Lilavati

I saw a copy of this book by Bhaskara II which Emperor Akhbar had asked to be commissioned in Farsi at the Mughal Exhibition in the British Library in London. It was beautiful. But the story resonated with me and I quote from the wiki site

His book on arithmetic is the source of interesting legends that assert that it was written for his daughter, Lilavati. A Persian translation of the Lilavati was commissioned in 1587 by Emperor Akbar and it was executed by Faizi. According to Faizi, Lilavati was Bhaskara II’s daughter. Bhaskara II studied Lilavati's horoscope and predicted that she would remain both childless and unmarried. To avoid this fate, he ascertained an auspicious moment for his daughter's wedding and to alert his daughter at the correct time, he placed a cup with a small hole at the bottom of a vessel filled with water, arranged so that the cup would sink at the beginning of the propitious hour. He put the device in a room with a warning to Lilavati to not go near it. In her curiosity though, she went to look at the device and a pearl from her bridal dress accidentally dropped into it, thus upsetting it. The auspicious moment for the wedding thus passed unnoticed leaving a devastated Bhaskara II. It is then that he promised his daughter to write a book in her name, one that would remain till the end of time as a good name is akin to a second life

now that’s a dad for you…

and while researching this, came across this place in Rajasthan..what a shame its falling to pieces..