හර්ෂගෙන් ලිපියක්
මේ ආචාර්ය හර්ෂ විජේවර්ධනගේ මෙටා සටහනක්.
මැණික්දෙන විහාරයෙන් තමයි සීගිරියට ඒ ගඩොල් ගෙනිහින් තියෙන්නෙ. ඒ ගඩොල්වල තමයි ශුන්‍යය සඳහා හල්අකුර යොදා ගෙන තියෙන්නෙ. දැන් කියන්න එපා ඒක යක්‍ෂයන්ගෙ වැඩක් නොවෙයි කියල.
ඔය කාලෙ දකුණු ඉන්දියාවෙ බෞද්ධ බලපෑම තිබුණ. ඒ බෞද්ධ සම්බන්ධකම් හරහා වෙන්න ඕන බුරුමය තායිලන්තය කාම්බෝජය වගේ රටවලට බිංදුව ගියෙ. මා හිතනවා බිංදුව උතුරු ඉන්දියාවට යන්න කලින් බෞද්ධ සම්බන්ධකම් මගින් අග්නිදිග ආසියාව යන්න ඇති කියා. ඒ රටවල් ශූන්‍යය සඳහා බිංදුව යොදා ගත්තත් අප නුවර යුගය වන තෙක් ම හා ඊට පසුවත් හල් කිරීම ලිත් ඉලක්කම්වල යොදා ගෙන තියෙනවා.
සිංහලයන් (යක්‍ෂයන්) ශූන්‍යයට හල්අකුර (සංකේතය) යොදා ගත්තෙ ඇයි කියන එකත් මේ කරුණුත් මා කලින් ලිපිවල සඳහන කර ඇති. ශූන්‍යතාව (වැරදි වුණත්) චතුස්කෝටික න්‍යාය ආදිය එහි දී බලපා තියෙනවා. මේ සියල්ල බටහිර හරි ඉන්දීය හරි ගැති පඬි නැට්ටන්ට නම් නාකි මිනිහකුගෙ විකාර හිතිවිලි.
අද ලෝකය පිළිගන්න එකක් නැහැ ශූන්‍යය සඳහා සංකේතයක් සකස් කෙළෙ සිංහලයන් කියල. අද අපේ මෝඩකම් දකින කිසිවකු එසේ සිතාවි ද? එහෙත් අපි උත්සාහ කරමු බිංදුව නැවතත් ලෝකයට දීමට.
මෙහි ඇත්තේ බුරුම අංක
In my journey looking for Sinhala Zero, I have begun thinking why that our Zero does not appear in Rock inscriptions but it clearly appears in Ola leaf books which were written in 1700. By this time, Thai and Khmer numerals have a clear zero and in fact Khmer had the zero since 600 AD due to Indian influence. When I examined the shapes of six and five which appear in this inscription which is found in the tablet k127, they are very similar to Lith Illakkam in Sri Lanka except for Zero. Is it possible that these shapes were originated in Sri Lanka during early Sigiri period? It is quite possible that Sinhala zero was replaced by the Indian dot but Sinhala Mathematicians kept the oldest form of Zero in Sri Lanka without replacing our original numeral Lith digit set. For my friends, I thought of providing 605 in present Lith Digits and for the sake of giving similarity,
I revisited my earlier research I conducted on Sinhala numerals a few years back thanks to Prof. Nalin De Silva. I visited his house for a few hours with my wife two weeks back discussing with him on Sinhala Zero and had a very interesting time with him exchanging new ideas between two of us; and his being a great mathematician, I really valued his insight into how Zero came into being and he was adamant that Sinhala people would have been the first to use a symbol for the zero.
My earlier research was on Sinhala numerals trying to find whether we had our own numerals sets. Most people did not realize that we even had our own numerals let alone a zero. I had to convince Michael Everson that Sinhala people even had a Zero. When I found that we had a zero and zero place holder concept I was adamant that Lith illakkam must be encoded in the Basic Multi Lingual Plane (BMP) with Sinhala characters. After three years of hard work, at the WG2 meeting which was held in South Korea, I finally convinced Michael Everson who had been pushing to encode Sinhala Illakkam in the BMP, which I moved to the Supplementary Plane as Archaic numbers leaving behind sufficient space to encode if we were to find any symbols for Sinhala fractions in the future.
With the insight from Prof. Nalin, I have begun to suspect that he may be right at the end. When I was carrying out research into Sinhala Numerals especially into Lith Illakkam, I was fascinated by the fact that Khmer, Laos and Thai numerals sets were similar looking to our Lith Illaklam which was found in Kandy Museum in some of the Ola. One major difference was that Khmer Zero is what we find in the Hindu Arabic Numerals. In our's, Hal lakuna was the zero. In fact one of the oldest zeros was found in khmer inscribed where zero was depicted as a dot in 6th century. I began to surmise that Lith Illakkam would have come into use in the Sigirya period since Hal Lakuna came into existence in sometime during the that period. There was another very interesting finding which bothered me, Manikdena Bricks (which were found in the stupa) which had very clear number 2 of Lith Illakkam and number 1 where number 2 was followed very close to a mark similar to kombuwa inscribed next to old Murthada NNA definitely number 21; and further there was similar mark to Lith illakkam 10. Manikdena was in fifth century and I was wrong in my book. Was it possible that Lith Illakkam gave rise to Khmer or Laos numerals? It is possible since our monks had huge influence on South Eastern histories of Myanmar, Khmer and Laos. Let us begin our journey which I hope to start tomorrow looking for Sinhala Zero again and its evolution.