History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.756.4

v4.c63.t2.756.4

On the whole, therefore, one may assume, though not without hesitation, that the months were *amānta*, that possibly there was an eclipse of the moon on Kārtika Full Moon when Kṛṣṇa had gone as a peace-maker and that there was a solar eclipse on the amāvāsyā of Kārtika just about the time the war began. In Śalyaparva 56. 10 we again meet with the words (at the beginning of the mace duel) ‘Rāhu swallowed the Sun at an unusual season’. This passage and Āśvamedhika 77. 15 (Rāhur-agrasadādityaṁ yugapat somameva ca) rather suggest that the eclipse of the sun at an unusual time had become a stock example of an evil portent without the actual occurrence thereof. The words in Śalyaparva refer to the last day of the war before the mace duel between Duryodhana and Bhīma and the passage says that Rāhu seized the sun and there was an earth-quake also. Hardly any one (except Dr. Daftari) holds that there was another eclipse on the last day of the war, when just before the war there already had been an eclipse on Kārtika amāvāsyā.