The Krishna Key

by Ashwin Sanghi

‘So 786 is sacred in Islam because of the Abjad value of the first Qur’anic verse?’ asked Radhika. ‘There is another explanation offered by Vedic scholars about the Islamic 786,’ answered Saini. ‘As you know, the modern numerals that we use in the Western world are commonly called Arabic numerals. What is often forgotten is the fact that Arabic numerals originally started out as Hindu numerals. What the world uses today—including the zero—was the numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians in which a sequence of digits could be read as a number. Persian mathematicians in India adopted the Hindu numeral system and passed it on to the Arabs further west. The Arabs shared the system with Europe during the Middle Ages, and hence, the system came to be known as Arabic.’ ‘So the numerals that we commonly use today across the world—zero through nine—are actually Hindu numbers?’ asked Radhika. ‘Yes, absolutely. Now if I take the three digits—7, 8 and 6—and write them in Hindu numerals, what do they look like?’