which are strikingly similar. Numerals and zero The Bakhshali manuscript uses numerals with a place-value system, using a dot as a place holder for zero. The dot symbol came to be called the shunya-bindu (literally, the dot of the empty place). References to the concept are found in Subandhu's Vasavadatta, which has been dated between 385 and 465 by the scholar Maan Singh. Prior to the 2017 carbon dating a 9th-century inscription of zero on the wall of a temple in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, was once thought to be the oldest Indian use of a zero symbol. Date In 2017, samples from 3 folios of the corpus were radiocarbon dated to three different centuries and empires, from AD 224–383 (Indo-Scythian), 680–779 (Turk Shahis), and 885–993 (Saffarid dynasty). If the dates are valid, it is not known how folios from different centuries came to collected, and buried. The publication of the radio carbon dates, initially via non academic media, led Kim Plofker, Agathe Keller, Takao Hayashi, Clemency Montelle and Dominik Wujastyk to publicly object to the library making the dates globally available, usurping academic precedence: Referring to the detailed reconsideration of the evidence by Plofker et al., Sanskrit scholar, Jan Houben remarked: {{Blockquote |text="If the finding that samples of the same manuscript would be centuries apart is not based on mistakes ... there are still some factors that have evidently been overlooked by the Bodleian research team: the well-known divergence in exposure to cosmic radiation at different altitudes and the possible variation in background radiation due to the presence of certain minerals in exposed, mountainous rock have nowhere been taken into account."}} Prior to the proposed radiocarbon dates of the 2017 study, most scholars agreed that the physical manuscript was a copy of a more ancient text, whose date had to be estimated partly on the basis of its content. Hoernlé thought that the manuscript was from the 9th century, but the original was from the 3rd or 4th century. Indian scholars assigned it an earlier date. Datta assigned it to the "early centuries of the Christian era". Channabasappa dated it to AD 200–400, on the grounds that it uses mathematical terminology different from that of Aryabhata. Hayashi noted some similarities between the manuscript and Bhaskara I's work (AD 629), and said that it was "not much later than Bhaskara I". To settle the date of the Bakhshali manuscript, language use