Bhaskara II Acharya/Lilavati/Chapter XIII/269/Historical Note

Historical Note on Bhaskara II Acharya's Lilavati: Example $269$

The specific names of the gods used in this example vary from text to text.

The canonical rendition from Henry Thomas Colebrooke refers to Sambhu and Hari, while pointing out in a footnote that they are also called Siva and Vishnu.

John Taylor refers to Mahadev and Vishnu.

Vera Sanford points out:

... the Hindus had different names for the god Hari according to the various arrangements of his four attributes in his four hands.

She then goes on to remark:

We may imagine that Bhaskara had this in mind, and thought to astound his readers by the number of names that would have to be invented for Siva had that god been given a name for each of the ways in which his ten attributes could be placed in his ten hands.

Sources

• 1816: John Taylor: Lilawati: or A Treatise on Arithmetic and Geometry by Bhascara Acharya: Part $\text {IV}$: Of Transpositions
• 1817: Henry Thomas Colebrooke: Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration: Arithmetic (Lilavati): Chapter $\text {XIII}$: Combination: $269$
• 1930: Vera Sanford: A Short History of Mathematics: Chapter $\text {IV}$: Algebra: Probability and Statistics: Permutations and Combinations