[ 13 1 At the age of thirty, somewhere near Rewa. He was # practical astronomer, and made several corrections in the older Astronomy. Indeed, the form in which we find Hindu astronomy at the present day, dates from him. He was a con- summate algebraist, from whom the Arabs got their knowlerige of the science. An indeterminate equation of the second degree, of which he gives & solution, was a prize problem in Europe 28. late as the 17th century. But the fame of Bháskara born in the Saka year 1036 (111# A. D.), near the Sahyadri Western Ghats), threw all his pre. decessors into the shade. He is a glory to us, a wonder among Europeang His great work, Siddhanta-Siromaņi, is one of the standard treatises of the present day. He appears to have made use of the Differential Calculus.* With the death of Bhaskara, the living breath of mathe matical science parted from India. Repeated invasions by a bar. barous nation poured forth an abundance of calamities, and in the troubled times the sacred muse of learning filed and hid ber- self among a herd of commentators in the Deccan. In the dark ages that followed, amidst the petty dissensions of a host of semi- independent states, we find intellectual effort at a stand-still-; men were content to chew the cud of what their predecessors had thought and done. At least, one name of this period is worth mentioning. This is Ganea of Nandigráma who wrote his Graha-lághava in Saka 1442 (1620 A. D.), a work which has been employed as an easy hand-book of astronomy in some parts .. * See a brief account of Bháskara by Paodita Bápudern Bintri in Journal, A, S. B. of 1893. Digitized by Google
