Līlāvatī — Mathematics as Play
From Līlāvatī, taught by Acharya T Krishnatrey. This lesson is free to read.
Around **1150 CE** the astronomer **Bhāskara II** (Bhāskarācārya) opened his great *Siddhānta Śiromaṇi* with a book of arithmetic so graceful that it was studied, recited and loved for **seven hundred years**. Its rules are terse; its examples are little poems — a swarm of bees, a broken necklace, a peacock and a snake — and behind each one lies exact mathematics. This is **līlā**: calculation as play. <pre data-block="quote">Mathematics is not dry calculation — it is the poetry of logic, the music of numbers. — after Bhāskarācārya, Līlāvatī</pre>