By Swami Harshananda
Bhāskarācārya (A.D. 1114-1160) was a celebrated astronomer and mathematician. He wrote the monumental work Siddhāntaśiromani when he was only 36. It has four chapters of which the first, called Līlāvatī, is on arithmetic.
The story goes that he named this part of his work after his daughter Līlāvatī who was widowed at an early age, to immortalize her. Līlāvatī is an extremely popular work written in an interesting and entertaining manner. It has been translated into several languages over the centuries. It includes sections:
- Śunya or zero
- Geometry
- Mensuration
- Kuṭṭaka or indeterminate equations of the first magnitude
Bijagaṇita or algebra is the second chapter. The other two chapters called Ganitādhyāya and Golādhyāya are works on astronomy that include celestial mathematics. The work has several commentaries in Sanskrit.
His other work is called Kārana-kutuhala, a handbook for preparing astronomical tables, is not so well-known.
References[edit]
- The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore