Someone asked me the following question. Do you know if there is an answer ?
"I was recently asked what the textual sources, if any, for the story behind the Tower of Brahma (a.k.a. Tower of Hanoi) puzzle might be. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he puzzle was invented by the French mathematician Édouard Lucas in 1883. There is a story about an Indian temple in Kashi Vishwanath which contains a large room with three time-worn posts in it surrounded by 64 golden disks. Brahmin priests, acting out the command of an ancient prophecy, have been moving these disks, in accordance with the immutable rules of the Brahma, since that time. The puzzle is therefore also known as the Tower of Brahma puzzle. According to the legend, when the last move of the puzzle will be completed, the world will end. It is not clear whether Lucas invented this legend or was inspired by it."
I have not come across any such story in the Indian literature, but that certainly does not mean that it could not be there somewhere!. If anybody is able to offer up more certainty on the question of whether Lucas invented the story himself or not, I would be interested to know"
Thanks in advance.
German Wikipedia says (without reference) that Lucas invented the story. French Wikipedia adds enough information to make that quite plausible. Lucas attributed it to one N. Claus de Siam, supposedly a mandarin at the college of Li-Sou-Stian; the name is an anagram of Lucas d’Amiens, (Lucas was born at Amiens), and the name of the college is an anagram of Saint Louis, the name of the lycée were he taught. He said that during his travels in connection with the publication of the works of the illustrious Fer-Fer-Tam-Tam that this supposed mandarin witnessed the priests in the great temple of Benares transferring the disks on their diamond needles.
According to Andreas M. Hinz in The Tower of Hanoi — Myths and Maths, Lucas was a member of the commission that edited Fermat’s collected works; he never went to Hanoi, but he was sent to Rome in this connection. The mandarin Fer-Fer-Tam-Tam is evidently Fermat, and Lucas’s own work with the commission seems to have suggested the story.