Epic-Puranic chronology

Krishna and Arjuna on their chariot at Kurukshetra, 18th century CE painting.

The Epic-Puranic chronology is a timeline of Hindu mythology based on the Itihasa (the Sanskrit Epics, that is, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana) and the Puranas. These texts have an authoritaive status in Indian tradition, and narrate cosmogeny, royal chronologies, myths and legendary events. The central dates here are the Kurukshetra War and the start of the Kali Yuga. The Epic-Puranic chronology is referred to by proponents of Indigenous Aryans to propose an earlier dating of the Vedic period, and the spread of Indo-European languages out of India, arguing that "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley traditions (7000 BCE to 8000 BCE)."

Itihasa-Purana

Main article: Itihasa-Purana

The Mahabharata and the Rāmāyaṇa are the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. Together they form the Hindu itihasa. The Mahābhārata narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War, and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or puruṣārtha (12.161). The bulk of the Mahābhārata was probably compiled between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE, with the oldest preserved parts not much older than around 400 BCE.

The Rāmāyaṇa narrates the life of Rama, the legendary prince of the Kosala Kingdom. Various recent scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text range from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, with later stages extending up to the 3rd century CE.

The Puranas (literally "ancient, old",) is a vast genre of Indian literature about a wide range of topics, particularly legends and other traditional lore, composed in the first millennium CE. The Hindu Puranas are anonymous texts and likely the work of many authors over the centuries. Gavin Flood connects the rise of the written Purana historically with the rise of devotional cults centering upon a particular deity in the Gupta era: the Puranic corpus is a complex body of material that advance the views of various competing sampradayas. The content is highly inconsistent across the Puranas, and each Purana has survived in numerous manuscripts which are themselves inconsistent.

The Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas contain genealogies of kings, which are used for the traditional chronology of India's ancient history. Ludo Rocher in his book "The Puranas" (1986) provides a long list of chronological calculations based on Puranic lists with a warning that they are "often highly imaginative".

Chronology

Cyclic time and yugas

Main article: Yuga Cycle

The Puranas are oriented at a cyclical understanding of time. They contain stories about the creation and destruction of the world, and the yugas (ages). There are four yugas in one cycle:

• Satya Yuga (a time of truth and righteousness)
• Treta Yuga
• Dvapara Yuga
• Kali Yuga (a time of darkness and non-virtue)

According to the Manusmriti (c. 2nd CE), one of the earliest known texts describing the yugas, the length of each yuga is 4800, 3600, 2400 and 1200 years of the gods, respectively, giving a total of 12,000 divine years to complete one cycle. For human years, they are multiplied by 360 giving 1,728,000, 1,296,000, 864,000 and 432,000 years, respectively, giving a total of 4,320,000 human years. These four yugas have a length ratio of 4:3:2:1.

The Bhagavata Purana [3.11.18-20] (c. 500-1000 CE) gives a matching description of the yuga lengths in divine years.

The Kali Yuga is the present yuga. According to Puranic sources, Krishna's departure marks the end of Dvapara Yuga and the start of Kali Yuga, which is dated to 17/18 February 3102 BCE, twenty years after the Bharata War.

Pre-Bharata War kings and avatars

In traditional Hindu astronomy, seven stars of Ursa Major are identified with the names of Saptarshis

The Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana contain lists of kings and genealogies, from which the traditional chronology of India's ancient history are derived. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Maurya court at Patna at c. 300 BCE, reported to have heard of a traditional list of 153 kings that covered 6042 years, beyond the traditional beginning of the Kali Yuga in 3102 BCE. The royal lists are based on Sūta bardic traditions, and are derived from lists which were orally transmitted and constantly reshaped.

Shraddhadeva Manu

The first king is Shraddhadeva Manu, the seventh and current Manu of the fourteen manus of the current kalpa (aeon), the progenitor of humanity. According to the Puranas, the genealogy of Shraddhadeva is as follows:

1. Brahma
2. Marichi, one of the 10 Prajapatis ("lord of creation and protector") created by Brahma, and one of the Saptarishis.
3. Kashyapa, son of Marichi and his wife, Kala. Kashyapa is one of the Saptarishis, the seven ancient sages of the Rigveda who are the patriarchs of the Vedic religion, and the ancestors of the Gotras of Brahmins.
4. Vivasvan or Surya (sun, solar deity), son of Kashyapa and Aditi.
5. Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Vivasvan and Saranyu (Saṃjñā). He is also known as Satyavrata and Shraddhadeva.

Shraddhadeva had seventy children, including Ila and Ikshvaku, the progenitors of the Lunar and Solar dynasties of the kshatriyas, which play a prominent role in the origin stories of the royal families of the Vedic period. The Mahabharata states that "it is of Manu that all men including Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Sudras, and others have been descended."

Tentative chronology

See also: Dashavatara

The Puranas have been used by some to give a tentative overview of Indian history prior to the Bharata War. Gulshan (1940) dates the start of the reign of Manu Vaivasvata at 7350 BCE. According to Ganguly, the Puranic gives 95 kings between Shraddhadeva Manu (aka Manu Vaivasvata), the progenitor of humanity, and the Bharata War. Dating the Bharata War at 1400 BCE, A.D. Pusalkar (1962) uses this list to give the following chronology:

1. Pre-flood tradition and the dawn of history
2. The great flood and Manu Vaivasvata
3. The period of king Yayāti (c. 3000–2750 BCE)
4. The period of king Mandhatri (c. 2750–2550 BCE)
5. The epoch of Parashurama, the sixth avatar of Vishnu (c. 2550–2350 BCE)
6. The era of Rama, the seventh avatar of Vishnu (c. 2350–1750 BCE)
7. The period of Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu (c.1950–1400 BCE)
8. The Mahabharata War (c. 1400 BCE)

According to Subhash Kak,

[T]he Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BCE).

Puranic Chronology - A new theory of ancient Indian chronology

Bharata War

Main article: Kurukshetra War

The historicity of the Mahabharata War is subject to scholarly discussion and dispute. The existing text of the Mahabharata went through many layers of development, and mostly belongs to the period between c. 500 BCE and 400 CE. Within the frame story of the Mahabharata, the historical kings Parikshit and Janamejaya are featured significantly as scions of the Kuru clan, and Michael Witzel concludes that the general setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE. According to Professor Alf Hiltebeitel, the Mahabharata is essentially mythological. Indian historian Upinder Singh has written that:

Whether a bitter war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas ever happened cannot be proved or disproved. It is possible that there was a small-scale conflict, transformed into a gigantic epic war by bards and poets. Some historians and archaeologists have argued that this conflict may have occurred in about 1000 BCE."

Despite the inconclusiveness of the data, attempts have been made to assign a historical date to the Kurukshetra War.

Attempts to date the events using methods of archaeoastronomy have produced, depending on which passages are chosen and how they are interpreted, estimates ranging from the late 4th to the mid-2nd millennium BCE. Popular tradition holds that the war marks the transition to Kali Yuga. The late 4th-millennium date has a precedent in the calculation of the Kali Yuga epoch, based on planetary conjunctions, by Aryabhata (6th century). Aryabhata's date of 18 February 3102  BCE for Mahābhārata war has become widespread in Indian tradition. Some sources mark this as the disappearance of Krishna from the Earth. The Aihole inscription of Pulikeshi II, dated to Saka 556 = 634 CE, claims that 3735 years have elapsed since the Bharata battle, putting the date of Mahābhārata war at 3137 BCE. Another traditional school of astronomers and historians, represented by Vriddha-Garga, Varahamihira (author of the Brhatsamhita) and Kalhana (author of the Rajatarangini), place the Bharata war 653 years after the Kali Yuga epoch, corresponding to 2449 BCE.

Some of the other proposals that have been put forward:

• Vedveer Arya gives the date of 3162 BCE, by distinguishing between Śaka & Śakanta Eras and applying correction of 60 years to the date given in popular tradition and based on Aihole inscription.
• P. V. Holey states a date of 13 November 3143 BCE using planetary positions and calendar systems.
• K. Sadananda, based on translation work, states that the Kurukshetra War started on 22 November 3067 BCE.
• B. N. Achar used planetarium software to argue that the Mahabharata War took place in 3067 BCE.
• S. Balakrishna concluded a date of 2559 BCE using consecutive lunar eclipses.
• R. N. Iyengar concluded a date of 1478 BCE using double eclipses and Saturn+Jupiter conjunctions.
• P. R. Sarkar estimates a date of 1298 BCE for the war of Kurukshetra.
• Dieter Koch dates the war to 1198 BCE based on super-conjunctions.
• Kesheo Lakshman Daftari, one of the members of the Calendar Reform Committee which prepared the Indian national calendar, holds that the war took place in 1197 BCE.

Post-Bharata War

The Vedic Foundation gives the following chronology of ancient India since the time of Krishna and the Bharata War:

• 3228 BCE – Descension of Krishna
• 3138 BCE – The Mahabharata War; start of Brihadrath dynasty of Magadha; start of Yudhisthir dynasty of Hastinapur
• 3102 BCE – Ascension of Krishna; start of Kali Yuga
• 2139 BCE – End of Brihadratha dynasty
• 2139–2001 BCE – Pradyota dynasty
• 2001–1641 BCE – Shaishunaga dynasty
• 1887–1807 BCE – Gautama Buddha
• 1641–1541 BCE – Nandas
• 1541–1241 BCE – Maurya Empire
• 1541–1507 BCE – Chandragupta Maurya
• 1507–1479 BCE – Bindusara
• 1479–1443 BCE – Ashokavardhan
• 1241–784 BCE – Shunga Empire and Kanva dynasty
• 784–328 BCE – Andhra dynasty
• 328–83 BCE – Gupta Empire
• 328–321 BCE – Chandragupta Vijayaditya
• 326 BCE – Alexander's invasion
• 321–270 BCE – Ashoka
• 102 BCE – 15 CE – Vikramaditya, established Vikram era in 57 BCE

Indigenous Aryans - '10,000 years in India'

Indigenous Aryans

Main article: Indigenous Aryans

The Epic-Puranic chronology has been referred to by proponents of Indigenous Aryans, putting into question the Indo-Aryan migrations at ca. 1500 BCE and proposing older dates for the Vedic period. According to the "Indigenist position", the Aryans are indigenous to India, and the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. According to them, the Vedas are older than second millennium BCE, and scriptures like the Mahabharata reflect historical events which took place before 1500 BCE. Some of them equate the Indus Valley civilisation with the Vedic Civilization, state that the Indus script was the progenitor of the Brahmi, and state that there is no difference between the people living in the (northern) Indo-European part and the (southern) Dravidian part.

The Indigenous Aryans theory has no relevance, let alone support, in mainstream scholarship.

'10,000 years in India'

See also: 8th millennium BC

The idea of "Indigenous Aryanism" fits into traditional Hindu ideas about their religion, namely that it has timeless origins, with the Vedic Aryans inhabiting India since ancient times.

M. S. Golwalkar, in his 1939 publication We or Our Nationhood Defined, famously stated that "Undoubtedly [...] we — Hindus — have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land for over eight or even ten thousand years before the land was invaded by any foreign race." Golwalkar was inspired by Tilak's The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), who argued that the Aryan homeland was located at the North Pole, basing this idea on Vedic hymns and Zoroastrian texts. Golwalkar took over the idea of 10,000 years, arguing that the North Pole at that time was located in India.

Subhash Kak, a main proponent of the "indigenist position", underwrites the Vedic-Puranic chronology, and uses it to recalculate the dates of the Vedas and the Vedic people. According to Kak, "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BC)." According to Sudhir Bhargava, the Vedas were composed 10,000 years ago, when Manu supposedly lived, in ashrams at the banks of the Sarasvati river in Brahmavarta, the ancient home-base of the Aryans. According to Sudhir Bhargava, people from Brahmavarta moved out from Brahmavarta into and outside India after 4500 BCE, when seismic activities had changed the course of the Sarasvati and other rivers.

See also

• Yuga
• Vedas
• Vedic science
• Solar dynasty
• Lunar dynasty
• Hindu cosmology
• Nasadiya Sukta
• Samudra Manthana
• Sanātana Dharma
• Brahmanda Purana
• History of India
• History of Hinduism
• Hindu mythological wars
• Puru and Yadu Dynasties
• List of Indian monarchs
• List of Hindu empires and dynasties

Sources

Printed sources

• Brockington, J. L. (1998), The Sanskrit Epics, BRILL, ISBN 90-04-10260-4
• Collins, Charles Dillard (1988), The Iconography and Ritual of Śiva at Elephanta, SUNY Press, ISBN 978-0-88706-773-0
• Flood, Gavin D. (1996), An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press
• Flood, Gavin, ed. (2003), The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 0-631-21535-2
• Ganguly, Dilip Kumar (1984), History and Historians in Ancient India, Abhinav Publications
• Hiltebeitel, Alf (2005), "Mahabaratha", in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion, MacMillan
• Kak, Subhash (1987). "On the Chronology of Ancient India" (PDF). Indian Journal of History of Science (22): 222–234. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-01-22. Retrieved 2015-01-22.
• Kak, Subhash (1993). "Astronomy of the Vedic Alters" (PDF). Vistas in Astronomy. Vol. 36. pp. 117–140. ISSN 0083-6656. Retrieved 2015-01-22.
• Kak, Subhash (1996). "Knowledge of Planets in the Third Millennium BC" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 37: 709–715. Bibcode:1996QJRAS..37..709K.
• Kak, Subhash (2001), "On the Chronological Framework for Indian Culture" (PDF), Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research
• Olivelle, Patrick (2005), Manu's Code of Law, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195171464
• Rocher, Ludo (1986). The Purāṇas. History of Indian literature. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-02522-5. Retrieved 2024-09-23.
• Singh, G. P. (2004). "The Puranic Tradition of Historiography in India". Indian Historical Review. 31 (1–2): 1–17. doi:10.1177/037698360403100201. ISSN 0376-9836.
• Singh, Upinder (2006), Delhi: Ancient History, Berghahn Books, ISBN 9788187358299
• Singh, Upinder (2008), History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, Pearson Education India
• Singh, Upinder (2009), History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, Longman, ISBN 978-8131716779
• Singh, Bal Ram (2010), Origin of Indian civilization (First ed.), Dartmouth: Center for Indic Studies, University of Massachusetts and D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, ISBN 978-8124605608, archived from the original on 2016-03-04
• Thapar, Romila (2013), The Past Before Us, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-72651-2
• Trautmann, Thomas (2005), The Aryan Debate, Oxford University Press
• Warder, A.K. (2000), Indian Buddhism, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers
• Witzel, Michael (1995), "Early Sanskritization: Origin and Development of the Kuru state" (PDF), EJVS, 1 (4), archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-06-11
• Witzel, Michael E. J. (2001). "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts" (PDF). Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. 7 (3): 1–115.

Further reading

• Frawley, David (1993), Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization, Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

External links

Indigenous understanding of Puranic chronology

• Chronological chart of the history of Bharatvarsh since its origination
• Royal Chronology and History of INDIA (Bharat)
• Hindu Timeline
• Reclaiming the chronology of Bharatvam Archived 2023-02-01 at the Wayback Machine
• Bharatiya Timeline Archived 2023-02-01 at the Wayback Machine
• The History of Bharata or India According to Indian Astronomy

Scholarly studies of Indian history

• Sahal Muhammed (2019), How Science Has Destroyed the Foundation of RSS' Idea of India