Krishna and Mahabharata : Historical realityBy Desh (Aug. 31, 2009)Dr Manish Pandit, a nuclear medicine physician from UK is making a movie onKrishna as a historic figure. Pandit has based his movie on dates andtimelinescoming out of scientific based research by credible evidence based onArcheology, Astronomy and Linguistics, apart from Oral evidence from Indiantradition.Mahabharat War started on November 22, 3067 BC. This comes out ofastronomicalevidence. And the astronomical juxtapositions are not arbitrary or thosethatcould happen in any decade or such... but some of them have not happenedsince.They are THAT rare a phenomenon.Saturn at Rohini and Mars at Jyestha with two eclipses - a Lunar eclipse atKartik and Solar eclipse at Jyesth. (these are from Udyoga and BhismaParvan).(1)Amavasya occurs in Jyestha in 19 years(2) (1) PLUS Solar Eclipse in Jyesth occurs in 340 years.(3) (2) PLUS Saturn at Rohini occurs ONCE in 7000 years.So, that constellation in astronomy has NOT occured since Mahabharat. Thedate- exact one - when that would have happened is Nov 22, 3067 BC.Update: i found an article which is very well written, which I am afraid maygoaway from that site. I have reproduced it at the bottom.Not only that, but the latter events like destructiion of Dwarka (based ontheastronomical events mentioned around that) occur at EXACTLY as the text says-36 years later.Pandit has based his research on work of Dr Narhari Achar (a professor ofphysics at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, in the US). According toAchar, Krishna was born in3112 BC.However, another person has used dates and astronomical events to zero in onthe dates of that time, Arun K Bansal. According to him, Krishna was born onJuly 21, 3228 BC anddied at 2 pm on February 18, 3102 BC. That is when KaliYugis supposed to have started and Dwapar Yug came to an end.So, Bansal's dates are a few decades prior to Achar's dates.However, there are more people who side with Dr. Achar (refer to the articlereproduced below).Here are a few dates that can be identified with respect to the dates by Dr.Achar:§ Lord Krishna, on His final peace mission, set out for Hastinapur on 26thSeptember, 3067 B.C. when the moon was at the asterism Revati.§ Lord Krishna arrived Hastinapur on 28th September, 3067 B.C., when themoonwas at the asterism Bharani.§ The full moon and lunar eclipse at Krittika occurred on 29th September,3067B.C.§ The solar eclipse at Jyestha occurred on 14th October, 3067 B.C.§ Lord Balarama set out for pilgrimage on 1st November, 3067 B.C.§ The War began on 22nd November, 3067 B.C.§ Lord Balarama concluded His pilgrimage on 12th December, 3067 B.C.§ The winter solstice occurred on 13th January, 3066 B.C.§ Bhishma died on 17th January, 3066 B.C.§ The comet Mahaghora appeared at the asterism Pushya in October, 3066 B.C.Mahabharat dates and Historical EventsInterestingly, the decades when Dwapar Yug is supposed to have ended andKaliYug supposed to have started as per these dates.. were also the years ofsomeMAJOR climatic shift on earth - due most probably to major shifts in SolarActivity! Some of the MAJOR things that happened:§ Sahara region changed from a habitable land to a barren desert!§ Glaciers Expanded covering plants.§ Atmospheric temperatures fell drastically.This was also the time, when Harrapan Civilization or Sindhu-SaraswatiCivilization is supposed to have began.Some people believe that Mahabharat was a Nuclear War. Why? Because of someexplanations that defy contemporary knowledge of weapons that people of THATtime could conceivably have created. Weapons with such impact could not havebeen conjured up just out of nowhere.. REPEATEDLY.. in various parts of thetext. See below for one such description of its effects. It is notsurprisingthat even in the modern world, Robert Oppenheimer, Nuclear Scientist jumpedupafter seeing the Atomic blast and cited a similar verse from Gita (part ofMahabharat).Now, if you see the extreme climactic changes - creation of desert out ofhabitable land in Sahara and drastic fall in atmospheric temperature as ifSolar Activity had changed - it may not be entirely unlikely, that thoseclimatic shifts may have mimicked a Nuclear Winter.Mahabharat is a fantastic epic and one which would have required MORE thanjustimagination to write. No writer has ever written something so completely OUTofwhack with his times, mores and thinking... as a Mahabharat within thecontextof History as taught in our school texts suggests. It seems so fantasticthateven the idea seems absurd!That alone - the imagination of a writer 5000 years ago to write somethingthat(if linera historical progress is taken to be true) ONLY people of todaycouldhave seen/heard/experienced/imagined! Its not just wishful imagination - asparting of seas et al - but very exact descriptions of things that happentodayand could happen tomorrow.The philosophy of Gita is hitherto unparalleled in the spiritual realm. NoSaint, prophet, Master, or mystic has covered so many topologies -Knowledge,Devotion, Action, - with so much mastery.What I am trying to say is that you cannot get something out of nowhere. Youcan only conjure up stuff that is there in your immediate consciousness.Fantasies and miracles in knowledge dont make sense to me!An incandescent column of smoke and flame,as bright as ten thousand suns,rose with all its splendour.It was an unknown weapon,an iron thunderbolt,a gigantic messenger of death,which reduced to ashesthe entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.The corpses were so burnedas to be unrecognizable.Hair and nails fell out;Pottery broke without apparent cause,and the birds turned white..After a few hoursall foodstuffs were infected..to escape from this firethe soldiers threw themselves in streamsto wash themselves and their equipment.”Reference Links:1. 'Lord Krishna existed. School texts are wrong'2. Krishna (b. July 21, 3228 BC)3. 33rd century BC4. Pre-historic Nuclear War and ancient Flying Aircraft uncoveredHistoricity of MahabharatIn January 2001, Indian History Congress was holding its Annual Conferenceatthe Alipur Campus of the University of Calcutta and at the concludingsessionof the said Conference the Nobel Laureate economist Dr. Amartya Sen, whileaddressing the delegates, said that Ramayana and Mahabharata do not have anyhistorical value. These two epics are simply mythology and nothing butpoets’fancy. He also said that neither Rama nor Krishna was a historicalpersonalityand both of them were simply mythical.Gandhiji wrote two commentaries on Shrimadbhagavadgita, Anasaktiyoga andGitabodha, and in the introduction of the former work, he wrote, “GenerallyMahabharata is taken to be a historical work. But in my opinion, it is notso.I cannot say that Ramayana and Mahabharata are historical works. They aresimply religious works. If you are still inclined to treat them ashistoricalworks, then I should say that they are nothing but the history of the Self(Atma). They do not contain what happened thousands of years ago. On thecontrary, they are the reflections of what is happening today in everysoul”.About Lord Krishna, he wrote, ”Krishna of Gita is the embodiment of pure anddivine knowledge, but without having any physical existence. By this theAvatarKrishna is not denied at all, but only it is said that He is mythical”.It is not difficult to understand that all such utterances of Sen, Gandhiandmany other like minded Indians derive inspiration from the Westerninterpretation of Indian history. Most of the Western scholars firmlybelievethat our ancestors grossly neglected writing history and what we claim to beour history is nothing but mythology. So M. Winternitz in his History ofIndianLiterature writes, “History is one weak spot in Indian literature. It is, infact, non-existent. The total lack of historical sense is so characteristicthat the whole course of Sanskrit literature is darkened by the defect”. Therenowned German scholar Max Muller, in his History of Ancient SanskritLiterature, writes, “No wonder that a nation like India cared so little forhistory”. “With regard to history, the Hindus have done really nothing butromances from which some truth may occasionally be extracted”, says anotherWestern scholar Major Wilford. These scholars refuse to accept Ramayana,Mahabharata and the Puranas as historical works as there are no mention ofyearand dates of the events described therein.But people of this country firmly believe that Ramayana, Mahabharata and thePuranas are their history and not simply epics or poets’ fancy. So Dr. S.Kalyanaraman, the director of the Chennai based Saraswati River ResearchCentre, says that the historicity of the events described in Ramayana andMahabharata is validated by two evidences: one is based on tradition and theother is based on jyotisha, or planetary configurations and other celestialevents narrated along with mundane events described in those epics, whichmaybe called sky epigraphs.So far tradition is concerned, people of this nation believe that Lord Ramawasborn on the day of Ramanavami and Lord Krishna was born on the day ofJanmastami and so on. In fact, there is a long list of such traditionalbeliefssuch as: Bhishma died on the Bhishmastami day, on the day of Vijaya Dashami,Lord Rama celebrated the day, with His army, as the day of victory afterkilling Ravana and defeating his army just on the previous day, on the dayofDeepavali, Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile and thepeopleof Ayodhya celebrated the day and decorated their houses by lighting lampsandthe tradition is still being continued; the War of Kurukshetra began on thedayof Gita Jayanti and so on and so forth.It is really strange that the people of Western Garhwal, now in the state ofUttaranchal, observe every year the Duryodhana Festival. There also exists atemple dedicated to Duryodhana where people offer their puja and manybelievethat the city of Varanavat, where Duryodhana tried to burn the Pandavasalive,was situated in that locality. It is also really striking that people ofthiscountry offer water in memory of Bhishma during shraddha ceremony. The pointtobe highlighted here is that, had all these been poets’ fancy and mythical,thetraditions could not have been continued for such a long time.The aspect of celestial epigraph, or planetary positions described in theseepics, particularly in Mahabharata, undoubtedly shows that the said epics domention the dates of events described therein, which the Western scholarsfailed miserably to understand. In Mahabharata alone there are 150 instanceswhere worldly events are mentioned along with the planetary positions in thesky. And, in addition to that, other astronomical events such as occurrenceofan eclipse, or appearance of a comet, or rare events like shower ofmeteoriteshave been mentioned. A few of such examples may be mentioned belowThe Udyoga Parva of Mahabharata narrates that, just before the War, LordKrishna, in His final peace mission, went to Hastinapur in the month ofKartika. He set out on the day when moon was at the asterism Revati. On Hiswayto Hastinapur, Krishna took rest for a day at a place called Brikasthala,andon that day the moon was at the asterism Bharani. The day on whichDuryodhanaturned down each and every effort of Lord Krishna to make peace and made thewar inevitable, the moon was resting at the asterism Pushya. And the LordleftHastinapura with Karna, on the day when the moon was yet to reach theasterismUttara Phalguni. As mentioned above, Karna accompanied Him to some distancetosee Him off and he then described to the Lord the positions of planets inthesky and expressed his apprehension that such a planetary configuration stoodfor very bad omen: such as large scale loss of life and drenching of blood.Vyasadeva narrated all these planetary positions in as many as sixteenversesas if someone was describing it after visualizing them in the sky. It isalsowell known that during the War, Lord Balarama went on a pilgrimage to holyplaces along the banks of the River Saraswati and Mahabharata describes theposition of the moon during the entire course of pilgrimage. For example, Heset out on the day when the moon was at the asterism Pushya and returned ontheday when the moon was at the asterism Shravana.The Mahabharata also mentions the occurrence of a solar eclipse at theasterismJyestha and a lunar eclipse at the asterism Krittika, just before thebeginningof the War. It also mentions the appearance of a comet at the asterismPushya,on the 8th day of the bright half of the month of Magha, when Bhishma died.Onthat day the moon was at the asterism Rohini and it was the day of WinterSolstice. The day on which Ghatotkacha, son of Bhima, died, the moonappearedat the horizon at 2.00 a.m. The epic also mentions the occurrence of a veryrare astronomical event that took place prior to the War: three eclipses,twolunar and a solar, within a lunar month of 27 days.There is also another continuing tradition in this country that says thatthebeginning of the present Kali Yuga, Kurukshetra War, death of Lord Krishnaandcoronation of Emperor Yudhishthira were contemporary events. FamousastronomerAryabhatta in his celebrated work Aryabhatiyam had accepted the saidtraditionand used the word “Bharatapurvam” in the said work very often and scholarsagree that he used the word to refer to such events that occurred before theMahabharata War. In 1991, Dr. D. Abhayankar and Dr. Ballabh of the OsmaniaUniversity calculated that the present Kali Yuga began on 7th February, 3104B.C. But it is now well accepted by the both Eastern and the Westernscholarsthat the present Kali Yuga began on the midnight of 17th and 18th February,3102 B.C. And hence it can roughly be said that the Mahabharata War tookplacenearly 5000 years ago from now.Today, man has created a machine called computer which, though most idiotic,can do mathematical calculations at an incredible speed. According to apopularad of a computer company, the calculations which Johannes Kepler took tenyearsto complete, can be done today within minutes, using a computer. It hastherefore been possible for the scientists, with the help of this fantasticmachine, to determine the dates of ancient events with unthinkable accuracy,using the planetary configurations given in the Mahabharata , as inputs.Theyhave developed so many software for this purpose and to name a few are: (1)Planetarium, (2) Ecliptic, (3) Lode star and the(4) Panchang Software.In 2003, a two day seminar was held on 5th and 6th January, in Bangalore, on“The Date of Mahabharata War: Based on Astronomical Data Using PlanetariumSoftware”, and a few of the eminent researchers who submitted papers were(1)Dr. S. Balakrishna of NASA, USA; (2) Dr. B. N. Narahari Achar, Department ofPhysics, Memphis University, USA; (3) Dr. R. N. Iyengar, Department of CivilEngineering, IISc, Bangalore; (4) Dr. S. Kalyanaraman, Saraswati RiverResearchCentre, Chennai and so on. These scientists agree that there does not existanycontradiction between any two descriptions of planetary configurations giveninthe Mahabharata.Dr. S. Balakrishna has studied the eclipses, both solar and lunar, describedinthe Mahabharata and tried to find out the dates of those eclipses using theLode Star Software. Generally 240 solar and 150 lunar eclipses occur in acentury and during the period from 3300 B.C. to 700 B.C. nearly 6000 solarand4000 lunar eclipses took place, though not all of them were visible fromIndia,or to be more precise, fromKurukshetra. Out of them, 672 were eclipse pairs,orboth solar and lunar eclipses within a lunar month. Dr. Balakrishna studiedtheeclipses those have been mentioned in the text of Mahabharata. In fact,thereare mentions of solar eclipses at 8 places in Mahabharata, out of whichthreeof them are very important. Firstly, the solar eclipse that is mentioned intheSabha Parva. The second solar eclipse which is mentioned in the Udyoga Parvatowhich Karna tried to draw the attention of Lord Krishna when He wasreturningfrom Hastinapur. The third important solar eclipse has been mentioned in theShalya Parva, that occurred along with two lunar eclipses within a month.Manybelieve that there was a total solar eclipse occurred on the 13th day of theWar, which has been allegorically mentioned as covering the sun by LordKrishnawith is HHis Sudarshan Chakra.The epic Mahabharata has so many other aspects which common people do notknow.Firstly, the epic as we see it today containing 100,000 verses was not thecreation of Vedavyasa. He composed what was then known as the Jai,containingonly 8,800 verses. Later on Rishi Vaishampayana enlarged it to contain24,000verses which was then known as the Bharata. Finally Sauti, the son of thesuta(the chariot driver) Lomaharshana, gave it present form as we see now,containing 100,000 verses.It has been mentioned earlier that just prior to the Mahabharata War, a veryrare event of three eclipses occurring within a lunar month took place: alunareclipse followed by a solar one and then another lunar eclipse. According tothe text of Mahabharata, the solar eclipse occurred just 13 days after thefirst lunar eclipse. Dr. S. Balakrishna of NASA, USA, has searched alleclipsepairs, a lunar eclipse followed by a solar eclipse after 13 days, that tookplace from 3300 B.C. to 700 B.C., using the Lodestar pro-software. He foundthat nearly 672 eclipse pairs have occurred within the said period, out ofwhich 27 pairs have been found to have less than 14 days time gap. Andaccording to Dr. Balakrishna, the eclipse pair of 2559 is the best matchwiththe description given in the text of Mahabharata. But according to Dr.Kalyanaraman, the eclipses occurred in 3067 B.C.- the lunar eclipse on 29thSeptember at the asterism Krittika and the solar eclipse on 14th October attheasterism Jyestha.Researcher Dr. P. V. Holay examined 6 planetary configurations given in theMahabharata and concluded that the War began on 13th November, 3143 B.C. ButDr. K. S. Raghavan and his coworker Dr. G. S. Sampath Iyengar, using thePlanetarium software came to the conclusion that the Kurukshetra War beganon22nd day of November, 3067 B.C. (according to the present Gregoriancalendar).Professor Dr. Narahari Achar of the University of Memphis, USA, also arrivedatthe same conclusion using the said Planetarium software. Dr. S. Kalyanaramanofthe Saraswati River Research Centre, Chennai, found the estimates of Dr. K.S.Raghavan and Dr. Narahari Achar correct and, on that basis, calculated thedates of some other important events of Mahabharata. For example: LordKrishna,on His final peace mission, set out for Hastinapur on 26th September, 3067B.C.when the moon was at the asterism Revati. Lord Krishna arrived Hastinapur on28th September, 3067 B.C., when the moon was at the asterism Bharani. Thefullmoon and lunar eclipse at Krittika occurred on 29th September, 3067 B.C.The solar eclipse at Jyestha occurred on 14th October, 3067 B.C.Lord Balarama set out for pilgrimage on 1st November, 3067 B.C.The War began on 22nd November, 3067 B.C.Lord Balarama concluded His pilgrimage on 12th December, 3067 B.C.The winter solstice occurred on 13th January, 3066 B.C.Bhishma died on 17th January, 3066 B.C.The comet Mahaghora appeared at the asterism Pushya in October, 3066 B.C.Finally, it should be mentioned that the said seminar officially acceptedthatthe Mahabharata War began, as mentioned above, on 22nd November, 3067 B.C.Soit appears that the Mahabharata War took place, not in Dwapara Yuga but, inthe35th year of the present Kali Yuga. It is not unlikely because according tothetext of Mahabharata, the War took place at the juncture of Dwapara and KaliYuga.Last year, (2005 A.D.), astrologer Arun Kumar Bansal, using computersoftware,calculated date of birth of Lord Krishna and it was 21st July, 3228 B.C. Soitappears that during the Mahabharata War, age of Lord Krishna was 161 years.Atthe first sight, it may appear to be absurd. But it should be mentioned herethat, according to Hindu scriptures, the normal life span of human beings is400 years in Krita (or Satya), 300 years in Treta, 200 years in Dwapara and100years in Kali Yuga. In fact, during the Kurukshetra War, most of themilitarytop brass of both Kauravas and Pandavas were more than 100 years old.To conclude, it should be mentioned here that the discovery of the ruins ofthecity of Dwaraka by the renowned archaeologist Dr. S. R. Rao, under theArabianSea, provides another strong evidence that Lord Krishna and the story ofMahabharata were a reality and not simply poet’s fancy.
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