Deciphering the year of Mahabharata war and how it holds key to Harappan culture
by
Jayasree Saranathan
January 16, 2022 15:56:39 IST
The scientific evidence about a cosmic impact in 3136 BCE is supported by the historical evidence provided by the Mahabharata, making the text a true historical document. The Mahabharata can no longer be called a myth
The need to conclusively establish the year of the Mahabharata war is felt all the more today for two reasons: One, the archaeological findings of the Harappan culture are spread within the geographic extent of the Mahabharata events; and two, the date of the Mahabharata war falls at the beginning of the early Harappan, coinciding with the spread of population.
The chronology of the Harappan/Indus culture given in Harappa.com shows Early Phase/Ravi Phase between 3300 BCE and 2800 BCE. In this period, the Mahabharata war had taken place in 3136 BCE — the year derived from the Kali Yuga computation — a time scale that is followed uninterruptedly till date in India. The inter-connectivity between these two — the Mahabharata and the Harappan findings — needs to be understood to begin with.
Link between Mahabharata and Harappa
The advanced city planning and material culture detected in Harappa could not have been sudden but a continuation of a pre-existing civilisation. The Mahabharata offers a link to that pre-history. For example, all the top three animal signs found in the “Harappan art” were the same as those owned as totems by the defeated Mahabharata characters — the unicorn by Jayadratha, the son-in-law of Dhritarashtra; the bull image by Kripa, the brother-in-law of Drona; and the elephant by Duryodhana and Shalva.
This raises a curious question of whether the losers had given up fighting and started engaging in Vaishya-hood as ordained by the Smriti texts. The transition in the successive phases of Harappa, showing rise in manufacturing and trade activities doesn’t seem to have a better explanation than this.
Interestingly enough, the absence of ‘horse’ in the Harappan seals is justifiable with the Mahabharata characters in the Harappan region. For, none in the Mahabharata and nobody anywhere in India sported horse as their emblem. Horses appeared in the coinage of the Indian rulers only in the 1st millennium of the Common Era, inspired by the European model of coins inscribed with horses.
The expansion of population in the early Harappan phase matches with fresh settlement of the displaced people of Dwaraka by Arjuna after the loss of Krishna’s Dwaraka into the sea, with the Satyaki clan settling down all along the banks of the river Saraswati, the Kritavarma clan sent to Matrikavata — probably referring to Mehrgarh (Maa-ghar or mother’s house) — and the continuity of the Saindhavas (Jayadratha clan) in the Sindhu (Indus) region.
The early Harappan Indus region shows sparse growth of settlements, indicating lack of migration from mainland regions of the Mahabharata events. In fact, not many preferred to move to those regions even during the Mahabharata time, as known from Karna’s version that the people of that region lost the wisdom of the Vedas by having lived....Continue to read here
