Jain Journal 1979 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 13

Antiquity of Bharata War as Revealed from Jaina Astronomy
SAJJAN SINGH LISHK AND S. D. SHARMA
The sage Vyasa is said to have compiled the great epic Mahābhārata and Vaisampayana recited it to king Janmejaya. Some schools are biased against the historical authenticity of Bharata war. But such views are more or less based on qualitative survey of language, popular myths, and geneology etc. and coupled with more of subjectivity. Qualitative analysis is more or less only a means to quantitative analysis based on astronomical method for the determination of historicity of an event. Besides it is worth reproducing words of V. C. Pandey1:
'In a country like India which abhorred fanaticism and monolithic approach and which did not persecute the Kautsas and the Carvakas who denounced the Vedas and God respectively, the historicity of the Mahabharata war could not have gone uncontested, if it were myth.'
The factual memory of this war was not only preserved in Brahmanical literature but also in Buddhist and Jaina canonical literature abundent in many astronomical observations which are quite dependable and many results are also supported by archaeological evidences. Here the antiquity of Bharata war has been quantitatively analytically examined in the context of its relevance to the Jaina astronomical data of postVedanga pre-Siddhantic period popularly known as the dark period in the history of ancient Indian astronomy3.
Kaye has opined that Mahabharata dated about 400 B.C. to 400 A.D. This assignment seems to be worth pondering in the light of the fact that Mahābhārata contains some astronomical references to bigger cycles like mahāyuga, kalpa, etc., specific order of planet, i.e. Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Rahu and the other planets, (ii.11.37) notion of solar months with refence to eight auspicious sankrāntis also ; 13 days halfmonth, which according to Dixit implies true computations of planets and the notion that the large stars look so small in concequence of their distances (iii.42-24). Such references are not found in Vedanga Jyotisa" but they are dealt with part and parcel in Siddhantic astronomy ascribed to 3rd/4th century A.D., but as a matter of fact the