Mathematical Problem

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?

-- Bhaskaracharya

The answer is quite easy to get! Very poetically put algebric problem.

There are two school of thoughts about the origin. Some say it was originally written in 1150 AD by Bhaskaracharya, and is taken from the book Lilavati, filled with poetic mathematical problems.

Others say the poem is derived from the Manoranjana, a commentary on the Lilavati, written by Rama Krishna Deva(period unknown).

The poem can be found in the book "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."

To remind all of us, 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.