Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Is Kali Yuga a fabricated concept? A background analysis (Supplement to Mahabharata date series - 5)

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How many of us know that the date of Kali Yuga, 17th or 18th February 3102 BCE, is a Western creation? The Wikipedia article on Julian day has a word on the identification of the beginning date of Kali Yuga calculated by Ebenezer Burgess, a US Missionary to Western India. It was given in the Julian Period.[1]


That date is religiously quoted by the Indic academia, while some Mahabharata researchers are of the opinion that this year is from the Gregorian calendar without the zero year. The foot note for this date says that the Julian days were given to Burgess by the US Nautical Almanac Office.

At the time of Burgess the US Nautical Almanac Office was engaged in defining the ‘Astronomical Unit’ used for measuring distances in space.[2] Only Julian days are used for all astronomical purposes. It should be known that the Julian year is the basic unit in Light Year calculation. To confirm that the Kali Yuga date given by Burges is Julian calendar date, I checked it in the converter. It shows that 18th February 3102 BCE is indeed the equivalent of the Julian day given by the Nautical Almanac office. We, the Indians have been given a date for Kali Yuga in Julian calendar, a calendar not in use in India and not reflective of the native Vedic calendar used by us. Needless to repeat here the mismatch between the Julian day and the Vedic sidereal day, already explained in Part 4

Professor K. Srinivasa Raghavan identified Bentley as the discoverer of this date who used the traditional “astronomical Kali Yuga” (!) combination of five planets at the beginning of the zodiac to get this date. The zodiac under reference is the beginning of Aries.

Bentley and others did not accept the date they had derived by saying that such a date was an extrapolated one and hence did not exist. Nevertheless this did not stop the Indic researchers from adopting it as the date of Kali Yuga, while at the same time doubting the very concept of Kali Yuga.

This date was rejected by Prof. Raghavan who thought that the conjunction of the planets at the beginning of Aries is erroneous. He towed the stance of the western writers that it was an invention of the astronomers of the early A.D years.  It seems Aryabhatiya did not gain wider reading in his times.

He however invented two types of Kali Yugas – the ritualistic Kali Yuga and the Astronomical Kali Yuga - without any citations. Jyeshtha Amavasya was identified by him as the beginning of the ritualistic Kali Yuga. His justification for this is a Tamil phrase “Kettai Moottai Sevvai Kizhamai” – a reference to “Gandanta” or conjunction of the stars Jyeshtha – Moola happening on a Tuesday. Astrologically it is disruptive for starting any work. But he assumed it to be referring to the birth of an evil epoch (Kali Yuga)

Perhaps seeing none to follow this Ritualistic Kali Era, he proposed the Astronomical Kali Yuga to have started on the day of Magha Shukla Pratipat on the belief that Lagadha had referred to it in his Vedanga Jyotisha.[3] He identified the Astronomical Kali Yuga when five planets congregated at Mid-Dhanishtha on 11th January 3104 BCE. There is no reference to any planetary position in Lagadha jyothisha, nor any indication in that text or any other text about all planets congregating at Dhanishtha marking the beginning of a yuga. 

Yet Raghavan assumed it to be so and proposed the Astronomical yuga which did more damage than ever before. This yuga not in tandem with the true Kali date became a handy tool to denounce the true Kali Yuga. Whenever you come across someone flogging at the true Kali Yuga as a mere ‘Astronomical’ yuga for computational purpose, know that it’s root started from Raghavan’s yuga at Dhanishta in Kumbha Rashi not at the beginning of Mesha Rashi (Aries). 

It seems Raghavan felt compelled to show a congregation of the planets - not at the traditionally held location but at the Uttarayana point of the time of Lagadha given in Vedanga Jyothisha. There is no pramana for both these Yugas proposed by him.

He made his calculations of the planetary longitudes in Julian days for his Astronomical Kali Yuga on 11th January 3104 BCE. The Kali day was derived in Julian days only. A sample calculation is shown from his book.

Simple arithmetic.From the known position of the planet near his time (1968 in the above calculation for Rahu), he extrapolated to the 1st day of Kali in Julian days to 18th February 3102 BCE. The difference between this Kali Date and his Astronomical Kali date being 768 Julian days, he calculated for those 768 days and added it to the previous result to get the planetary position. In effect his calculations were extrapolations only – a criticism he told of the Siddhanta writers.

He used the lunar tithis to locate the Uttarayana and Vishu points of the sun. For instance, taking Jyeshtha Amawasya at the beginning of Jyeshtha star he kept adding the days in of lunar tithis that finally led him to Rohini for Vishu at 17 degree Taurus. This kind of calculation led him to a time line as follows.


From Pandavas entering Hastinapura and Draupadi’s marriage, every event of Mahabharata occurred after his Ritualistic and Astronomical Kali Yuga! This chronology led him to 22nd November, 3067 BCE as the date of Mahabharata war. This date has been endorsed / taken up by Dr. Narahari Achar and others following him.

What Prof. Raghavan had showed in Julian days was simulated in Julian day based astronomy software by Dr. Achar and Dr. Manish Pandit.

The bottom line is

The traditional Kali Yuga was dumped.

Perhaps this paragraph by Richard Solomon best summarizes the thinking of the current crop about Kali Yuga.[4]


Salomon continues to say, “In use as in origin, the Kali Yuga is primarily an astronomer’s era; it is used only occasionally for civil and epigraphic functions.” The same is echoed by Dr. Achar.

I leave it to the readers to pick out the similarities in thought about Kali Yuga between then and now and between them and them.

But the question comes up – if the super conjunction of all the planets can be computational from the current knowledge of the planetary movements, should it not have existed in the past? Why then doubt it? Is it because it cannot be simulated in the astronomy software? To answer this, begin reading from the 1st part. There is an answer to this.

I must make a mention about Mr. Nilesh Oak’s version here. He didn’t know the connection between the Mahabharata date and the Kali Yuga date at the time of writing his book, but later on felt compelled to do something about it that he is now on the way to ‘discovering’ a date of Kali yuga to match with his date of Mahabharata of 5561 BCE.

Seeing all these I am led to think that the best way to start my discourse on Kali Yuga is with the two verses of Bhavishya Parva of Hari Vamsam on the nature of Kali Yuga as it intensifies.

Without any supporting evidence (Pramana), Ritualistic Kali Yuga and Astronomical Kali Yuga were invented and propagated around.

Without knowing that Time was expressed in Kali years until the Gregorian calendar had taken over the country, it is being postulated that Kali Yuga was astronomer’s computation.

Having said that it is computational, the absence of Kali Yuga during Mahabharata war is resisted by citing a verse that Kali Yuga arrived when Bhima killed Duryodhana by an adharmic blow. Is Adharma computational?

If Bhima hitting Duryodhana in adharmic way signals the entry of Kali Yuga, why not cite the verses of Krishna to Karna at the end of the peace mission, that it would not be Satya Yuga or Treta Yuga or Dvapara Yuga but only Kali Yuga when Arjuna and other Pandava brothers destroy the Kauravas?  Was Satya or Treta Yuga running then to make this kind of observation?

Without the minimal knowledge of scriptures that Krishna and Balarama were avatars of Dvapara Yuga and not Kali Yuga, they were made to live in Kali Yuga in these researches.

After having made them the avatars of Kali Yuga why bother about pushing a Kali date at the time of war by citing the sandhi verse?

The 9th verse of the 2nd chapter of Adi Parva says that the encounter between the armies of the Kauravas and the Pandavas took place at Samanta-Panchaka in the interval between Dvapara and Kali Yuga. What was this time? When did Dvapara end and Kali Yuga start?

If this was in computational years, why is it said in the same chapter in the 3rd verse (before the Dvapara- Kali sandhi) that in the sandhi (conjunction) between Treta and Dvapara Yuga, Parashurama killed the Kshatriyas in the same place? Was that also computational?

Parashurama being a contemporary of Rama, Ramayana had happened closely to this sandhi period. The historical presence of Samanta-Panchaka at a decipherable time close to Mahabharata makes Ramayana closer in Time to Mahabharata and not away in lakhs of years that a Maha Yuga is supposed to be of.

This closeness also reveals that the Yuga reference in the sandhi period is something else and not computational – to use their nomenclature – ‘astronomical’.

Let me unravel these in the next part from the scriptural point of view besides establishing the Kali date mathematically.

(To be continued)



[3] Prof.K. Srinivasa Raghavan, (1969) “The Date of the Maha Bharat War and the Kali Yugadhi” Page 2 in the Chapter “Determination of the Date of the Astronomical Kali Yuga Era”. https://archive.org/details/dateofmahabharat00srinuoft/page/1/mode/2up

[4] Richard Saloman, “Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages” p.180

1 comment:

  1. Please use tables in repressenting explaining conclusions.easier to grasp nutshells

    ReplyDelete