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Antiquity of Bharata War as Revealed from Jaina Astronomy
Sajjan Singh Lishk and S. D. Sharma
The sage Vyåsa is said to have compiled the great epic Mahābhārata and Vaišampāyana recited it to king Janmejaya. Some schools are biased against the historical authenticity of Bhārata 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. Pandey.?
"In a country like India which abhorred fanaticism and monolithic approach and which did not persecute the Kautsas and the Carvãkas who denounced the Vedas and God respectively, the historicity of the Mahābhārata 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 Bhārata war has been quantitatively analytically examined in the context of its relevance to the Jaina astronomical data of post-Vedanga pre-Siddhāntic period popularly known as the dark period in the history of ancient Indian astronomy.3
Kaye has opined that Mahābhārata was written 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,
188/JAINTHOLOGY
