Mahabharata - History or Mythology

Mahabharata is an epic that a lot of us grew up with, thanks to Doordarshan and BR Chopra. Each character stayed in our minds and represented a facet of who we are. While I enjoyed the TV show it took many years for me to connect with its deeper metaphorical connection with life and universe. And it does not stop there, every time I revisit the story, it offers new meanings and perspectives. All you need is an open and inquisitive mind. Here is an attempt to look at Mahabharata from the perspective of Ithihasa.

From the available sources the lineage of Mahabharata starts from King Pururavas and goes all the way till Janmanjeya - the great grand son of Arjuna. There has been many attempts to put a date for the times of Mahabharata and none has been conclusive. Aryabhatta's calculation arrive at 3rd millennium BC and so does the Jain inscriptions in Aihole, Karnataka. Contemporary scholors find these calculations erroreneous and arrive at 5th millennium BC as the period when this epic happened. Assuming it happened sometime around 5000 BC, we can draw conjectures that the last known Kuru King Janmenjaya lived around 5000 BC and one of the earliest ruler from our recorded history King Mahapadma Nanda walked the earth around 1000 BC. That gives us 4000 years of void except for a few broken pots and drainage system that comes in between, from the Harappa and Mohenjo daro age. 

Thanks to the profanity of the britishers we know more about Harappa's drainage system and less about their culture. Apparently the british party that was incharge of constructing rail roads in Sindh took the bricks and stones from these ancient structures as cheap raw material for their building activities. If not for these idiots I wonder what else we would have uncovered about this civilisation and perhaps a connection to King Janmenjaya or his descendants? Sadly, we will never know. The present day Kurukshetra which is Haryana and Delhi is believed to have been subjected to massive floods following Janmenjeya's rule which forced the Kuru's to abandon that part of the country. 

Here is a visualisation (not to scale) that puts things in perspective.

Thanks to Kannan and Srini for reading drafts of this.

T I M E

Birth and Death are inevitable. Man understood that from the time he started to think. He also observed the changes around him and noticed a pattern. He tried to quantify this by defining a Calendar.

In India from early times, there were 2 references chosen, the SUN and the MOON. Even today there are 2 new years’ celebrated, Chandramana and Souramana.

The Greeks and the Romans had a Calendar based on SUN and it had 10 months. When Alexander came to India, roughly around 300BC, the Greeks were surprised to see that the Indians followed a 12 months calendar. However, when they observed closely, they had to accept that the Indians were right. After the Romans adopted Christianity, they noticed that the season when Christmas occurred changed. Hence, 2 months were added to their calendar, July and August, in memory of the Roman Emperors Julius and Augustus Ceaser. The New Year day was shifted from April 1^st to January 1^st and those who insisted that April 1^st was New Year were termed “Fools” and we still remember it by calling April 1^st the “Fools Day”. If you don’t believe me, just look at the names of the months once again, the 9^th Month is called “September”; but “septa” is the prefix for 7 in Greek. 10^th Month is October but “octa” is the prefix for 8. Similarly for November and December.

Muslims chose the Lunar method for calculating the year. Having originated in the harsh Arabian Desert, there was no discernible change in the weather based on SUN and they resorted to calculate the year with 12 lunar months. However, there is an anomaly to this. 12 months of Lunar cycles is only 355 days. If you notice the Ramzan festival over the past 6 years, you can see that it is around 11 days earlier as per the Solar calendar.

YEAR	Date as per Solar Calendar	Difference
2013	August 7
2014	July 27	11 days
2015	July 17	10 days
2016	July 6	11 days
2017	June 25	11 days
2018	June 14	11 days

Although, this did not have a bearing in the Arabian Desert, this does have implications for example in England. If Ramzan falls on the summer months, the days are long which impacts the fasting duration.

Interestingly, in India too most festivals are celebrated based on the Lunar Calendar. The 15 days between Ammavasya (New Moon Day) and Poornima (Full Moon Day) are named based on the number of days, viz., 1st Padya, 2nd Dwitiya, 3rd Tritiya, 4th Chaturthi.. etc. The Waxing and Waning Lunar cycles are named as “Shukla” and “Krishna” Pakshas respectively. The festivals are named based on those, such as, Ganesha Chaturthi, Krishna Janma Astami, Rama Navami etc.

Now to the crux. All the festivals are celebrated with some traditional dishes. For instance, Rama Navami is celebrated with Panaka (Sweet juice), Butter milk and Kosumbari (Salad dish). This is ideal for the summer season, when this festival falls.

Hang on… this festival is based on the Lunar Calendar, how can it fall in summer always? This would be a natural question. We already saw that Ramzan, which is based on Lunar Calendar, falls on different seasons.

This is where; we have to respect the ancient Indian wisdom. Our ancestors saw this anomaly very early and they introduced extra Lunar months to compensate. These were called “Adik Mas”. There are 2 extra months in 5 years. 11 days per year for 5 years equals 55 days, add to that the extra day of the leap year, which corresponds to 2 lunar months. This ensured that we can enjoy the Panaka and Majjige on Ram Navami, which falls in summer, even though it is based on Lunar Calendar.

Our ancestors did not stop at this. They also named 60 years. The 60th Birthday is still a very important birthday in a person’s life and called “Sashtiabthapoorthi”. Usually it is celebrated in a grand way. It is said that a person’s horoscope will be an exact match on the 60th birthday to that on his date of birth. 60 is the Least Common Multiple of 12 and 30. Jupiter takes 12 years and Saturn takes 30 years to complete one revolution.

There are many more hidden mysteries around us. It’s left for us to unravel and appreciate them.    

Jai Gurudev