From Śūnya to Zero -- an Enigmatic Odyssey.

Who invented zero? Interestingly, there is no one-line answer. And the acceptability of any attempted answer generally depends on the perception of the seeker, as the connotation of the word 'zero' can be perceived from several different but interrelated perspectives. Many ancient civilizations, including India, had their own version of zero or a zero-like concept or symbol as a representative of 'nothingness'; some as a philosophical conundrum, elsewhere some others even in a practical sense, such as a filler or a gap on their counting board; but except in India, none of these early and somewhat hesitant initial concepts did ultimately mature to its true mathematical potential. Today it is generally accepted worldwide that this peerless concept of a decimal place value system of enumeration in tandem with the true zero of our present-day mathematics, evolved in ancient India. Initially philosophically nurtured and analyzed during the early periods of oral tradition in India by several different schools of thought, eventually at some point of time the concept reflected in the Sanskrit word śūnya was transformed into a numeral for mathematical expression of 'nothing'. Perhaps at a later period, it bloomed into its full potential as a number, kha, an integer on which mathematical operations can be performed. Indeed, this unique feature makes kha, the Indian zero, the true progenitor of our modern mathematical zero. However, the exact time frame of this gradual evolution is still hotly debated, a recent controversy in this direction being the outcome of attempted radiocarbon dating of the famous Bakhshali manuscript by the Bodleian Library of Oxford. Going in the other direction, some scholars suggest that a trace of this concept, if not in total operational perspective, might have had a Greek origin that traveled to India during the Greek invasion of the northern part of the country in the pre-Mauryan period. A relatively recent third view professes the Chinese origin of the concept of zero as a placeholder, which might have traveled with the traders from China to the far eastern parts of Asia, to places like Cambodia, then under Buddhist influence that spread from mainland India, where it got the shape of a 'bold dot', the earliest known written form of zero. Scholars belonging to this school of thought want to credit mainland India only for 'garlanding' this concept of zero toward its modern shape, sometime around the eighth or ninth century CE. Embracing all these paradigms of claims and counterclaims about the origin of zero made till date, this article is a nutshell version of an odyssey, an unparalleled journey from a concept to a number in its own right, perhaps the most significant creation of the human mind ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]