retaining the foreign names (at least the name Romaka), shews that the foreign Siddhantas were distinct from what were Indian, and there is no proof that the Romaka or any other foreign Siddhánta was ever in use in this country,superseding the purely Indian productions. To give an analogy, a Sanskrit translation of the British Pharmacopæia will no more prove the absence of Chargka than an English translation of the latter 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 ameng 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 Aryabhata, and our equal ignorance of the source of the knowledge credited to Hipparchus, 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 precession of the equinoxes, or the evection inequality of the moon ? On the contrary, the constants ought to have been identical, not only because they are believed to have a common origin, but also because they represent facts, as tras Digitized by Google
