सिद्धान्तदर्पण (महामहोपाध्याय सामन्त चन्द्रशेखर सिंह - नग्न-नेत्र खगोल वेध एवं गणित महाकोश)

xiv सिद्धान्त दर्पण
circumstances something, however poor, is laid
before us, something, however crude, is evolved
from within, we should rejoice over it.
Whatever may be thought of the merits of the
work, I regard it as a misfortune that the author
has not found a man to introduce his work, better
qualified than myself, whose daily avocations run
in a different groove. For my part, I shall deem my
efforts amply rewarded, if my countrymen, to
whom original researches are as yet a thing of the
future, find in the life and doings of my author a
living example of what patient inquiry after truth
and diligent struggle after knowledge can achieve.
But I caution them again against high hopes. To
apperciate the man, one must compare his work
with others produced under similar conditions. It
will be unfair to expect anything new in the work
which will be useful to those who have studied
European Science. Let me therefore briefly recount
a few bright names from the annals of our ancient
astronomy that the present work may be taken and
its true worth.
Not to dive into the antiquity of Hindu
astronomy, which is as old as the Vedas and
regarding which abler men have measured swords,
let me begin the story from the point where we
tread on the firm ground of history. It begins with
Aryabhatta of Kusumapura (Pataliputtra), the
Andubarius of the Greeks, the Arjabhara of the
Arabs, and the Indian founder of the theory of the
earth's daily rotation. He was born in the Saka year
398 (A.D.476) and wrote his famous work at the age
of twenty-three. It was he in whose work we find,
as far as our present knowledge goes the first
successful attempt to solve indeterminate equations