Arabic-Indic/Persian/Hindi numerals and dates

[Robert]

Here's a link that shows what numbers look like in some other languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals

"Arabic-Indic" would be used by countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Persian" would be used in Iran.

"Hindi" would be used on certain older coins from India (prior to European influence). There are many languages in Inida (over 300?) and many of them have slightly differering numerals.

[Robert]

This is the best date converter I could find. It's from Zurich University in Switzerland.

http://www.ori.unizh.ch/hegira.html

Basically the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar based on the Christian year 622 AD, when the prophet Muhammad was chased out of Mecca and welcomed into Medina. His flight/emigration is called the "Hegira" (or "Hejira") and the Latinized "Anno Hegirae" or "Year of the Emigration" is used like we use "AD" to date something. So the year 1 AH corresponds to 622 AD.

Since the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, it's shorter than the Christian calendar. There isn't a "clean" conversion between the two because the Islamic calendar has some variability built into it. I think the above converter works on an algorithm such as this very rough approximation:

(AD date - 622)*1.03=AH date


Here's a little history of Muhammad:

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553918/Muhammad_(prophet).html

[Robert]

Here's a chart showing Modern Chinese numerals:

http://www.math.uvic.ca/courses/math415/Math415Web/china/cnumber.html

Be sure to use only the ones called "Modern". To make the number "12", you place the character for "10" next to the character for "2". By placing them next to each other you add them together. Older Japanese coins read right to left. In the year 1948 (the 23rd year of Emperor Showa, or Hirohito) they changed to read left to right.

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean coins use the same number system.

The identification of Chinese coins are very complicated. The "cash" coins, the ones with the square holes in them, aren't dated. They're categorized by the Emperor's name and mint. Most of the coins issued around the beginning of the Republic of China (1906-1912) are undated. Most coins up to this point don't have mintage totals.

Other Japanese/Chinese/Korean coins use a system of dating based on the Emperor's reign. For example, if a coin was made in the 5th year of the reign of an emperor, the coin would show the name of the emperor and a Chinese "5".


Here's a link to more history/coins.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~kenelks/chineserepublic.htm

[joeyuk]

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