Jayasree Saranathan - Myth of The Epoch of Arundhati

I never knew that dating an historical event can be so easy until I read the book When Did The Mahabharata War Happen? The Mystery of Arundhati written by Nilesh Nilkanth Oak. All that you need to do is to get fascinated by an astronomy observation that you read for the first time in the University library and think you have comprehended it, check the works of others and pick out the one that sounds more like yours, buy astronomy books and star catalogues to acquaint yourself with the terms and basic concepts and run the simulator at regular intervals to see what you thought appears in the screen no matter what it could mean in astronomy. If you catch up a scenario that you are looking for on a select window of the simulator that is eureka moment for you and with that you can claim yourself a revolutionary like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo!

The kind of impression as above that one gets on reading this book is quite disturbing for the reason that the research constructed in this way and trumpeted as one based on scientific acumen and logical reasoning by the author himself is in effect questioning the very basics of two issues of importance to the Hindu society. His entire research is aimed at proving that the iconic characterisation of Arundhati is indeed wrong. She as one following the steps of her husband Vasishtha still continues to be invoked in Vedic mantras in the Hindu marriages, and his research renders this practice ridiculous. His theory, if accepted would amount to dismantling the iconic status of Arundhati in the Hindu society.

The other issue pertains to the date of Mahabharata war deduced by Oak in his book which is a contravention to the current system of time keeping. Everyday millions of times in this country, the current time is being invoked in the Sankalpa mantras from the beginning of Kali Yuga that started 5120 years ago at the time of writing this. His book has created a piquant situation that if his date is right it means the present age of Kali Yuga is wrong and with that the alignment of week day and the solar year would also be wrong for the very reason that these two are intertwined and the week day used all over the world today is calculated from the first day of the Kali Yuga that started 5120 years ago.

By discrediting a cultural symbol of our society and destabilising the foundation of time keeping, Nilesh Oaks research throws a disturbing and a serious challenge to the very basis of the Hindu society which is still functioning on the formulations given by the Vedic sages of yore. His research throws a challenge to the ingenuity of the Vedic sages for elevating Arundhati perennially to the celestial sphere much like Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada.

Nilesh Nilkanth Oaks research is based on a single verse of sage Vyasa told to Dhritarashtra just before the commencement of the Mahabharata war expressing a deviation in the usual appearance of the binary, Vasishtha and Arundhati (Mizar and Alcor) in the Ursa Major constellation identified as Saptarishi constellation by the Vedic society. The binary is always seen as though the star Arundhati is towing behind the star Vasishtha much like the real character Arundhati who always followed her husband Vasishtha. At the time of Mahabharata war, sage Vyasa has made a statement that Arundhati kept Vasishtha at her back phata kta .

This expression has been taken by Nilesh Oak as scientifically testable one, or to use his word from Karl Poppers terminology, falsifiable one. He has checked the position of these two stars in a select window of the latest version of Voyager software and made the claim that Arundhati walked ahead of Vasishtha for more than 6000 years and has named that period as the Epoch of Arundhati. Since the observation of Arundhati walking in front of Vasishtha was reported by Vyasa, Oak hypothesises that Mahabharata could have happened only within the Epoch of Arundhati. And in the absence of such an observation, Ramayana must have happened before the Epoch of Arundhati, according to him. Picking out the other astronomy references in Mahabharata and fitting them within this Epoch using his Voyager simulator, he has identified the year 5561 BCE as the year of Mahabharata war. This is clearly far earlier than the traditional date of Mahabharata by more than 2000 years!

It is not an understatement that an average Hindu who believes in the symbolism of Arundhati and the Hindu time scale is anguished by these ideas promoted as having passed scientific and empirical tests. Therefore the need arises to put into test his ideas and the methods he has used to push these ideas. Basically this can be re-phrased into two questions:

(1) Did Arundhati walk ahead of Vasishtha?

(2) Did Nilesh Oak use a reliable methodology of research?