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V - THE DATE OF THE PRESENT GĪTĀ
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and 'dhātu' means the 'memento which is buried'. In Ceylon and in Burma there is many a dāgotā, in numerous places. This shows that the Mahābhārata must have been written after the date of Buddha, but before he was looked upon as an incarnation. The words ‘Buddha' and 'Prati-Buddha' occur in various places in the Mahābhārata (Šān. 194.58; 307.47; 343 52) But there the words only mean a Jñānin, a Knower, or a Sthitaprajña. That word does not seem to have been taken from the Buddhist religion; nay, there is good reason for believing that the Buddhists themselves have taken these words from the Vedic religion.
(7) In the Mahābhārata, the enumeration of constellations does not start with Asvinī, but with Krttikā. (Ma. Bhā. Anu. 64 and 89); and the zodiacal signs Mesa, Vrsabha, etc are nowhere mentioned This is a matter of very great importance from the point of view of the date of the Mahābhārata; because, one can easily draw the inference from this fact that the Mahābhārata must have been written before the zodiacal signs Mesa, Vrsabha etc were known in India as a result of contact with the Greeks, that is to say, before the date of Alexander. But a still more important fact is the enumeration of the constellations starting with Sravana. It is stated in the Anugitá that Viśvāmitra started the enumeration of the constellations with Sravana ( Ma. Bhā. Aśva. 44 2, and Adi 71. 34). That has been interpreted by commentators as showing that the Uttarayana then started with the Sravana constellation, and no other interpretation is proper. At the date of the Vedānga-Jyotisa, the Uttarāyana used to start with the Sun in the Dhanisthā constellation. According to astronomical calculations, the date when the Uttarāyana should start with the Sun in the Dhanisthā constellation comes to about 1500 years before the Saka era; and according to astronomical calculations, it takes about a thousand years for the Uttarāyana to start one constellation earlier. According to this calculation, the date when the Uttarāyana ought to start with the Sun in the Sravana constellation comes to about 500 years before the Saka era. Therefore, it can be proved mathematically that the present Mahābhārata must have been written about 500 years before the Saka era. The late Mr. Shankar Balkrishna Dikshit has drawn the same conclusion in his Bhāratiya Jyotih-Šāstra.
