Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c22.101

c22.101

The tragic story of Līlāvatī, the learned daughter of the great Indian astronomer, Bhāskarācārya, is called to mind by these water clocks. It had been foretold that Līlāvatī would lose her husband soon after marriage, unless the ceremony were performed at a certain auspicious moment. Her father prepared the wedding ceremonies accordingly, and set the water clock to sink at the auspicious moment and so give the signal for the ceremony to be performed. The child, however, in her play, found the dish, and leaning over the basin in which it was floating, a pearl fell from her necklace and blocked the hole by which water was filling the bowl; and it was not till long after the set time that the distracted father found that his precautions had been taken in vain; and it was after this that he determined that she, even if widowed, should at least be the great and learned woman she afterwards became.