitude of medieval Indian mathematicians, compared to Europeans, in accepting negative numbers. The Hindus justified this attitude by arguing that having a debt is the inverse of possessing an asset; thus, attributing a negative number to a debt but a positive one to an asset. To advance the argument, the paper shows that the accounting aspect of debt is at least as …