I am glad to share the link to my Master Class lecture on “Mahabharata Astrology” delivered on 9th October 2021, on the occasion of the 109th Jayanti of Dr. B.V. Raman, organized by Raman & Rajeswari Research Foundation chaired by Bangalore Niranjan Babu, the son of Dr. B.V. Raman.
Starting with the
basic classification of Astrology, I showed how all the planetary references in
the Mahabharata, tagged as nimitta-s are part of Phala Bhaga of Jyothisha, that
rejects any reference to the newly discovered planets, namely, Uranus, Neptune
and Pluto. This clarifies that any work on dating the Itihāsa-s, done by using
these planets can be rejected outright at the outset.
Then I went on to
show how all the planetary and the calendar references in the Mahabharata are aligned
with Vedic astronomy and the Ashtānga system of Time. Some salient points are
as follows:
(1) Only 27 functional
stars at any point of time, and not 28.
(2) The 13th
tithi Amavasya was caused by a disturbance to the Z-axis of the Earth- Moon system
by an extra-terrestrial impact making the moon to go on a shorter revolution, that
is perpetuated into memory by the concept of Bodhāyana Amavasya.
(3) This disturbance
had thrown off the earth from its X-Y axis temporarily, which caused it to take
a longer path to reach the Uttarāyaṇa-point, making Bhishma to wait for his
exit. This anomalous change in Time is remembered as Ratha Saptami.
(4) This also
caused the earth to wobble more than normal before attaining its natural
orientation that is detectable by unusual appearances of the sky reported by Vyāsa
in the altered appearance of Arundhati-Vasishtha pair and the reverse movement
of Dhruva and Mars.
My paper published on this cosmic impact in the Academia Letters (https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1385) brought me into contact with one of the reviewers of my paper, Prof. Joachim Seifert of Germany. He shared with me the graphs and the details of an extra-terrestrial impact already recorded in the Temperature chart of Holocene. The year was 3136 BCE, that I validated as the year of the Mahabharata war, that took place thirty-five years before the beginning of Kali Yuga, when Krishna left.
The verses of the Mahabharata suggesting the impact that I shared with
him convinced him further about the impact that he recognized it as the “Hastināpura Meteor Event”,
the details of which are going to be published by him in his upcoming paper in
a science journal. This event becoming the world’s first ever recorded eye-witness
account – earlier than the Kaali impact of Sweden – the Mahabharata is set to
come out of the tag of Mythology and as a true account that did take place in
3136 BCE, 35 years before Kali Yuga began.
From this I went on establishing the Vedic concept of the to-and-fro oscillation of the equinoxes -fundamental to understanding the lack of change in month-season combination - that is totally different from the ever-precessing equinoctial model of the west. This model rejects the axial precession of the earth – which is also revealed by the archaeo-astronomy of the ancient monuments of the world – and supports the precession of the entire solar system caused by the helical path of the sun as it surges ahead in the Universe. This path causes the sway of the sun for 27 degrees on either side of the sidereal Aries in lateral view from the earth. As a result, the seasons do not change much but oscillate around Caitra which we have retained as the standard configuration at all times in the past and even now.
In this context I
am explaining the crucial factor called the “Ayanāmśa”- the difference
between the tropical position of the equinoctial sun from the sidereal position
which is very much a part and parcel of horoscopy even today, but missing in
western astronomy. The absence of this concept in the astronomy simulations
shows absurd levels of addition of the ayanāmśa value, say, 35 to 45 degrees for
3067 BCE and 5561 BCE, 150 degrees for Bali’s time when the vernal equinox was
said to be in Virgo and 180 degrees if one dates the Ramayana at 14,000 years
ago. Were the Vedic sages so illogical in conceiving the ayanāmśa concept with
such large deviations?
In a continuously precessing
equinoctial system, there is no need for the ayanāmśa, but then the sages had
proposed the use of ayanāmśa shows that the equinox was not continuously precessing.
The ayanāmśa concept based on the oscillatory model of the equinoxes, ingrained
in our more or less static state of month-seasons and incorporated in casting
our horoscopes, must make us realize how irrelevant it is to use the western
astronomy calculations that have no place for ayanāmśa correction.
In this context I
have shown that it is not possible to extrapolate or approximate the rate of
the ayanāmśa for the past. The only exception being the zero degree point of
the sidereal Aries, which the sun crosses every 3600 years, where the super
conjunction of all the planets (except Rahu) had taken place at the time of the
departure of Krishna when Kali Maha Yuga began. That date (22nd January
3101 BCE) is reproduced from Jhora for Vedic / Surya Siddhanta ayanāmśa, Lahiri
ayanāmśa and Pushya Paksha ayanāmśa along with the simulation from the
Stellarium astronomy software. Only the Vedic / Siddhāntic ayanāmśa shows the
congregation. All credit to Sri. Vinay Jha who computed this from the ancient
works.
I further went on
to demonstrate how the eclipses and the planetary data found in our inscriptions
do not match with the astronomy catalogue computations used in the astronomy
simulators and in the Jhora astrology simulator. By 400 years ago, the position
of both the sun and the moon had deviated. This had increased more by 1000 years
ago. Prof. Vahia’s research also establishes that the NASA data does not concur
with the eclipse sightings in India.
The cause can be
traced to the inability to solve the n-body equations. Any eclipse should
solve 4-body equations, involving the moon, the sun, the star in the backdrop
and the latitude and longitude of the observer.
Mr. Nilesh
Oak claimed in his
book on the date of the Mahabharata that the makers of his software vouchsafed
for the Proper motion of the stars in his simulator. That pertains to the single-body
equation with no scope to solve the other problems that must have been
addressed to make them appear in a particular configuration in the observer’s
sky.
Similarly, Prof.
Achar also addressed the single-body equation when he wrote in his 2014 paper
that the motion of the slow-moving planet such as Saturn is enough to date the
Mahabharata war. His rationale was that Saturn with 200 revolutions in a period
of 5000 years compared to 60,000 revolutions of the moon in the same period,
had less margin of error, but simulations show that the location of Jupiter, another
slow-moving planet could not be correctly identified in the simulation in a
very recent past, say, in 1601 CE, due to problems in getting the precession
rate of the day accurately.
Though he agreed
that eclipses cannot be simulated correctly for periods 5000 years ago, he did
not seem to realize the mismatch within the four bodies – the sun, the moon, the background
star and the earth in the event of an eclipse not simulated correctly. At best
he thought that the simulators concur with the astronomy catalogues, but of
what use they have for Vedic astronomy calculations?
Compared to any combination,
the Kali Yuga congregation is a 10-body problem which can be solved only in the
limited equinoctial model at the point of the zero ayanāmśa, at the beginning
of sidereal Aries.
Unable to reproduce
the Kali Yuga date, the colonial writers rejected it as fabricated. Fleet even
rejected the Janamejaya inscription that incorporates 8-body equation on the
pretext that the date is impossible. As one coming from a background that believes
that the earth was created only 5000 years ago, he could not accept the prospect
of advanced dynasties in India at that time. Why should we inherit a colonial
obsession and reject the history of Janamejaya, the second king of Kali Yuga?
Our time scale is
such that we have 9-body equations concurring at every moment of Time. They are
not reproduceable at a later date due to limitations in calculating the precession
rate and the current limited knowledge of the equinoctial movement. The sages
who handed down the knowledge of the limited equinoctial movement did not give us
any formula for calculating precession at any point of time. They wanted us to
watch the shadow of the sun regularly to calculate the deviation and adjust it
as ayanāmśa. For now, it is Lahiri ayanāmśa but at the beginning of sidereal Aries,
it was zero ayanāmśa. Fortunately, this point happened to see the Kali yuga
conjunction on 3101 BCE. Thirty-five years before that, the Mahabharata war had
taken place (3136 BCE).
