GERBERT
CHAPTER IV
HOW GUPTA AND MOHAMMED AND GERBERT WROTE THEIR NUMBERS
"No Story To-Night," wrote the StoryTeller in large letters on a piece of paper, smiling as he did it. Then he pinned the notice on the edge of the shelf just above the fireplace, went back to his easy-chair, opened his curious book, and pretended to read.
A few minutes later a certain small lady tiptoed in and then tiptoed out again. There was the sound of whispering and quiet laughing in the hall, and then the door opened softly, the Tease once more tiptoed in, crossed out the " No," and with her pencil wrote above it the words " A Real Good."
Then the Crowd rushed in and all read aloud, A real good story to-night."
" What is the use in arguing with the Crowd?" asked the Story-Teller.
" No use at all," answered the Crowd.
NoStoryToNight
THE STORY-TELLER'S NOTICE AND HOW IT WAS CHANGED
But all this time the Story-Teller was just as anxious to begin as the Crowd was to listen. This, then, is the story he told :
It was a hot day, and Gupta (goop'tä), brown of skin and brown of dress, played under the shade of the bamboo on the banks of the Indus (în'dus), the great stream that gives the name to India.
Gupta was glad to be out of the hot sun, glad to splash in the water with a branch of bamboo, glad to be living in that ancient land ancient even when he played by the Indus two thousand years ago. Gupta had never been to school, for there were no
OF LONG AGO
schools like ours to attend, and so he could neither read nor write, and he had little idea of Europe and none whatever of America.
Of all the people he knew, only the priests in the temple near his home could read and write, and no one in all Europe or A ia or Africa had ever heard of America -for this was many hundred years before Columbus was born.
ANCIENT HINDU NUMERALS
The first four numerals, for I, 2, 3, and 4, as Gupta learned themmore than two thousand years ago
The priests soon noticed that Gupta was brighter than the other boys in the village, and so they took him to the temple and taught him to read and write. They also taught him to write the numbers to four, which was as far as they themselves were certain how to write. them, but these numbers did not look at all like most of ours.
The first three numerals were simply straight marks, like those the Romans used, and the four looked like our plus sign.
Gupta learned to write numbers with a sharp iron pencil which scratched slightly into a piece of palm leaf. Books were always
PALM-LEAF ARITHMETIC
An old arithmetic from India, written on strips made from the leaf of a kind of palm
written in this way in India at the time that Gupta lived, and indeed for many years thereafter, and they looked very different from the book which you are reading.