The numerals

You may know that the numerical digits used in English are called “Arabic numerals,” as opposed to, for instance, Roman numerals (I, V, X, etc.). What’s more, if you’re familiar with the numerals used in Hindi, you might have noticed that they, too, resemble English numerals. There’s a reason for all of these similarities: today’s English numerals are indeed descended from the ones that were used by Arabic-speaking mathematicians in the medieval era. Unsurprisingly, Urdu numerals are derived from Arabic too. (The numerals used by modern Arabic speakers are a bit different from all of these.) What may be more surprising, though, is that medieval Arabic numerals were in turn based on numerals that were developed in India, and which eventually developed into the ones used in modern Hindi.

After centuries of change, you can still see resemblances across scripts. The most fundamental similarity is that even though Urdu is written from right to left, numbers are written from left to right! Note the similarities among the digits in all three scripts:

You can see that ۱ and ۹ are very similar to 1 and 9. ۲ resembles a 2 rotated 90º, ۳ looks like a 3 rotated 90º and with a tail attached, ۴ looks a bit like a mirror-image 4 (especially in the open-topped handwritten style), and ۷ looks much like a 7 rotated 180º.

The remaining Urdu numbers are less like their English counterparts, but there are some elements that are useful to notice. ۶ looks like a mirror image of ۲, and ۸ is something like a rotated ۷. Lastly, ۵ looks like an upside-down heart, and ۰ is just a dot. A hamza, in either in its standard or squiggle form, is used as a decimal point.

Here is how the numbers are written:

Dates and other numerical marks

A special symbol is often used when writing dates. A stylized version of the word sana سنہ, Arabic for ‘year’ (usually written san सन् in Hindi) is placed under the numerals, like so:

؁۲۰۲۳

‘2023’

Often, years are simply written as a number, or with the ؁ mark. If there is no further marker, they can usually be assumed to refer to the Gregorian calendar. We can also specify which calendar we mean by adding a small initial letter standing for the relevant system. Most often, this is an ain (for عیسوی īsvī ‘Christian’) to indicate the Gregorian calendar or a do-chashmī he (for ہجری hijrī ‘Hijri’) for the Islamic calendar:

With other abbreviations, Vikrami and other calendars can also be specified. On occasion, you may also see the ؄ symbol used instead of ؁. This is an abbreviated form of the Sanskrit word samvat and is used for dates in the Shaka calendar.

Numbers are sometimes combined with words and a few special marks. Numerals are sometimes written above the equivalent words, just as you might see them in parentheses in English, e.g. “one (1).” Numbers can be indicated with ؀. For example, ؀۲۴ ‘24’ might appear on its own or in superscript above چوبیس chaubīs ‘twenty-four.’ A slashlike mark is also sometimes used to mark a number, especially a day of the month:

۱۴؍ اپریل ؁۱۸۹۱ء

‘14 April 1891’

Footnotes are marked with, e.g., ؂۱۵ ‘footnote 15,’ and references to page numbers with, e.g., ؃۳۱۲,, an abbreviation for صفحہ ۳۱۲ safha 312 ‘page 312.’

Insight

In the past, special symbols were also used for noting amounts of money, as in this advertisement for perfumes:
 
Advertisement from Dilgudāz. Image source: British Library.

These symbols are quite complicated and are explained in C.M. Naim’s Introductory Urdu (the double slashes mean “ditto”).

Review

Exercises