[ 25 ] Poverty has pinched him in his old age and has compelled him to incur a large debt. * The general public does not care to know his incomings and outgoings, his privations and star-gazings. "What has he done after all ?" --asks the impatient critic. To hind, I would say, Is it not enough to find in this man a true lover of scienoe, who, re- gardless of other peoples' unfavourable opinion of his work, their taunts and dissuasions, has devoted his whole life to the one pur- suit of knowledge ; who has shewn the way to original research amidst difficulties serious enough to dishearten men in better cir- cumstances; who has employed his time usefully, instead of fit- tering it away like the usual run of men of his rank, on a work which guides the daily routine of millions of his countrymen ? I do not pretend to express any opinion on the literary merita of his work; but it appears to me that the metrical composition alone, apart from its value as a contribution to Hindu astronomy is such as to entitle him to a high place among the writers of Sanskrit verse of the present day. It contains, as he tells us at the end of the work, 2500 slokas of various poetical metres. Of these, 2284 verses have been composed by him and the remaining 216 quoted from the old Siddhantas. Of the latter, the Súrya Siddhanta and the Siddhanta-Siromaại have been very largely drawn upon. Indeed, as Bháskara had Brahmagupta for his guide, when writing his Siromaani, Chandrasekhara has, in the main, followed in the footsteps of Bháskara For two years past, he has been obliged to compate an ephemeria for a local publisher, who pays him the insigailcant eum of Rs. 300 for the ina- mouse labour required for the work, Digitized by Google
