AFAIK, Indians used the little endian notation. Arabs reversed it since they were writing from left to right, but the Europeans did not reverse what the Arabs did. Today of course Indians follow the west in using big endian, but the little endian practice reflects in, for instance, the ka-ṭa-pa-yā-di system used in Indian musicology ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system ).
Katapayadi does seem to be little endian, but the examples I found on Wikipedia of old Indian numerals and their predecessor, Brahmi numerals, seem to be big-endian.
Good point. I didn’t know these examples, so my comment is at least partially wrong. I am puzzled about Brahmi numerals: that is supposedly Ashokan Brahmi, but India did not have numerals at the time of Ashoka.
AFAIK, Indians used the little endian notation. Arabs reversed it since they were writing from left to right, but the Europeans did not reverse what the Arabs did. Today of course Indians follow the west in using big endian, but the little endian practice reflects in, for instance, the ka-ṭa-pa-yā-di system used in Indian musicology ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system ).
Katapayadi does seem to be little endian, but the examples I found on Wikipedia of old Indian numerals and their predecessor, Brahmi numerals, seem to be big-endian.
Good point. I didn’t know these examples, so my comment is at least partially wrong. I am puzzled about Brahmi numerals: that is supposedly Ashokan Brahmi, but India did not have numerals at the time of Ashoka.