A thrill ran down my spine as I looked at the Bakhshali manuscript, the first recorded instance of “0” being used mathematically as a number in its own right. This was at London Science Museum’s exhibition “Illuminating India: 500 Years of Science and Innovation” in 2018, as part of India-UK Year of Culture.

In an exhibition that was full of more visually appealing objects such as ancient astrolabes (intricate artwork in metal), surgical instruments based on Sushruta Samhita (the first treatise on surgery dating back to 6th century BCE) and prototypes of instruments and the camera used on India’s space mission to Mars, the unglamorous Bakhshali manuscript was the showstopper. Now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the document was discovered in a field in Punjab in undivided India

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