He used capital vowels for the unknown quantities and capital consonants for the known, thus being able to express several unknowns and several known… - David Eugene Smith

There are only four Hindu writers on algebra whose names are particularly noteworthy. These are Āryabhata, whose Āryabhatiyam (c. 510) included problems in series, permutations, and linear and quadratic equations; , whose Brahmasiddhānta (c. 628) contains a satisfactory rule for solving the quadratic... Mahāvīra, whose Ganita-Sāra Sangraha (c. 850) contains a large number of problems involving series, radicals, and equations; and Bhāskara, whose Bija Ganita (c. 1150)... extends the work through quadratic equations.

1. The human mind is so constructed that it must see every perception in a time-relation—in an order—and every perception of an object in a space-relation—as outside or beside our perceiving selves.
2. These necessary time-relations are reducible to Number, and they are studied in the theory of number, arithmetic and algebra.
3. These necessary space-relations are reducible to Position and Form, and they are studied in geometry.
Mathematics, therefore, studies an aspect of all knowing, and reveals to us the universe as it presents itself, in one form, to mind. To apprehend this and to be conversant with the higher developments of mathematical reasoning, are to have at hand the means of vitalizing all teaching of elementary mathematics.

The fact that arithmetic and geometry took such a notable step forward... was due in no small measure to the introduction of Egyptian papyrus into Greece. This event occurred about 650 B.C., and the invention of printing in the 15th century did not more surely effect a revolution in thought than did this introduction of writing material on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea just before the time of Thales.