It had been found that five different types of numerations were used in the Sinhala language at the time of the invasion of the Kandyan kingdom by the British.
Abraham Mendis Gunasekera, in A Comprehensive Grammar of Sinhalese Language (1891), described a set of archaic numerals which were no longer in use.
Abraham Mendis Gunesekera uses modern Sinhala letters and vowel modifiers which is the Version 2 of Lith illakkam.
In other words, ‘Sunayathana’ is filled with a kodiya will multiply by ten of the number which is on the left side of Sunayasthana.
Abrham Mendis Gunesekera clearly states that instead of Hal lakuna of the Sinhala language, a ‘Shunaya binduawa’ (zero) can be used to fill the ‘Shunayasthana’ (Zero Place Holder).
[2] Even to this day, years are given in the front page of popular ephemeris in Sri Lanka, ‘Panchanga Lith’ using ‘Katapayadiya’.
This is numeration is known as Katapayadiya since number one is allocated with the Sinhala letters ‘Ka’ (ක), ‘Ta’ (ට), ‘Pa’ (ප ) and ‘Ya’ (ය) .
Katapayadiya was widely used by South Indian astrologers and some of Chola rock inscriptions in Sri Lanka have dates inscribed in Katapyadia.
The method of page numbering of Ola using Sinhala Swara with consonants had been common tradition in the ancient and recent history of Sri Lanka.
Having investigated paging of Ola leaves, the majority of palm leaf manuscripts which are in the museum had Sinhala consonants with ‘swara’ (ස්වර) (combinations of sounds) for numbering.
The number of combinations which can be made out of consonants is 544 and once the first 544 finishes, paging begins with the second cycle of 544 with the word ‘dwi:’ (ද්වී) or second in English.
Bhootha Anka was created by ancient Sanskrit mathematicians and astronomers prior to the invention of a symbol for zero.
Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat, in his article ‘Ancient Sanskrit Mathematics: An oral tradition and a written literature”, describes Bhootha Anka as object-number metronomic expressions.
These numerals were used to record donations given by royals and other people who were belonged to the upper echelon of ancient Sinhala society to Buddhist temples.
The introduction of zero as a symbol denoting the absence of units or of certain powers of ten in a number represented by the Hindu numerals has been rated as one of the greatest practical inventions of all time”.
Colombo and Kandy museum were visited many instances to study Ola leaf pagination by the researchers.
Other country museums that are reputed to host to Sinhala Ola leaf collections are in Arizona, US, Brussels, Belgium and Netherlands.