What the learned calculators (sankhyah) describe as the originator of intelligence, being directed by a wise being (satpurusha) and which alone is the primal cause (bija) of all knowns (vyakta), I venerate that invisible Supreme Being as well as that science of calculation with unknowns […] Since questions can scarcely be solved without the reasoning of algebra—not at all by those of dull perceptions—I shall speak, therefore, of the operations of analysis.
— BHĀSKARA I