Dear Gunnar, Tim and friends,

thank you very much for putting us in the right historical perspective.
I shall follow up on your notes when I can keep up with my History
readings, something I enjoy to do very much.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Timothy C. Cahill wrote:

It is very unlikely that the Buddhist concept "su~n~na" forms the basis
for the concept of zero. Ancient Indians exploited "zero" in their
grammatical literature quite extensively. Panini defines several "zero-
affixes" so that he can derive words which require stem modifications
in the absence of a suffix. His treatment presumes that the concept is
not new. Most accept that Panini preceded the Buddha, in part because
the *Asthadhyayi* makes no reference to him.