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Some of these transliterate this Hindu term as ''jya'' instead of ''jiva''. Maor attributes the translation to Gherardo of Cremona (c. 1150) instead of Robert of Chester (although he doesn't explicitly say Gherardo was "first"). Boyer, however, describes how both Robert of Chester and Gherardo of Cremona, along with several others, were contemporaries who were gathered together in Toledo by the archbishop there, where a school of translation was developed. Boyer says that Robert made the first translation of e.g. the Koran and of al-Khwarizmi's ''Algebra'', among other things. Boyer also says, however, that most of these works are not dated, so it is possible that there is some uncertainty over who first translated the trigonometric work.
Maor also says that, although the first use of half-chords was in the ''Siddhanta'', the first explicit reference to the sine function was in the ''Aryabhatiya'' a century later. There, Aryabhata the elder uses the term ''ardha-jya'', which means "half-chord", which he later shortens to ''jya'' or ''jiva''.
Some of these online works, especially the Maor book, seem quite nice. It would be great if some of this information could make its way into Wikipedia. [[User:Stevenj|—Steven G. Johnson]] 02:48, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)
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