To summarize so far, whuddowehave?
An excellent reference from a top website by a well known western, neutral mathematician quoting:
"So you can see that when no beads have been moved, you need a symbol to represent “0". This symbol is very important, in order to show that this is the number 15730 and not the much smaller number 1573. It was probably in using an abacus that the Hindus of the Indus valley in today’s Pakistan first invented zero."
From Zero to Hero - MSN Encarta
We have the Bakhshali Manuscript, proving that "zero" was used in Ancient Pakistan first.
Bakhshali manuscript
We have Pingala's usage of the number zero in his treatizes which though in Binary, count up using the number zero to reset the count system after 9. Another Ancient Pakistani
We have Panini's early usage, before Pingali, and the Bakhshali's, of the shunya in his works - another Ancient Pakistani
To this the early Mahayanists added the post-Paranirvana development of shunya, that can be traced in Panini’s fourth-century BCE use of it, as an emptiness that is pregnant due to its situation in relation to another concept, like the potential of a term to have a suffix, even when it doesn’t have one. Which was followed slightly-later, by the mathematicians adoption of this same shunya as the zero, place holder, in their creation of the decimal system.
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On Brahamgupta's Multan origins from Ancient Pakistan - he created the rules governing zero's usage
A very good neutral academic reference from Strasbourg University quoting Brahmagupta as from Multan
"
Né en 598 au nord-ouest de l’Inde, à Multan, aujourd’hui au Pakistan, Brahmagupta passera une grande partie de sa vie dans la ville de Bhîlmal sous la protection du souverain Gurjara. "
Brahmagupta
Another academic reference from an Italian researcher quoting Brahmagupta as from Multan
"
Indians became adept mathematicians around 3000BC, but only the usage of zero became well known around the 6th century when Brahmagupta of Multan formulated rules of operation usig it. For 400 years from the 6th century, India was foremost in maths, and zero began its journey around the world. With the rise of trade among Arabs, Greeks and Indians, caravans carried more than goods to China, Arabia and Greece."
http://www.ooffouro.org/ita/RESEARCH/ABQ/OOFFOURO_ABQ%20- ResearchArea.pdf
Yet another academic reference, this time from the University of Wisconsin, quoting Brahamgupta as from Multan, Pakistan
“Exponentiation and Euler measure,” is reminiscent of an interesting
“mistake” made by Brahmagupta of Multan in his 6th century treatise
Brahmasphutasiddantha."
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math/pdf/0203/0203289v2.pdf
What's that.. And ANOTHER reference to Brahmagupta as being Multan-born!! Can it be true??!!
"The eminent Multan-born Indian mathematician Brahmagupta (598 A.D. - 660A.D.) went on to give the rules of operation of zero in his treatise Brahmasphutasiddhanta as though zero were any other number. Today, his rules may sound trivial, but imagine their significance when zero was ‘nothing’ in the rest of the world."
http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/numeracy.pdf
I may have missed a couple there's so many........................