One Point everybody misses is that the zero has not been defined in this manuscript..It would take people from the Gangetic Plain to do that.....and even if the evidence of zero can be found in NWFP, it just shows that they were able to do with because of awareness of the Mahayana Buddhist concept of Shunyata/Emptiness.................
It is the obsession with emptiness around 100 BC onwards that Mahayana Buddhists and Vedantins (post Brahma Sutra) had that led to the development of zero...the colder, drier climate of NWFP also helped with preservation, which has been the bane of subcontinental texts..............
It is not the Abrahamics of that time (Jews,Christians,Essenes,Samaritans) who invented the zero...You need to have a radically different conception of Reality vis-a-vis the Abrahamics to come up with Zero
Even Buddha was forming his own ideas about nothingness with the Arupa Jhanas
- fifth jhāna: infinite space (Pali ākāsānañcāyatana, Skt. ākāśānantyāyatana),
- sixth jhāna: infinite consciousness (Pali viññāṇañcāyatana, Skt. vijñānānantyāyatana),
- seventh jhāna: infinite nothingness (Pali ākiñcaññāyatana, Skt. ākiṃcanyāyatana),
- eighth jhāna: neither perception nor non-perception (Pali nevasaññānāsaññāyatana, Skt. naivasaṃjñānāsaṃjñāyatana).
and before that there was the Brihadarayanaka Upanishad
Springing forth from these elements itself
solid knowledge is destroyed
when they are destroyed—
after death no intelligence remains
And of course there is the Nasadiya Sukta:
Which talks of the One arising suddenly out of Nothingness and then splitting up to make Reality
The Indians are just trolling.
The Zero discovery came from ancient Pakistan.
So what is Buddha had his enlightenment in Bihar. Buddha was born in modern day Nepal.
Siddhartha was born in Nepal, the Buddha was born in Bihar...90% of his 500 monks who would later spread Buddhism, came from Magadha region...only two of his monks were from Balkh