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
