Comments on: Mahabharata War – A Backdrop

By: B Shantanu

B Shantanu — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:03:10 +0000

Thanks Bharat: Here is an alternative link: http://www.vvshirvaikar.de/Dnyaneshwari/Mbwar.htm

Rajiv: I had a hurried look at your link…I will read carefully at some point today and perhaps carry excerpts in a future post…It seems very informative. Thanks.

By: Bharat

Bharat — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:30:24 +0000

The link ( hinduweb.org) is not working.

“Pandu was anaemic and unable to bear children so Mahabharata seems to use this good ruse to legalise Kunti’s and Madri’s children as Pandu’s”

This “ruse” thing may not be exactly correct. This is because MB explicitly mentions this episode in great detail.

Firstly it was Pandu himself who asks Kunti to go for ‘Niyoga’. When Kunti objects to this proposition, Pandu explains to Kunti about ‘moral practices’ of ancient times and how Sage Shwetaketu changed those practices.

By: B Shantanu

B Shantanu — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:47:40 +0000

Thanks for the link Rajiv…Will have a look.

By: Rajiv Chandran

Rajiv Chandran — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:20:58 +0000

I think the following reading would be instructive in understanding the correct dates of the bharata war :

http://www.indicstudies.us/Astronomy/GreatBharatawar.html

By: Rajiv Chandran

Rajiv Chandran — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:15:09 +0000

I think Bharat is right and that Mr Yardi’s analysis follows outdated and inaccurate notions and ideas fostered by western historians. The mahabharata mentions a significantly reduced Sarasvati River that had stopped going to the sea. Geological studies of extinct river channels in northern india indicate that the Sarasvati stopped being an ocean going river in the early to middle fourth millenium before current era ie around 3600-3200 BC. It also shows that the river Sarasvati completely dried up around 1900 BC. So how is it that Mahabharata could have occurred around 1400 BC or 1100 BC – approximately 500-800 years after the drying up of Saraswati ?

Puranas ( which western historians have done all and some more to discredit and distort ) support the 3102 BC date of Kaliyuga – and it is this that has served as sheet anchor for traditional Hindu history. There is remarkable internal consistency in the fitting the traditional king-lists when derived from this date. On the other hand using Alexander as sheet anchor has led to not only to wrong and mangled chronologies – which find no support in traditional accounts (for eg Shankara in 600 AD – as against puranic 500 BC, or the Buddha in 500 BC instead of the puranic 1800 BC) but also to the dismissal of many kings and dynasties as mythological (Vikramaditya and Shalivahana of Ujjaini). Such is the violence done to traditional accounts is to construct our history.

It is time we returned to traditional narratives to understand what they had to say about our ancestors – instead of being blindly led up the garden path by colonial historians.