The Bakhshali manuscript is a bunch of old papers that were found with lots of numbers and symbols written on them. It was found a long time ago in a place called Bakhshali, which is in what is now Pakistan.
These papers are really important because they have some of the oldest examples of mathematics in the world! Math is like a puzzle or game that uses numbers to solve problems, like how many apples you have in your basket or how tall you are.
The people who wrote on these papers a long time ago used a funny way of writing numbers, different from what we use today. For example, they used dots instead of lines to show the number of things, like dots on dice.
Even though they wrote in a different way than we do today, they were really smart because they figured out how to use math to solve problems. They were able to add, subtract, and even do some more complicated things like square roots!
Scientists and historians have been studying these papers for a long time to learn more about how people in the past used math to solve problems. By learning about the past, we can understand more about how we use math today and maybe even discover something new!