Ball wrote "A Short Account of the history of Mathematics", seems to have been first published in 1888, and went through four editions with revisions by the author, the last one which appeared in 1908. Dover published an edition in 1960, and also published an edition in 2010 .
(Wiki) Walter William Rouse Ball, known as W. W. Rouse Ball (14 August 1850 – 4 April 1925), was a British mathematician, lawyer, and fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1878 to 1905.....Educated at University College School, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1870, became a scholar and first Smith's Prizeman, and gained his BA in 1874 as second Wrangler. He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1875, and remained one for the rest of his life.
A quote from Ball:
The Hindoos, like the Chinese, have pretended that they are the most ancient people on the face of the earth, and that to them all sciences owe their creation. But it is probable that these pretensions have no foundation; and in fact no science or useful art (except a rather fantastic architecture and sculpture) can be definitely traced back to the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula prior to the Aryan invasion. This invasion seems to have taken place at some time in the latter half of the fifth century or in the sixth century, when a tribe of Aryans entered India by the north-west frontier, and established themselves as rulers over a large part of the country. Their descendants, wherever they have kept their blood pure, may still be recognised by their superiority over the races they originally conquered; but as is the case with the modern Europeans, they found the climate trying and gradually degenerated. For the first two or three centuries they, however, retained their intellectual vigour, and produced one or two writers of great ability.
For the humor-impaired, evidently W.W. Rouse Ball had not read his own country man's work:
Charles Whish (1834), "Hindu Quadrature of the circle and the infinite series of the proportion of the circumference to the diameter exhibited in the four Sastras, the Tantra Sahgraham", Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 3 (3): 509–523, doi:10.1017/S0950473700001221
Whish wrote about some impure-bloods who lived in the tropical heat:
(Wiki) the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics was a school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala, India, which included among its members: Parameshvara, Neelakanta Somayaji, Jyeshtadeva, Achyuta Pisharati, Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri and Achyuta Panikkar. The school flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and the original discoveries of the school seems to have ended with Narayana Bhattathiri (1559–1632).
