None of these early Indian inscriptions gave any evidence of place value or of a zero. That would make our place value possible. Hindu literature gives some evidence that the zero might have been known before our era. But we have no actual inscriptions containing such symbols before the ninth century. The first definite external reference to the Hindu numerals is contained in a note of Severus Sebokht, a bishop who lived in Mesopotamia about 650. Since he speaks of nine signs the zero seems to have been known to him.
