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

xx सिद्धान्त दर्पण
known by the familar name of Pathani Saanta
(corrupted from Pathan and Samanta), a nickname
given him by his parents on account of their first
two children having died in infancy.
At an early age Chandrasekhara received
instruction in Sanskrit. For sometime he studied
Sanskrit Grammar, Smritis and Puranas, logic and
medicine, and read all the important Kavyas in the
original. His education has thus been varied and
many sided. But it has stood him in much better
stead than the modern elaborately arranged
curriculum of the English schools, through which
he would have been thrust, had he lived nearer a
town.
At the age of ten, one of his uncles¹ taught him
a little of astrology. He shewed the young
Chandrasekhar some of the stars to satisfy his
curiosity so natural in young children and thus
gradually initiated him into the mysteries of
astrology. At this age, his extraordinary desire to
test for himself the position of the stars as they
changed night after night was predominant. The
determination of lagnas is a very frequent necessity
in horoscopy; and the varying position of the
planets among the stars, without a knowledge of
which astrological predictions could not be made,
led him to watch their movements. This idle
curiosity exhibited in star-gazing developed into the
habit, of a really fruitful study of astronomy. There
was, however, no teacher who could instruct him
in the science, and he was quite ignorant of any
language save Sanskrit and his mother-tongue

1. It was his father but not uncle according to the biographer
   Pt. Chandrasekhar Mishra of Khandapara: