C.R.Rao quoted in }Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis" - Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

We believe that the idea underlying this integral concept of statistics finds adequate expression in the ancient Indian work Sankhya in |Sanskrit the usual meaning is ‘number‘, but the original root meaning was ‘determinate knowledge’ in the Atharva Veda a derivative from Sankhyata occurs both in the sense of ‘well-known‘ as well as ‘numbered’. The lexicons give both meanings. Amarakosa gives Sankhya – vicarana (deliberation, analysis) as well as ‘number’; also Sankhyavan – panditah (wise, learned).

He sometimes spoke of "zero" as the symbol of the absolute (Nirguna Brahman) of the extreme monistic school of Hindu philosophy, that is, the reality to which no qualities can be attributed, which cannot be defined or described by words and which is completely beyond the reach of the human mind. According to Ramanujan the appropriate symbol was the number "zero" which is the absolute negation of all attributes.

If Mahalanobis had done nothing else, if he had only founded Sankhya, the Indian Journal of Statistics, even so his contribution to science would have been outstanding and memorable. Sankhya is an international journal in the sense that it receives contributions from statisticians and probabilists the world over; international as in the sense of maintaining a standard comparable to the best in the world. And this has been from the very beginning. This is something that cannot be said of many scientific journals in the country