Antiquity of Bharata War as Revealed from Jaina Astronomy

Summary

“Antiquity of Bharata War as Revealed from Jaina Astronomy” addresses the long‑standing question of when the Mahābhārata war occurred and whether it is a historical event or a myth. Sajjan Singh Lishk and S. D. Sharma argue that purely linguistic or mythological analyses are insufficient and that quantitative astronomical evidence preserved in Jain canonical literature must be considered. They begin by noting that the epic’s compilation by Vyāsa and its recitation to King Janamejaya have been debated, with some scholars placing the war around 400 B.C. to 400 A.D., while others doubt its historicity. Quoting V.C. Pandey, they contend that an event so fundamental would not have gone uncontested in a culture that tolerated critical schools like the Kautsas and Cārvākas if it had been entirely fictional. The authors then examine how Jaina works of the Gaṇitānuyoga category, which include treatises on astronomy and geography, developed sophisticated notions of declination, latitude, obliquity of the ecliptic and time‑measurement absent in earlier Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa. Jain scholars refined the pancāṅga, measured zodiacal arcs, introduced a sexagesimal system of time units and converted the thirty‑fold Vedic division of the day into decimal fractions. Because these innovations post‑date the Vedāṅga system, the Mahābhārata, which lacks such developments, must be earlier than the mature Jaina school of astronomy. The article presents four lines of evidence: (a) Mahābhārata uses simple time units like kalā and kāṣṭhā, whereas Jaina texts employ finer units such as muhūrta, truṭi and lavā; (b) the epic contains no reference to seven‑day weeks; (c) speculative interpretations of a 13‑day half‑month implying advanced computation are not supported, as argued by K.L. Daftari, who shows that the so‑called “15th tithi” in eclipses arises from observational corrections; (d) some Western scholars attribute astronomical passages to interpolation after Hipparchus (second century B.C.), but these passages align with post‑Vedāṅga pre‑Siddhāntic Jaina astronomy. By surveying Sanskrit and Prakrit sources, the authors suggest that Mahābhārata dates to an intermediate period when Jaina astronomy was evolving but not yet fully established, possibly before the first millennium B.C. They emphasize that differences between Lagadha’s Vedāṅga, the Jaina traditions of Videha and Gandharva and later Siddhāntic texts indicate multiple schools of ancient Indian astronomy. The article ends with acknowledgements and a long list of references, signalling that further analytical studies are in progress.