Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect c9.4

c9.4

In the Aihole inscription of the Chalukya king Pulakeśin II, dated *Saka* 556 (expired), *i.e.*, A.D. 634-35, it is stated that at that time 3,735 years had passed since the Bhārata war, *i.e.*, the battle of Kurukshetra. The date of the battle according to this calculation is 3102 B.C., which is the starting point of the so-called *Kali-Yuga* era. But, as pointed out by Fleet,² the reckoning was not founded in Vedic times. It is an invented one, devised by the Hindu astronomers and chronologists for the purposes of their calculations some thirty-five centuries after the initial point which they assigned to it. As a matter of fact another school of Hindu astronomers and historians represented by Vriddhagarga, Varāhamihira and Kalhaṇa placed the heroes of the Kurukshetra story 653 years after the beginning of the Kali Yuga and 2,526 years before the Śaka ēra (i.e., in B.C. 2449).¹ A recent writer tries to reconcile the conflicting views presented by the two schools of chronologists by suggesting that the Śaka-kāla of Varāha is really Śākya-kāla, i.e., the era of the Buddha's Nirvāṇa. This view is not only opposed to the evidence of Kalhaṇa but is flatly contradicted by Bhaṭṭotpala who explains Śaka-kāla of the Bṛhat-Saṁhitā passage as Śakanṛipa-kāla (era of the Śaka king).²