My Master Class lecture on “Mahabharata Astrology”

I am glad to share the link to my Master Class lecture on “Mahabharata Astrology” delivered on 9^th October 2021, on the occasion of the 109^th 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 13^th 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 limited movement of the equinoxes, there are only three pole stars identified by the Vedic sages. Abhijit that appears as a pole star in the western system of precession cycle has never been a pole star but only a zodiacal star. Similarly, Agastya can never be a pole star in the south as it lies outside the path of the limited oscillation. 

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 (22^nd 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).