This is a fantastic story about an East India Company mathematician claiming the Hindus understood the Binomial theorem in whole numbers. Unfortunately, we hardly were taught all of this... Year was 1790 and the city was Calcutta. Reuben Burrow, a Company surveyor, dropped a Sanskrit puzzle into Asiatic Researches. The puzzle goes like this: A raja's palace has 8 doors. Open them one at a time, two at a time, three, on up to all eight together. How many ways are possible? The Sanskrit rule goes 8, 28, 56, 70, 56, 28, 8, 1. Add it up, and we get 255. Look closely and you find those are binomial coefficients. Europe called the same pattern Pascal's triangle. Burrow was a tenant farmer's son from Leeds. Walked four days to London at 18, taught himself Sanskrit once he got to India. He worked the rule through and wrote that the Hindoos (his words) understood it in whole numbers "to the full as well as Briggs, and much better than Pascal". The paper never named the book but the puzzle matches Bhaskara's Lilavati, written around 1150 CE. Source: Asiatic Researches vol 2, Calcutta 1790, pp 487-497. Photo 1: p 494, the "much better than Pascal" line.. Photo 2: p 495, the palace puzzle and the rule setup Photo 2: p 496, the total 255 and Burrow's proof. All are 1790 print, public domain.