Today I decided to commemorate the memories of a gentleman who is not remembered much these days, let alone people know or care about him. He is our Samanta Chandrasekhar, popularly known as Pathani Samanta (pronounced Samantaw) - an Odia who dabbled in astronomy producing results with immaculate accuracy at a time modern science and astronomy was at its infancy. He was born exactly 187 years ago, on December 13, 1835.
Born in a village in the district Nayagarh in Odisha, Pandit Samanta deeply studied our Ancient Hindu texts of astronomy written in Sanskrit and was able to decipher the hidden knowledge which supplemented his instinct and intuition. He used his grasp of astronomy to measure the distance of celestial bodies from earth amazingly close to what has been found by modern scientists. Without any access to the modern instruments, he took the help from a hollow bamboo pipe and couple of sticks for his measurement. Pathani Samanta's findings were recorded in his book titled Siddhanta Darpana (The Gospel Treatise Mirror). This book found mentions in the European and American press in 1899.
During his childhood, Pandit Samanta's passion was watching the movement and position of moon and stars in the night those days when the air was crispy, pollution free - the sky was bright and blue during the day, crystal clear to gaze at night. During the day he would closely observe shadows of Sun and their length. It is said that he could measure the distance of vultures flying high in the sky using his naked eyes and few wooden instruments.
In the year 1894 Sri Chandrasekhar was concerned about his health due to chronic frequent bouts of colic, commonly called in colloquial Odia as "PETA MARA BEMARI" those days. At the age of 59 in an era when the average life expectancy was less than 50, he had reasons to be worried, carrying the burden of 5 sons and a daughter, not to mention his shy but supportive wife. He was a poor man, being dependent on meager income received from the King of Manjusha who was impressed by the Pandit's skills in correctly measuring the height of Mahendra Giri (Hills) using his bare hands and his famous paraphernalia of bamboo sticks & wooden accessories. His ability to correctly predict Lunar and Solar eclipses earned him the title of MAHAMOHAPADHYAYA (The Very Wise and Learned One) by the British India Government - first time ever conferred to a non Brahmin in Odisha.
Though poor, Pathani Samanta's fame in Astrology and Astronomy had travelled far and wide, enough to get an audience with Commissionner Cook of Cuttack. The duo of Samanta and his son travelled downstream on a boat on River Mahanadi to Cuttack and reached Cook SAHEB's (a colonial way of addressing the Englishmen and still reserved for the elites in India) one sultry August afternoon. The Commissioner who was leaving for a game of Tennis gave them an appointment to meet the next day.
Following morning, Cook took Pathani Samanta to the bank of river Kathajodi. Pointing to the Saptasajya range of mountain, the Commissioner challenged the later to measure its height. Sri Chandrasekhar instantly got busy with his hollow bamboo stick and other instruments, burying his head, making calculations on the ground using a piece of chalk - finally deriving his figure of 1178 cubits and 16 fingers. Commissioner Cook cross checked the height of Saptasajya mountains from his official records. The result was tantalizingly close.
An impressed Cook shook hands with Pathani Samanta. The first thing the Pandit did after coming out of Commissioner's residence was to take a dip in the river Mahanadi - for he touched a MLECHHA (outcaste). Touching a beef eating, Christian White man those days was tantamount to sacrilege, so he needed to purify himself by taking a bath in the river before it was too late.
On another occasion, during a bright, starry night sitting on the verandah of the house of Jogesh Chandra Ray, Professor of Science in Cuttack, Pandit Samanta was challenged by the Professor to measure the distance between the planets Mars and Venus shining on the Western sky. The shabbily dressed old man got busy with his instrument and making calculations using a chalk on the verandah. To the Professor's surprise the calculation by Pathani Samanta came extremely close to the actual distance between the two planets. When Sri Jogesh Chandra Ray showed our Pandit a modern Telescope, the old man started dancing as he could see from close up his favorite celestial bodies whom he gazed at from a distance over several decades.
But his joy was short lived, as Samanta Chandrasekhar didn't live long after this incident. His Colic got better of him, slowly consuming him, destroying the body of one of the finest brains Odisha had ever seen. On his birthday I am taking the opportunity of dedicating my blog to our twinkling, scintillating star of Odisha who is living among the galaxies in the boundless sky where he rightly belongs to - a beacon of light, ray of inspiration for the current generation and many more to come.
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