The open manner and timing of the publication of these test dates was criticised by a group of Indian mathematical historians (Plofker et al. 2017[1] and Houben 2018 §3[2]).

[8] It was unearthed by a peasant in the village of Bakhshali, which is near Mardan, in present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

[4] The language of the manuscript,[a] though intended to be Sanskrit, was significantly influenced in its phonetics and morphology by a local artist dialect or dialects, and some of the resultant linguistic peculiarities of the text are shared with Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.

[13] It is probable that most of the rules and examples had been originally composed in Sanskrit, while one of the sections was written entirely in a dialect.

[14] It is possible that the manuscript might be a compilation of fragments from different works composed in a number of language varieties.

[12] Near the colophon appears a broken word rtikāvati, which has been interpreted as the place Mārtikāvata mentioned by Varāhamihira as being in northwestern India (along with Takṣaśilā, Gandhāra etc.

[4] This is a style similar to that of Bhāskara I's commentary on the gaṇita (mathematics) chapter of the Āryabhaṭīya, including the emphasis on verification that became obsolete in later works.

[4] The rules are algorithms and techniques for a variety of problems, such as systems of linear equations, quadratic equations, arithmetic progressions and arithmetico-geometric series, computing square roots approximately, dealing with negative numbers (profit and loss), measurement such as of the fineness of gold, etc.

This formula is contained in Bakshali Manuscript, folio 4v, rule 17 (Kaye III, p. 176) as follows: Ādyor viśeṣa dviguṇam cayasaṃdhiḥ-vibhājitam Rūpādhikaṃ tathā kālaṃ gati sāmyam tadā bhavet.

Dvayāditricayaś caiva dvicayatryādikottaraḥ Dvayo ca bhavate paṃthā kena kālena sāsyatāṃ kriyate?

The accompanying example reads: "The initial speed (of a traveller) is 2 and subsequent daily increment is 3.

[16] The Bakhshali manuscript uses numerals with a place-value system, using a dot as a place holder for zero.

[6] In 2017, samples from 3 folios of the corpus were radiocarbon dated to three different centuries and empires, from AD 224–383 (Indo-Scythian), 680–779 (Turk Shahis), and 885–993 (Saffarid dynasty).

[5][19][6] However, on 14 October 2024, Oxford University having revised its findings from second run of carbon dating tests in 2018, revealed that Bakshali manuscript dates from 799 - 1102 AD (9th - 11th century Approx), https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5a6d1dd7-f20c-4209-adb6-33849f5b08f4/files/snp193c210 The publication of the radio carbon dates, initially via non-academic media, led Kim Plofker, Agathe Keller, Takao Hayashi, Clemency Montelle and Dominik Wujastyk to publicly object to the library making the dates globally available, usurping academic precedence: We express regret that the Bodleian Library kept their carbon-dating findings embargoed for many months, and then chose a newspaper press-release and YouTube as media for a first communication of these technical and historical matters.

The Library thus bypassed standard academic channels that would have permitted serious collegial discussion and peer review prior to public announcements.

While the excitement inspired by intriguing discoveries benefits our field and scholarly research in general, the confusion generated by broadcasting over-eager and carelessly inferred conclusions, with their inevitable aftermath of caveats and disputes, does not.Referring to the detailed reconsideration of the evidence by Plofker et al., Sanskrit scholar, Jan Houben remarked: "If the finding that samples of the same manuscript would be centuries apart is not based on mistakes ... there are still some factors that have evidently been overlooked by the Bodleian research team: the well-known divergence in exposure to cosmic radiation at different altitudes and the possible variation in background radiation due to the presence of certain minerals in exposed, mountainous rock have nowhere been taken into account.

[4] To settle the date of the Bakhshali manuscript, language use and especially palaeography are other major parameters to be taken into account.

This excludes the earlier dates attributed to manuscript folios on which a fully developed form of Śāradā appears.