convinced that there must have been a considerable intercourse of scholars at an early date.[1]
Of the rest of Japanese mathematics in this early period we are wholly ignorant, save that we know a little of the ancient system of measures and that a calendar existed. How the merchants computed, whether the almost universal finger computation of ancient peoples had found its way so far to the East, what was known in the way of mensuration, how much of a crude primitive observation of the movements of the stars was carried on, what part was played by the priest in the orientation of shrines and temples, what was the mystic significance of certain numbers, what, if anything, was done in the recording of numbers by knotted cords, or in representing them by symbols,—all these things are looked for in the study of any primitive mathematics, but they are looked for in vain in the evidences thus far at hand with respect to the earliest period of Japanese history, It is to be hoped that the spirit of investigation that is now so manifest in Japan will result in throwing more light upon this interesting period in which mathematics took its first root upon Japanese soil.
- ↑ There is considerable literature upon this subject, and it deserves even more attention, See, for example, the following: Klingsmill, T. W., The Intercourse of China with Eastern Turkestan … in the second century B. C., in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N. S. London 1882, vol XIV, p. 74. A Japanese scholar, T. Kimura, is just at present maintaining that his people have a common ancestry with the races of the Greco-Roman civilization, basing his belief upon a comparison of the mythology and the language of the two civilizations. See also P. von Bohlen, Das alte Indien wit besonderer Ricksicht auf Ægypten. Konigsberg 1830; Reinaud, Relations politiques ef commerciales l’ Empire Romain avec l’ Asie orientale, Paris 1863; P. A. di San Filipo, Delle Relazioni antiche et moderne fra L’ italia e l’ India, Rome 1886; Smith and Karpinski, The Hindu-Arabic Numerals. Boston 1911, with extensive bibliography on this point.
