Lilavai

SR No.: 002796
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 500
Language: Sanskrit, Hindi, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 15 MB

Page 56

INTRODUCTION
characters the counterparts of which, say a self-willed prince, a greedy merchant, a vain priest etc., one can come across in any town. The advice given to royalty is at once-interesting and instructive. It would be a great find for Prakrit literature, if Jineśvara's original work in Prakrit is discovered in any ms.-collection.1
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One suspects whether the Prakrit poem Nirvana-Lilavati of Jinesvara was so named in order to distinguish it from an earlier Prakrit poem, the Lilavati of Kutuhala. It is not unlikely; but from their stories analysed above, it is quite clear that these two Prakrit poems have very little in common, so far as the story is concerned. Whether the style etc. of Jinesvara were influenced in any way by Kutuhala's work can be ascertained only when Jineśvara's Prakrit original comes to light.
Lilavati (bhasya) & Nyaya-Lilāvati
Srivatsācārya (A. D. 1025) wrote a Bhasya, called Lilavati on the Kaṇādasūtra. A century or so later Vallabha-nyāyācārya (c. 1150 a. D.) composed a work Nyaya-Lilavati' which deals with the Vaisesika system and has been subjected to so many commentaries.3 These works have no connection whatsoever with our Prakrit poem.
Lilavati of Bhaskarācārya
The medieval Indian mathematician, Bhāskarācārya (middle of the 12th century A. D.) had, as the legend goes, a daughter, Lilavati by name, who became a widow at an early age despite har father's astronomical calculations of the muhurta for her marriage. One of the four parts of his famous work Siddhanta siromani (written in 1150 A. D.) bears the title Lilavati which with Bijaganita covers mathematics proper as distinguished from astronomy discussed in two other parts. It is for his daughter's diversion and pursuit, and every now and then addressed to her, that the author appears to have composed this arithmetical section. In the Lilavati he presents 'his algebraical theorems in the guise of problems set to a fair maiden, the terms of which are chosen from the bees and flowers and other objects familiar to the poets'. This work is
1 I am very thankful to Acharya Jinavijayaji who showed me the transcript of the Jaisalmer MS. of the Lilavati-sära and also placed at my disposal his Hindi summary of the story on which this outline of mine is based.
2 M. Krishnamachariar has noted thus in his History of Classical Sanskrit
Literature, p. 439; "In Vallabhacarya's Nyaya-lilavati (p. 69) we have ' यथा वा स्वेच्छा स्मृतपदार्थसार्थे भवति शालिवाहनो नृपतिरिदानीं श्रृङ्गारसरसीतीरे देव्या लीलावत्या सह ललितमधुरं संगीतकमनुतिष्टतीति ज्ञातम् 1
1 See Sarvadarsanasamgraha pp. 525-26, Poona 1924.