The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c16.s1.15

c16.s1.15

The problem of general chronology is still worse. The whole scheme of ancient Indian chronology hinges on the *Mahabharata* war and the death of Krishna, which according to the *Bhagavata* took place 37 years after the great battle. With the death of Krishna and the passing of such a great personage, a darkness is supposed to descend, and an era of evil begins; and this new age is Kali yuga. This basic historic fact was mixed up later with astronomy and with the determination of a cycle of 3600 years marked by a certain planetary combination, observed by Varahamihira in the 5th century A.D. A backward calculation seems to have been made, fixing the beginning of the Kali yuga at 3102 B.C. It is very interesting to recall that the first inscription mentioning a date in the Kali Era is Pulakesin's Inscription of 634 A.D.¹ A heroic attempt was made by Sengupta² to make some scientific calculations of the astronomical data from the Puranas and other works. The very inconsistency and arbitrariness of his results nullifies their value. As Raychowdhary puts it; "Astronomical Kaliyuga-reckoning is a pure astronomical fiction created for facilitating the Hindu astronomical calculations and was designed to be correct only for 499 A.D."³