CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 62 of 120

Correct — B, Faizi. Abu al-Faiz ibn Mubarak, known as Faizi, rendered the Lilavati into Persian around 1587. He was the elder brother of Abul Fazl, tutor to Akbar's sons, sadr of several regions from 1581 and poet laureate of the court from 1588, and he also turned the Yogavasistha into Persian and wrote the romance Nal o Daman before his death at Lahore on 15 October 1595. The Lilavati is the arithmetic book of the Siddhanta Shiromani, the twelfth-century treatise of Bhaskara II, and its 277 verses on measurement, progressions and permutations were exactly the kind of practical Sanskrit learning Akbar's translation programme wanted in Persian.

• (a)Abul Fazl — Abul Fazl was Faizi's younger brother and the court's historian — the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari are his. He supervised much of the translation programme but the Lilavati is credited to Faizi.
• (c)Fathullah Shirazi — Fathullah Shirazi was the Iranian polymath Akbar brought from Bijapur, an engineer and astronomer who reformed the revenue calendar into the Ilahi era and designed mechanical devices. He was not the translator of the Lilavati.
• (d)Ataullah Rashidi — Ataullah Rashidi is remembered for work on Sanskrit astronomical and mathematical material at the Mughal court, and coaching lists often attach the Bijaganita to his name; the Lilavati is not his.

Akbar set up a translation department that moved Sanskrit works into Persian so that the court, which read Persian, could use them. The Mahabharata became the Razmnama, the Ramayana and the Atharva Veda were rendered, the Yogavasistha was done by Nizamuddin Panipati, and Bhaskaracharya's arithmetic reached Persian through Faizi. Bhaskara II (1114-1185) headed the observatory at Ujjain; his Siddhanta Shiromani has four parts — Lilavati on arithmetic, Bijaganita on algebra, Grahaganita on planetary mathematics and Goladhyaya on the sphere.

The item works by putting four genuine members of Akbar's circle side by side, so elimination by unfamiliarity will not help. What separates them is function: Abul Fazl wrote history, Fathullah Shirazi built and calculated, and Faizi was the literary man of the family, which is why the poetry and the translations are his. A candidate who remembers only that the two brothers were among Akbar's navaratnas will be pulled to the more famous name, and that is the trap. The paper prints the title as Lilavati without diacritics, and Bhaskaracharya is the honorific for Bhaskara II rather than a separate person.

• Faizi (1547-1595) was made poet laureate of Akbar's court in 1588 and died at Lahore on 15 October 1595.
• The Lilavati is the arithmetic section, 277 verses long, of Bhaskara II's Siddhanta Shiromani, composed around 1150.
• Faizi's Persian Lilavati dates to about 1587; he also translated the Yogavasistha.
• Abul Fazl, Faizi's younger brother, wrote the Akbarnama and its third volume the Ain-i-Akbari, and was killed in August 1602.
• The Persian Mahabharata produced under Akbar was called the Razmnama, the Book of War.

• Reaching for Abul Fazl on any Akbar-court question because his is the name that comes first to mind.
• Treating Bhaskaracharya and Bhaskara II as two different mathematicians.
• Mixing up the Lilavati (arithmetic) with the Bijaganita (algebra) when a question names the branch.

Either as a who-translated-what item on Akbar's Persian renderings, or as a match-list pairing Sanskrit works with their Persian titles and translators.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Lilavati, translated into Persian at Akbar's court, is a work on which one of the following subjects?

  • (a)Arithmetic
  • (b)Medicine
  • (c)Statecraft
  • (d)Music

  Answer(a) Arithmetic — the Lilavati is the arithmetic section of Bhaskara II's Siddhanta Shiromani.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Persian translation of the Mahabharata prepared under Akbar was known by which one of the following names?

  • (a)Razmnama
  • (b)Iqbalnama
  • (c)Tarikh-i-Alfi
  • (d)Nal o Daman

  Answer(a) Razmnama — literally the Book of War, the Persian Mahabharata of Akbar's translation department.