Click here for the previous question
Question – 42
Why did Bhishma
wait for 58 nights for the Uttarayana? Since he had a boon to choose his end
time, why couldn’t he choose a day closer to Uttarayana and avoid a long, grueling
stay on the arrow bed?
Answer:
Bhishma was an
expert in the science of Time which we know from the way he did a calculation to convince the Kaurava-s that
Pandava-s did not reveal themselves earlier than expected (Question
15). How could he make a grave mistake in calculating the arrival of
Uttarayana which marked the beginning of a new year in the 5-year Yuga scheme?
However, something
seemed to have gone wrong going by the time features that Bhishma himself told
for his last day on the earth. While lying on the arrow bed, he told
Yudhishthira and others that he would leave the earth on the first day of
Uttarayana coinciding with Shukla Ashtami in the
month of Magha. And he did shed his body on that
tithi when the moon was in the star Rohini.
This date looks strange
because Shukla Ashtami can never become the tithi of any ayana in any
year of the 5-year Yuga. Let us take a look at the table of the 5-year Yuga
calendar produced in Question
39
In the first year,
the Uttarayna begins in Shukla Pratipat. The Dakṣiṇāyana of the same year will
begin in Shukla Saptami only because every 7th
tithi will be the first day of the next ayana. By this, the Uttarayana of the
second year will begin in Shukla Trayodasi but
Bhishma says that it was Shukla Ashtami! It was
four tithi-s behind, but the star of the day continued to be the same (Rohini).
How can this happen?
Since Bhishma very
clearly and openly stated that Uttarayana starts on Shukla Ashtami, let us take
it as the base tithi and construct the 5-year yuga calendar. The calendar so
constructed throws up a big surprise that the subsequent Yuga didn’t start on
the same day but regressed to a past date! A look at that calendar shows what I
mean!
A systematic addition
of 6 tithi-s and 18 stars for each ayana (as stipulated by Lagadha) beings the
6th year (which is the 1st year of the Yuga) to the
previous lunar month, Pushya (Paush) and not Magha as it was when the Yuga started
in Krodhi! The tithi was that of Krishna Paksha Ekadasi – four tithi-s behind
the expected Shukla Pratipat of Magha.
By starting four
tithi-s behind on Shukla Ashtami, the next round of the Yuga also lagged by 4
tithi-s by which the lunar month happened to be the previous one. Has Time slipped
backward?
How can Time slip backward? The original calendar had gone awry such that
Bhishma or any one of that time lost track of Time and ended up spending more
time than required to reach the day of the Uttarayana.
The mismatch
between the two calendars for two consecutive years has given us this unique
puzzle on Time.
