Recap:
·
The use of astronomy software to date a
long past event such as Mahabharata is unreliable. The main reason is the
mismatch between the zodiacal system
used in the astronomy simulators and the fixed zodiac of the Indic society for
all times in the past.
·
The astronomy softwares use the tropical
zodiac or the shifting zodiac along with the moving vernal equinox. This causes the solstices to shift
accordingly.
·
This concept is absent in Indic
astronomy in which the ayanamsa is calculated and deducted from the tropical
degrees to align with the fixed zodiac at zero
degree Aries.
·
At this stage itself the dating research
using ANY astronomy simulator is rendered
useless.
·
A case study of the year 3067 BCE proposed by Dr. Achar and Dr. Manish Pandit is taken up to show a flawed reference to the vernal equinox at Taurus during Mahabharata,
displayed by the astronomy simulator, while it should have been close to the zero point of Aries as per the Indic
calendar system.
·
The use of the astrology software simulated
with Drik
Siddhanta – Lahiri ayanamsa combination
to identify the sidereal positions for the various planetary locations picked
out from the astronomy simulator for the year 3067 BCE is proved to be a case
of flawed methodology with Adhika Masa
appearing in the most inappropriate
month of Magha around that time.
From
this let me proceed further to show that the date system of the astronomy software doesn’t match
with the Indic system of time keeping. Similarly any attempt to deduce
the sidereal positions for the dates of the astronomy
simulator in the astrology simulator for the Hindu calendar dates cannot produce the correct
results.
The calendar system used in the astronomy simulators.
The
calendar system used in astronomy and in the astronomy software is different.
Unlike the historians, the astronomers depend on arithmetic calculations to
arrive at the dates. The date should be easily computable and not requiring counting
the number of days of the months and the years and adjustment of the leap
years. It should be helpful in simple addition or subtraction in calculating,
say, the duration of the cycle of a variable star. For these purposes, the Julian day is found to be
helpful and therefore universally used in astronomy applications and in the
astronomy softwares.[1]
This
day is given as a number with decimal
places for the fraction of hours, minutes and seconds remaining in a day,
counted from noon to noon in Universal Time or from midnight in Modified Julian
days. For civil purposes, the calendric date of the Julian days is given in Julian year. The Julian year was in vogue in the
western countries until the Gregorian year was introduced to replace it, though
the Julian day system is retained for astronomy purpose. We must know the
background of this replacement to understand important features related to the reliability
of the astronomy software for dating Mahabharata.
In
the western societies, the year was counted from one vernal equinox to another vernal equinox. This is known as a Tropical year. Around 46
BCE, Julius Caesar introduced a calendar named after him as ‘Julian’ that followed the tropical year. It was found
out that this year was not of the exact duration of the tropical year and overshot by 11 minutes and 14
seconds.[2] This resulted in the mismatch of the true
tropical position with the calendric tropical year. The
Julian calendar accumulated 12.7 days by the time of 1582 CE.
To
correct this, the Gregorian calendar was introduced after expunging the
accumulated days of the Julian calendar. Ten days were removed but the week day
continuity was maintained. From October 4th on Thursday, the next
day became October 15 on Friday! Ten days in the Julian calendar
were lost and the
sequence of the week days was adjusted arbitrarily from the previous to the
next week day to match with the new calendar. This is the first anomaly that one faces while using the Julian
calendar system for dating Mahabharata. A number of researches have gone into
matching the Julian date with the Gregorian date, but the bottom line is that
the loss of week days in the Julian calendar remains. The conversion between
the two looks as follows.
For
the current time, there is a gap of 12 to 13 days. The week day is synced in
both the calendars and synced at all times in past and in future, but we should
remember that the natural sequence of the Julian week day is disrupted during
the change-over. Two anomalies arise here, (1) the day begins at noon in Universal Time in the Julian
calendar but at midnight in the
Gregorian calendar at each zone. In the Modified Julian Day System the
Julian day starts at midnight at UT.
This is in contrast to the Vedic day that starts at local sunrise in India. (2) These calendar dates are just numbers
and have no connection to
the star positions as in the Vedic system. In all, there are three
anomalies if we include the loss of 10 week days.
The Julian days are extrapolated to the past, to the year 4713 BCE (proleptic Julian calendar) which is derived by matching three cycles in use in Europe in the past- the solar cycle, the lunar cycle and the Indiction cycle– each with varying length but synced on Monday noon, January 1 of 4713 BCE. [3] The corresponding date in the Gregorian date was 24th November, 4714 BCE. The week day was the same. It was Monday. The difference was 37 days at that time.
The
conversion between the dates of Gregorian and Julian calendars are perfectly
laid now. However the Julian day continues to be the favored system of the
astronomers. The reason for this preference is expressed by the International Astronomical Union as
follows:
“Although
there are several different kinds of year, the IAU regards a year as a Julian year of 365.25 days
(31.5576 million seconds) unless otherwise specified. The IAU also recognises a
Julian century of 36,525
days in the fundamental formulas for precession. Other measurements of
time such as sidereal, solar
and universal time are not suitable for measuring precise intervals of time,
since the rate of rotation of Earth, on which
they ultimately depend, is variable with respect to the
second.” [4]
This offers the best
explanation for why we cannot take the Julian date for dating Mahabharata.
The
Julian year is tropical and it is matched with
the tropical year of another calendar, namely Gregorian. Experts have worked on
equalizing them by conversion, but where is the research for conversion of the Julian year into the Vedic
year which is sidereal?
Sidereal
year being longer than the tropical year, how is it possible to claim that the
planetary combinations picked out for a Julian date in the astronomy software
was the same expressed in Mahabharata that used the sidereal calendar?
It
may be argued that the Mahabharata calendar was not sidereal because it used
Uttarayana (winter solstice) position for calculating a year. If so, why did Vayu Purana that existed before Mahabharata
and which was quoted in Mahabharata for Time computations, express the four
units of time of which sidereal is one?[5] The
sidereal year was computed even before Mahabharata times and it continued for
all times till today.
The Uttarayana computation was for ritual purpose just as the lunar Caitra is taken as year beginning in the current times for rituals. Burgess in his translation of Surya Siddhanta has provided a list of sidereal year duration given in six Siddhantas by giving the difference with the current time.[6]
The
error column is not actually errors in computation, as he thinks, but
fluctuations in the sidereal year. These fluctuations cause the difference in
the length of the year that would further upset the direct match between the Julian
tropical and the Vedic sidereal year. These computations must put at rest any
doubt on what constituted a year for computation. It was the sidereal year.
Let
me take up the more recent text on sidereal year, known as “Veemanatha Pancanga Vākya”
in Tamil, written in Kali
Year 4968, corresponding to 1867 CE.[7]
The length of the year given in this Tamil text is 365 days, 15 Nazhigai (नाडी), 31 Vinadi and 15 Tatparai.
The
conversion for this:
Using the conversion, and further converting the into present
time scale, the length of the Vedic sidereal year is 365.2586806 days……..(A)
Compare this with the length of the tropical year of the
Gregorian and Julian dates.
Gregorian
(Tropical) 365.24219878 days …….. (B)[8]
Julian
(Tropical) is 11 minutes 14 seconds longer than B = 365.24999971days
………. (C )[9]
The
difference between C and B = 0.00780093 days.
The
difference of 0.00780093 days per year had caused the Julian year advance by
12.7 days in 1629 years (between 46 BCE and 1582 CE)
It caused a gap of 24 days between now and 3067 BCE promoted as the year of Mahabharata. The gap was 13 days between 4713 BCE and 3067 BCE. However these differences are just numbers. This is not the case with the Vedic date which is linked with a star and a sign to mark the year beginning.
Now
let us compare between Vedic sidereal and Julian tropical that is in use in the
simulator.
Vedic
Sidereal (A) – Julian Tropical (C) = 0.00868089 days.
Vedic
year is longer by 0.00868089 days than the Julian Tropical year.
In
how many years, this difference would become 1 day?
115.1955077 Years =1 day
So
every 115 to 116 years one
Julian day is lagging behind the Vedic year. It must be added to the Julian year to be on par with the Vedic year.
Calculate
the number of days drifted in this way for 3067 BCE (in 5087 years from now)
5087 Years
=44.157971 days
The Julian days in the astronomy simulator would be behind the Vedic sidereal day by little more than 44 days for the date 3067 BCE promoted as the date of Mahabharata.
The drift is higher than this for Mr. Nikesh Oak’s date, 5561BCE that is publicised as scientific. Any date derived from the astronomy simulator suffers from the defect of drifting Julian days.
What
I have shown is simple arithmetic.
Only
experts can do the conversion accurately by taking into account the noon and
mid night beginning of the Julian day and the sunrise time of the Vedic
sidereal day.
But
what I have shown is that,
·
The planetary combinations in the
astronomy software supposed to have been corroborated with the Mahabharata text
for the year 3067 BCE cannot match with the true positions in the Vedic year
corresponding to that date.
·
The application of the Julian year in
Jhora astrology software to generate the sidereal positions of the Vedic Year cannot
produce the true positions because in the absence of the conversion of the
Julian to Vedic sidereal, the day and the planetary combinations shown in the
simulator is not the true date corresponding to the Julian date.
To cross-check this mismatch between the Vedic sidereal year and the Julian date of the astronomy software, let me take up the 1st day of the Julian period, i.e. January 1, 4713 BCE that occurred on Monday. The astrology simulator must show Monday on that date for noon at Universal Time. I checked it for the year 4713 BCE and also 4712 BCE (one year less) as was done by the 3067 researchers. Drik- Lahiri is taken up as done by them.
Figure 26: First day of the Julian calendar
Figure
26 shows Friday, NOT Monday. The solar and lunar calendars were supposed to have begun on
that date. They don’t appear so. Figure 27 shows the features for one year
less.
Figure 27: Julian Calendar with one
day less
The
week day and the solar- lunar calendars do not match with the proleptic Julian
first year.
Now
let me also show how it appears for the Gregorian settings. The conversion is
as follows:
The simulation for 24th November, 4714 BCE is as follows:
Figure 28: First day of the Julian
calendar in Gregorian settings
It
was Friday and the solar and lunar months did not begin on this date.
The
following Figure is generated for one year less.
Figure 29: One day less for the first day in Gregorian calendar
Once
again mismatch in all respects.
This
makes it very clear that the Julian date taken up from the astronomy software
does not tally with the Vedic year of the astrology software.
Conversion
is a very basic requirement when we pick out a date from one calendar and try
to match it with another calendar.
This major defect started from Prof. K. Srinivasa Raghavan whose work was embraced without any critical study. He used Julian days for calculating the dates of Mahabharata. He overlooked the fact that the Vedic day is not of the same length as the Julian day - a crucial point and a game- changer in the search for the true date of Mahabharata war. This was similar to Dr. S. Balakrishnan’s failure to recognize that a tithi is different from a solar day. The entire research group of today followed these two persons and lost their way to reach the goal.
In any research in science or engineering, the veracity of the methods and methodology (use of software) would be meticulously tested and assessed before embarking on the research. Here in dating research of Mahabharata (and Ramayana too) this minimum requirement is not at all adhered to. Without even knowing whether the astronomy software is suitable for testing the planetary positions given in the Itihasas, too many people are just picking out an astronomy software and are claiming that they have “found out” the date!! Without knowing this major limitation of the softwares, people are picking out some date – none of which tally with the traditional date of Mahabharata at 3136 BCE! The reading public should know this limitation of every dating research done using the astronomy software.
With
this we are moving on to the 3rd issue on how the calculation of the
position of the planets and the stars in the astronomy software is not the same
as in Vedic astrology by taking up the year 5561 BCE proposed by Mr.Nilesh Oak.
(To
be continued)
