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

Introduction xxxvii
by independent observation. On the contrary, the
fact of their retaining the foreign name (at least the
name Romaka), shows that the foreign Siddhantas
were distinct from what were Indian, and there is
no proof that the Romaka or any other foreign
Siddhanta was ever in use in this country,
superseding the purely Indian productions. To give
an analogy, a Sanskrit translation of the British
Pharmacopoeia will no more prove the absence of
Charaka than an English translation of the later will
prove the absence of the former. All that we can
logically infer is that there was intimate intercourse
between the Hindus and the Yavanas, a fact
otherwise known from political history. The Hindus
may have been indirectly influenced by the
teachings of the Yavanas. But it must be admitted
that the Yavanas may have been also influenced by
their presence among the Hindus.
We can safely go so far, omitting all sorts of
possibilities and vague conjectures. Having regard
to our ignorance of the state of astronomy and its
gradual development in India anterior to
Aryabhatta, and our equal ignorance of the source
of the knowledge credited to Hiparchus, it is
hazardous to speak of the indebtedness of the one
nation to the other. If the Hindus learnt the science
of astronomy from the Yavanas, how is it that the
constants of sanskrit astronomy are so different
from those of Ptolemy ? How is it that the early
Hindu writers were unacquainted with such useful
as well as remarkable facts as the precesion of the
equinoxes, or the evection inequality of the Moon ?
On the contrary, the constants ought to have been
identical, not only becaus they are believed to have
a common origin, but also because they represent