volume 24 of the Book of the Later Han as one of the books studied by Ma Xu (??). Based on the known dates of his younger brother Ma Rong (??) this places the date of composition no later than 93 CE.

Most scholars believe that Chinese mathematics and the mathematics of the ancient Mediterranean world had developed more or less independently up to the time when The Nine Chapters reached its final form. The method of chapter 7 was not found in Europe until the 13th century, and the method of