The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c3.5

c3.5

I have omitted to mention in the essay that a few native scholars have tried to ascertain the date of the Mahâbhârata, and the Râmâyaṇa from certain positions of the sun, the moon and the planets given in those works. For instance, the horoscope of Râma and the positions of the planets at the time of the great civil war, as found in the Mahâbhârata, are said to point to a period of 5000 or 6000 B. C., and it is contended that the Vedas which preceded these works must be older still. Bentley relying on the same date has calculated 961 B. C. as the exact date of Râma's birth. This will show how unsafe it is to act upon calculations based upon such loose statements. Sometimes the accounts in the Purâṇas are themselves conflicting, but even where they are or can be made definite any conclusions based on them are not only doubtful, but well nigh useless for chronological purposes, for in the first instance they are open to the objection that these works may not have been written by eye-witnesses ( the mention Râshis in the Râmâyaṇa directly supporting such an assumption ) , and secondly, because it is still more difficult to prove that we now possess these books in the form in which they were originally written. With regard to the positions of the planets at the time of the war given in the Mahâbhârata, the statements are undoubtedly confused ; but apart from it, I think that it is almost a gratuitous assumption to hold that all of them really give us the positions of the planets in the ecliptic and that such positions again refer to the fixed and the moveable zodiacal portions of the Nakshatras. Perhaps the writers simply intend to mention all auspicious or inauspicious positions of the planets in such cases. I have therefore avoided all such debatable and doubtful points by confining myself solely to the Vedic works, about the genuineness of which there can be no doubt, and using the Purâṇic accounts only to corroborate the results deduced from the Vedic texts. According to this view the Mahâbhârata war must be placed in the Kṛittikâ period, inasmuch as we are told that Bhîshma was waiting for the turning of the sun from the winter solstice in the month of Mâgha. The poem, as we now have it, is evidently written a long time after this event.