History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.753.1

v4.c63.t2.753.1

The number of works and papers in which the dates of the Bhārata war and of Kaliyuga are discussed is very large. A few of them only are noted here. The late Shankar Balkrishna Dikshit in his exhaustive volume on 'the History of Indian Astronomy' (in Marathi, 2nd ed. of 1931) deals with this subject at pp. 107–127. Mr. C. V. Vaidya in 'Mahābhārata, a criticism, 1904' devotes one chapter (pp. 55–78) and appendix note V (pp. 180–190) to the date of the Mahābhārata war. He holds fast to the traditional view that the Mahābhārata war was fought in 3101 B. C. Mr. N. Jagannatha Rao writes a book on ‘the Age of the Mahābhārata war’ (Bezwada, 1931), in which he disputes the identity of Candragupta Maurya with Sandracottus mentioned by Megasthenes, holds that Sandracottus is the Gupta Emperor Candragupta, that the date of Candragupta Maurya would be about 1535 B. C., that the word ‘Śakakāla’ in the Bṛhatsaṁhitā refers really to the era of the Persian Emperor Cyrus about 550 B. C. and that the Great War was fought in 3139 B. C. The work does not go deeply into anything and is rather superficial. There is a lengthy and interesting article by Mr. K. G. Sankar on ‘some problems of Indian Chronology’ in Annals of the B. O. R. Institute, Poona, vol. XII pp. 301-361 in which he seems to favour 1198 B. C. as the date of the Mahābhārata war. Mr. J. S.