states called Gadajat ruled by a dynastic king, enjoying some degree of autonomy under the British rule. It  was a small state with an area of 244 square miles only, having its capital in the small township of Khandapara, situated about sixty miles west of Bhubaneswar surrounded by hills and jungles.  This kingdom was founded in 1599 and was being ruled at the time of Samanta, by his nephew, the eleventh king named Natabar Singh Mardaraj. Samanta's father Shyamabandhu, and mother Bishnumali, were a very pious couple. They had nine daughters and one son before the birth of Chandra Sekhar. Since two
daughters and the only son then had died in infancy, they had named Chandra Sekhar as Pathani Samanta also, who is popularly known in Orissa by that name.  
From the very childhood, he showed extraordinary qualities. At the age of four, he spotted the planet Venus in the sky during the day. In those days, it was considered inauspicious to see a star in the sky during the day time. So his father had to perform elaborate Yagna  before Lord Jagannath to get rid of the sin. He received primary education in Sanskrit from a Brahmin teacher. He studied Sanskrit Grammer, Smritis, Puranas, Darshan  and the original texts of many Kavyas. When he was ten year old, one of his uncles taught him a little of astrology and showed him some of the stars in the sky. Thereafter,
Samanta started teaching himself Lilabati, Bijaganita, Jyotisha  and  Vyakarana etc, and more importantly, the ancient astronomical works like  Surya Siddhanta and  Siddhanta Siromani from the family library.

At the age of fifteen, he began to check the predictions of the Siddhantas with his stronomical observations. He was utterly surprised to find that the predictions of the classics like Siddhanta Siromani and Surya Siddhanta did not agree with his observations. The stars and planets, neither appeared at the right place in the sky, nor at right time, as per the calculations. Disagreement between repeated calculations and observations, finally confirmed him that ancient  Siddhantas have errors. This kind of conviction on the part of a boy at the tender age of fifteen  against the time honoured age-old scientific treatises,  is undoubtedly rare indeed.Young Chandra Sekhar resolved to rectify all those errors accumulated in Indian astronomy over thousands of years. The major hurdles on his way were, getting the right instruments for observation. Ancient Indian works did not give details of instruments or methods of measurements explicitly, except some hints here and there. He devised his own instruments for  the measurement of time,height of distant objects,latitude and longitude of heavenly
bodies etc. His passion for precision and accuracy was unbelievable.
He constructed as many as ten types of instruments for measuring time. His most well known   instrument is Mana Yantra  which is very simple, yet very versatile. Commencing from the age of fifteen, Samanta went on making  
observations and devising formulae for astronomical calculation for eight years. At the age of twenty-three, he started systematically recording his observations. Three years later,   he started writing his results in the form of Sanskrit shlokas  and made a treatise called  Siddhanta Darpana, which was completed in 1869 when he was thirty-four. Working in a remote corner of Orissa, far from Cuttack the only town with some semblance of modern education then, he had no option but to
keep the manuscript written on palm leaves in Oriya script for thirty years, lying in a corner of his house.

                Prof. Mahesh Chandra Nyayaratna, Principal of Sanskrit College Calcutta, was in charge of Sanskrit education of Bengal presidency, which comprised then, the present Bengal, Bihar and Orissa provinces. In one of his official tour, he providentially met Samanta and was greatly impressed with his erudition and scholarship, and probably he introduced him to Prof. Jogesh Chandra Ray of Cuttack College,presently called Ravenshaw College. Later, it was the recommendation  of Prof. Nyayaratna which brought him the title of Mahamahopadhyaya  conferred by the British government in 1893.

                          Prof. Jogesh Chandra Ray played a key role in the publication of Siddhanta Darpana in Devanagiri script from a Calcutta press in 1899 with the financial support from the kings of Athmalik and Mayurbhanja. It must be noted that the scholarly introduction of fifty six pages in English therein by Prof. Ray,  formed the window through which the outside world could get a glimpse of the valuable treasure contained in this monumental work in Sanskrit verses, which was hardly accessible.

Samanta Chandra Sekhar, although belonged to a royal family, had to face a lot of hardships to maintain his large family consisting of six daughters, five sons and a large number of hereditary servants. He had a fiefdom of two villages
and a small amount of land out of which he had annual income of Rs.500/- and 1000 maund of paddy. Six months before his death, the government granted him an allowance of Rs.50/- per month. The king Natabar Singh was extremely
envious of him for his popularity and put all kinds of hurdles on his way.

He was a very religious person.A large part of his daily life was devoted to prayer, worship and meditation. He breathed his last at Puri on Jyesth Krishna Dwadashi, the 11th June, 1904.