Whilst making love a necklace broke.
 A row of pearls mislaid.
 One sixth fell to the floor.
 One fifth upon the bed.
 The young woman saved one third of them.
 One tenth were caught by her lover.
 If six pearls remained upon the string
 How many pearls were there altogether?

In a previous life I studied mathematics at university. Before I even started my studies, I had always felt that there was a connection between a mathematical proof and a poem. Usually, both are divided into lines. They tell “truths” (though in both maths and poetry, these may sometimes be paradoxical, nonsensical even). The best ones have an indescribable beauty and inevitability to them. They are a product of an individual mind, intent on searching for something and finding it.

It was with some pleasure then, a year into my studies, that I discovered classic Indian mathematics. Indian mathematicians essentially invented modern mathematics in the first millenium: they created our place value system; discovered the zero we use today as a number and a concept; were the first people to create a mathematical definition of infinity; and they wrote virtually all of their mathematical works in verse.

I found this problem-poem in a book called The Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah. In it he says: “Numerical tables, Indian astronomical and mathematical texts, as well as mystical, theological, legendary and cosmological works were nearly always written in verse… From this type of game, the Indian scholars went on to use imagery to express numbers; the choice of synonyms [for whole numbers] was almost infinite and these were used in keeping with the rules of Sanskrit versification to achieve the required effect. Thus the transcription of a numerical table or of the most arid of mathematical formulae resembled an epic poem.”

This poem was originally written in 1150 by Bhaskaracharya, a mathematician and mechanic and is taken from a book he wrote called the Lilavati, filled with poetic mathematical problems.

The most appealing thing I find about it, is that it takes a simple algebraic problem and dresses it up in a lovely little human drama: falling pearls interrupting a lover’s embrace. Maths was never presented hand in hand with lovemaking when I studied it! {And the answer is fairly easy to get… try it! It’s not hard!}

— David

Minstrels Links

Poem #599, Geometry – Rita Dove
Poem #601, Hall and Knight – E. V. Rieu
Poem #604, Euclid Alone Has Looked On Beauty Bare – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poem #797, Big Whirls Have Little Whorls – Lewis F. Richardson
Poem #805, Rigid Body Sings – James Maxwell
Poem #1205, Love and Tensor Algebra – Stanislaw Lem