Is ‘Muhurta’ same as a star? Yes, if you accept Nilesh Oak’s ‘astronomy’!

 Excerpted from my book “Myth of 'The Epoch of Arundhati' of Nilesh Nilkanth Oak

Fundamental concept of Muhurta not understood.

Muhurta^[1] is a basic unit of time which continues to be vigorously followed even today. A solar day has 30 Muhurtas that is split into day-time and night time Muhurtas of 15 each. The nature of each Muhurta (nature of time) is revealed by the etymology of the name of the Muhurta. That this has been perfected in Mahabharata times is known from the verse on Krishna starting off for the peace talk in Maitri Muhurta where Maitri means friendship. 

As a Mahabharata researcher Nilesh Oak is expected to do his homework on terms such as this pertaining to Mahabharata astronomy. But from what he says it is obvious that he has not acquainted himself with the fundamentals of Mahabharata astronomy. He thinks by possessing Voyager software and learning to run it – which any kid can do- he can decipher the astronomy terms of Mahabharata and fix up the date of Mahabharata War based on it.

Nilesh Oak says,[2]

“Krishna left Upaplavya, early morning, on 31^st August... I do not know the significance of ‘Maitri Muhurta’, however if it refers to ‘Maitri’ nakshatra being on the eastern horizon, then Anuradha (Maitri) nakshatra was on the eastern horizon around 7:30 AM.”

His honesty in accepting that he doesn’t know the significance of the term cannot be appreciated in a research. What should a genuine researcher do when confronted with terms unknown to him? He/she must first develop a data base of all the unknown terms in the text and gather information about them. This must be done before embarking on the research.

But Nilesh Oak is someone who thinks that scientific methodology means using only the software and does not realize that “history is a science in the method and manner in which it studies the evidence and ascertains the facts.”[3]By his failure to approach the issue in a scientific manner of collecting information on fundamental concepts (there are many), he is giving wrong information that Krishna started off “early morning” and makes a ridiculous derivation of time from the Voyager by bungling up Maitri Muhurta with Anuradha nakshatra.

 

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[1]One Muhurta = 48 minutes.

[2]“When Did The Mahabharata War Happen?” Page 116

[3]Sreedharan, (2007) “A Manual of Historical Research Methodology”South Indian Studies. Page 23