Article Written By EIH Researcher And Writer
Aparnna R Menon
The dating of Mahabharata piques a lot of interest. Intricately linked with proving the text’s historicity, the dating of this epic has been attempted by researchers by employing both archaeology and astronomy. The references embedded in the Mahabharata have been explained in various ways to derive a formulated year where the events in it mainly the Mahabharata war could have happened.
Jyotishasastra was originally based on traditional cosmological and celestial lore and the requirements of maintaining a ritual calendar. Its main objective later evolved to foretelling the whereabouts of the celestial bodies at any known time and location, partly for calendric purposes and partially for making future predictions was laid as “astrology.” Some of the main texts were in Sanskrit largely by priestly and scholarly groups who undertook timekeeping and forecasting practices. Throughout the Mahabharata, the stars, planets, and other celestial bodies are referenced both literally and metaphorically. Eclipses, stars, and other celestial bodies are mentioned in a number of the settings the author has in mind.
Professor of Physics and Astrophysics Patrick Das Gupta mentions meteors and comets featured in Mahabharata. Borrowing from the work of Prof Alf Hiltebeitel, he narrates the piece from Mahabharata which mentions Nahusha, a human king who performed kingly duties of Gods when Indra went absent after killing Vrita. Absorbing the power from sages, demons, gods, goblins, etc., Nahusha beamed with “five hundred lights on his brow glowing” and ruled the skies. He made the seven seers of Ursa Major carry him about in a palanquin to attract the notice of Indra’s consort Sachi. One of the seven sages, Sage Bhrigu, erupted in wrath at the humiliation he had to endure. He urged Agastya to take his place momentarily and offer the carriage his shoulder. The palanquin lost balance when Brigu was replaced by Agastya because of his short stature. Enraged by this, Nahusha violently kicked Agastya. Agastya cursed the king and turned him into a serpent that fell from the sky. A deeper analysis of this showcases the narration of an event wherein a comet crossed the Big Bear and moved southwards with its tail growing longer, and eventually going out of sight after crossing the horizon. Other cases illustrated include the three eclipses featured in the shlokas from Udyoga Parva and Bhisma Parva. The episode where Arjun avenges the death of his son Abhimanyu by killing Jayadratha also recounts an element of an eclipse. After having taken a vow to kill Jayadratha before sunset, Jayadratha steps aside only to come out after the setting of the sun. But the darkness is soon replaced by light which results in Arjun’s vow being fulfilled. The study of archaeoastronomy which attempts to unravel the intricacies of how celestial bodies were understood in the past has been employed in the study of Mahabharata. The text’s understanding of the phenomena of the sky and the influences it exhibited as the result of the former has been providing interesting insights. This has been employed to answer the question of dating Mahabharata which has been mostly centred around the war. Historically, Aryabhatta dates the war to 3100 BC while Varahamihira dates it to 2400 BC. The conflicting views held on the calendar system have resulted in multiple dates being formulated by different researchers. The important episodes chosen for this process include Balarama’s pilgrimage, the timeline of the war, Bhisma Moksha Tithi and Nakshatra, Saturn’s position, eclipses and Jupiter’s position among others. A detailed study of the nakshatra ganana and the 27 nakshatras have been done. The moon’s cycle in its orbit is poetically described as him visiting each of his wives, nakshatras, once every month. Most of the studies use the mentions in the text to set the nakshatras of the war timeline assigning one to the first and the last day of the war. One of the researchers, a doctor, Dr Manish Pandit, assigns 3067 BC to the war whereas Nilesh Oak, another writer, pushes it further back to 5561 BC.
The question that emerged out of this is, can a precise date be assigned to a text that has several interpolations, changes and additions? Thus the puzzle of dating Mahabharata is bound to be unresolved.
Historians hold diverse opinions on this topic. While some prefer to date events of Mahabharata to a brief period, others contend that each piece has to be dated independently. The date of the war at Kurukshetra is also debated. According to one theory, the war is signalled to be the beginning of the Kaliyuga and the conclusion of the Dvaparayuga. According to calculations, this is proximate to 3102 BC. Nevertheless, the notion of the four yugas, or time cycles, mentioned in the epic is believed to have originated during the time of the Christian era. According to the Puranic genealogies, there were either 1015 or 1050 years between Pariksit, who ruled after the war, and Mahapadma Nanda, of the fourth century BC, which would contradict the date of 3102 BC. Kalhana, the author of Rajatarangini, dates Kurus and Pandavas to 653 years after the start of the Kaliyuga. The authorship of the text is also debated. It has also been extensively discussed whether the book was authored by a single author or various authors over a century, between c. 150 and 0 BC. Renowned historian Prof Romila Thapar addresses this topic stating that the original oral composition was given a literary rendering by Vyāsa, with several added interpolations by later redactors, probably the Bhṛgus.
The Mahabharata has been told and retold and exists in countless vernacular forms, some even longer than the Sanskrit text. An oral pre-history that Mahabharata holds cannot be denied. One of the prime elements of oral tradition is that it is not frozen. Bound by improvizations as they are recited, Mahabharata, unlike the Vedic hymns did not remain a closed tradition. Dependent on the immediate social contexts, several interpolations, additions and subtractions were bound to happen to the story. Thus Mahabharata consists of elements of embedded history. To understand the nuances of the text, one needs to look into the genre it belongs. Itihasa, thus it indeed was, notes aspects of historicity. As Prof Thapar points out, like earlier epics, the text bears a consciousness of history but does not claim historicity. It implores an earlier society of clans and recounts occasions that tied them together or tore them apart, centralising the deeds of the “heroes”. Itihasa’s role is not necessary to convey “authentic history,” but to represent an older period and its values, and to introduce the later time when the composition was re-edited. Bhishma on the bed of arrows, who was dying yet spoke on dharma, vara, and moksha, would be an example of such a system. Thus, as Prof Thapar notes, “the archaeological hunt for material culture as the replica of the epic turns into a kind of chimaera”. Time has been complexly woven into the epic that an archaeological periodization becomes nearly impossible.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thapar, Romila. The Past before Us. Harvard University Press, 14 Oct. 2013.
Kak, Subhash C. “Archaeoastronomy and Literature.” Current Science, vol. 73, no. 7, 1997, pp. 624–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24100273. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.
Plofker, Kim. “Astronomy and Astrology in India.” The Cambridge History of Science, edited by Alexander Jones and Liba Taub, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018, pp. 485–500. The Cambridge History of Science.
Nilesh Nilkanth Oak. When Did the Mahabharata War Happen? : The Mystery of Arundhati. United States, Danphe, 2011.
Pandit, Manish. Criteria Governing the Astronomy of the Mahabharata War, 2021, pp. 11–42.
Image credits
Arjuna During the Battle of Kurukshetra. (n.d.). World History Encyclopedia. https://www.worldhistory.org/uploads/images/1414.jpg?v=1679244246
