1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia

Counting rods
Counting  rods (traditional Chinese: 籌 ; simplified Chinese: 筹 ;
pinyin: chóu; Japanese: 算木; rōmaji: sangi) are small bars,
typically 3–14  cm long, that were used by mathematicians for
calculation in ancient East Asia. They are placed either horizontally
or vertically to represent any integer or rational number.

The written forms based on them are called rod numerals. They

are a true positional numeral system with digits for 1–9 and a blank
for 0, from the Warring states period (circa 475 BCE) to the 16th
century.

Contents
History
Using counting rods Yang Hui (Pascal's) triangle, as
Place value depicted by Zhu Shijie in 1303,
Rod numerals using rod numerals.
Fractions
Rod calculus
Unicode
See also
References
External links

History
Counting rods were used by ancient Chinese for more than two thousand years. In 1954, forty-odd counting
rods of the Warring States period were found in Zuǒjiāgōngshān (左家公山) Chu Grave No.15 in Changsha,
Hunan.[1][2]

In 1973, archeologists unearthed a number of wood scripts from a Han dynasty tomb in Hubei. On one of
the wooden scripts was written: “当利二月定算 ”. This is one of the earliest examples of using counting rod
numerals in writing.

In 1976, a bundle of Western Han counting rods made of bones was unearthed from Qianyang County in
Shaanxi.[3] The use of counting rods must predate it; Sunzi, a military strategist at the end of Spring and
Autumn, mention their use to make calculations to win the war before being in the battle[4]; Laozi (Warring
states period) said "a good calculator doesn't use counting rods".[5] The Book  of  Han recorded: "they
calculate with bamboo, diameter one fen, length six cun, arranged into a hexagonal bundle of two hundred

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 1/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia
seventy one pieces". At first calculating rods were round in cross section, but by the time of the Sui dynasty
triangular rods were used to represent positive numbers and rectangular rods were used for negative
numbers.

After the abacus flourished, counting rods were abandoned except in Japan, where rod numerals developed
into a symbolic notation for algebra.

Using counting rods
Counting rods represent digits by the number of rods, and the
perpendicular rod represents five. To avoid confusion, vertical
and horizontal forms are alternately used. Generally, vertical rod
numbers are used for the position for the units, hundreds, ten
thousands, etc., while horizontal rod numbers are used for the
tens, thousands, hundred thousands etc. It is written in Sunzi
Suanjing that "one is vertical, ten is horizontal".[6]

Red rods represent positive numbers and black rods represent

negative numbers.[7] Ancient Chinese clearly understood
negative numbers and zero (leaving a blank space for it), though rod numeral place value from
they had no symbol for the latter. The Nine Chapters on the Yongle Encyclopedia: 71,824
Mathematical Art, which was mainly composed in the first
century CE, stated "(when using subtraction)
subtract same signed numbers, add different
signed numbers, subtract a positive number from
zero to make a negative number, and subtract a
negative number from zero to make a positive
number".[8][9] Later, a go stone was sometimes
used to represent zero.

This alternation of vertical and horizontal rod Japanese counting board with grids
numeral form is very important to understanding
written transcription of rod numerals on

manuscripts correctly. For instance, in Licheng suanjin, 81 was transcribed as , and 108 was

transcribed as ; it is clear that the latter clearly had a blank zero on the "counting board" (i.e., floor or

mat), even though on the written transcription, there was no blank. In the same manuscript, 405 was
transcribed as , with a blank space in between for obvious reasons, and could in no way be

interpreted as "45" . In other words, transcribed rod numerals may not be positional, but on the

counting board, they are positional. is an exact image of the counting rod number 405 on a table
top or floor.

Place value

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 2/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia
The value of a number depends on its physical
position on the counting board. A 9 at the
rightmost position on the board stands for 9.
Moving the batch of rods representing 9 to the left
one position (i.e., to the tens place) gives 9[] or 90.
Shifting left again to the third position (to the
hundreds place) gives 9[][] or 900. Each time one
shifts a number one position to the left, it is
multiplied by 10. Each time one shifts a number
one position to the right, it is divided by 10. This
applies to single-digit numbers or multiple-digit
numbers.

Song dynasty mathematician Jia Xian used hand-

written Chinese decimal orders 步十百千萬 as rod
numeral place value, as evident from a facsimile
A checker counting board diagram in an 18th-
from a page of Yongle Encyclopedia. He arranged
century Japanese mathematics textbook
七萬一千八百二十四 as

counting rod numerals in grids in a Japanese

mathematic book

七一八二四
萬千百十步
He treated the Chinese order numbers as place value markers, and 七一八二四 became place value decimal
number. He then wrote the rod numerals according to their place value:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 3/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia

七 一 八 二 四
萬 千 百 十 步
In Japan, mathematicians put counting rods on a counting board, a sheet of cloth with grids, and used only
vertical forms relying on the grids. An 18th-century Japanese mathematics book has a checker counting
board diagram, with the order of magnitude symbols "千百十一分厘毛“(thousand, hundred, ten, unit, tenth,
hundredth, thousandth).[10]

Positive numbers
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Vertical  

Horizontal  

Negative numbers
  0 −1 −2 −3 −4 −5 −6 −7 −8 −9

Vertical  

Horizontal  

Examples:

231  

5089  

−407    

−6720  

Rod numerals
Rod numerals are a positional numeral system made from shapes of counting rods. Positive numbers are
written as they are and the negative numbers are written with a slant bar at the last digit. The vertical bar in
the horizontal forms 6–9 are drawn shorter to have the same character height.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 4/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia
A circle (〇) is used for 0. Many historians think it was imported from Indian numerals by Gautama Siddha
in 718,[8] but some think it was created from the Chinese text space filler " □ ", and others think that the
Indians acquired it from China, because it resembles a Confucian philosophical symbol for nothing.[11]

In the 13th century, Southern Song mathematicians changed digits for 4, 5, and 9 to reduce strokes.[11] The
new horizontal forms eventually transformed into Suzhou numerals. Japanese continued to use the
traditional forms.

Positive numbers (traditional)

  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Vertical

Horizontal

Negative numbers (traditional)

  0 −1 −2 −3 −4 −5 −6 −7 −8 −9

Vertical

Positive numbers (Southern Song)

  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Vertical

Horizontal

Examples:

Traditional Southern Song

231

5089

−407

−6720

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 5/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia
In Japan, Seki Takakazu developed the rod numerals into symbolic notation for algebra and drastically
improved Japanese mathematics.[8] After his period, the positional numeral system using Chinese numeral
characters was developed, and the rod numerals were used only for the plus and minus signs.

Western Seki After Seki

x + y + 246 甲乙 甲 乙 二四六
5x − 6y 甲 乙 五甲 六乙
7xy 甲乙 七甲乙
8x / y N/A 乙 八甲
Fractions
A fraction was expressed with rod numerals as two rod numerals
one on top of another (without any other symbol, like the modern
horizontal bar).

Rod calculus
The method for using counting rods for mathematical calculation
Fraction 1/7
was called rod calculation or rod calculus (筹算). Rod calculus can
be used for a wide range of calculations, including finding the value
of π, finding square roots, cube roots, or higher order roots, and solving a system of linear equations.

Before the introduction of written zero, there was no way to distinguish 10007 and 107 in written forms
except by inserting a bigger space between 1 and 7, and so rod numerals were used only for doing
calculations with counting rods. Once written zero came into play, the rod numerals had become
independent, and their use indeed outlives the counting rods, after its replacement by abacus. One variation
of horizontal rod numerals, the Suzhou numerals is still in use for book-keeping and in herbal medicine
prescription in Chinatowns in some parts of the world.

Unicode
Unicode 5.0 includes counting rod numerals in their own block in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane
(SMP) from U+1D360 to U+1D37F. The code points for the horizontal digits 1–9 are U+1D360 to U+1D368
and those for the vertical digits 1–9 are U+1D369 to U+1D371. The former are called unit digits and the
latter are called tens  digits,[12][13] which is opposite of the convention described above. Zero should be
represented by U+3007 ( 〇 , ideographic number zero) and the negative sign should be represented by
U+20E5 (combining reverse solidus overlay).[14] As these were recently added to the character set and since
they are included in the SMP, font support may still be limited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 6/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia

Counting Rod Numerals[1][2]

Official Unicode Consortium code chart (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D360.pdf) (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+1D36x

U+1D37x

Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 10.0

2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

See also
Rod calculus
Abacus
Chinese mathematics
Unicode numerals
Tian yuan shu

References
1. Ancient China Math (http://www.tutorvista.com/math/ancient-china-math) – Copyright © 2010 –
TutorVista.com, All rights reserved.
2. 中国独特的计算工具 (https://web.archive.org/web/20071121050945/http://mkd.lyge.cn/zhanzheng/a04/x
3/040.htm), archived from the original (http://mkd.lyge.cn/zhanzheng/a04/x3/040.htm) on 2007-11-21,
retrieved 2007-12-16
3. Wu Wenjun ed, Grand Series of History of Chinese Mathematics, vol 1, p371
4. 孫子: 夫未戰而廟算勝者，得算多也
5. 老子: 善數者不用籌策。
6. Chinese Wikisource (http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%AD%AB%E5%AD%90%E7%AE%97%E7%B
6%93) 孫子算經 先識其位，一從十橫，百立千僵，千十相望，萬百相當。
:
夢溪筆談: 如算法用赤籌、黑籌，以別正負之數。
7. Chinese Wikisource,
8. Wáng, Qīngxiáng (1999), Sangi o koeta otoko (The man who exceeded counting rods), Tokyo: Tōyō
Shoten, ISBN 4-88595-226-3
9. Chinese Wikisource (http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9D%E7%AB%A0%E7%AE%97%E8%A
1%93)正負術曰 同名相除，異名相益，正無入負之，負無入正之。其異名相除，同名相益，正無入正
:
之，負無入負之。
10. Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols, p 369, MIT Press, 1970
11. Qian, Baocong (1964), Zhongguo Shuxue Shi (The history of Chinese mathematics), Beijing: Kexue
Chubanshe
12. Christopher Cullen et John H. Jenkins, Proposal to add Chinese counting rod numerals to Unicode and
ISO/IEC 10646 (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04227-count-rod.pdf), 2004
13. The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0 – Electronic edition (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D360.pd
f) (PDF), Unicode, Inc., 2006, p. 558
14. The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0 – Electronic edition (http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/
ch15.pdf#G28213) (PDF), Unicode, Inc., 2006, pp. 499–500

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 7/8
1/2/2018 Counting rods - Wikipedia

External links
For a look of the ancient counting rods, and further explanation, you can visit the sites

https://web.archive.org/web/20010217175749/http://www.math.sfu.ca/histmath/China/Beginning/Rod.html
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52557.html
Counting rods in China (http://big5.ce.cn/gate/big5/cathay.ce.cn/history/200612/05/t20061205_967697
0.shtml) (in Chinese) (Translate to English: Google (https://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3
A%2F%2Fbig5.ce.cn%2Fgate%2Fbig5%2Fcathay.ce.cn%2Fhistory%2F200612%2F05%2Ft20061205_
9676970.shtml&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=zh&tl=en&edit-text=), Bing (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.
aspx?from=zh&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fbig5.ce.cn%2Fgate%2Fbig5%2Fcathay.ce.cn%2Fhistory%2
F200612%2F05%2Ft20061205_9676970.shtml))
Counting rods and go stones of a Japanese mathematician around 1872 (http://www.city.saitama.jp/ww
w/contents/1044324363225/index.html) (in Japanese) (Translate to English: Google (https://translate.g
oogle.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.city.saitama.jp%2Fwww%2Fcontents%2F104432436322
5%2Findex.html&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=ja&tl=en&edit-text=), Bing (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/b
v.aspx?from=ja&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.city.saitama.jp%2Fwww%2Fcontents%2F104432436
3225%2Findex.html))

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Counting_rods&oldid=811300483"

This page was last edited on 20 November 2017, at 19:27.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark
of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods 8/8