Mahabharat (Retold With Scientific Evidence)

This book is a narration of important events of Mahabharat war with exact dates. It is backed by scientific evidence entailing five years of intense research. Sky simulations of sequential astronomical references, using Planetarium and Stellarium software, spanning a period of 52 years prove that the war was fought in the year 3139 BCE.

This book will compel the reader to look at the evidence and re-calibrate his understanding of ancient India. Specifically, if Mahabharat war was fought in 3139 BCE, are we not supposed to conclude that the Harappan Civilisation was actually the Vedic civilisation of Mahabharat era?

The reader will be enthralled to look at the evidence of the Kali Era conjunction in the morning of 19th February 3102 BCE, heralding the beginning of Kaliyuga.

Besides astronomy, the book puts forth evidence from seven disciplines of science. It proves the profound philosophy of Bhagavad Gita was actually passed on to the world on Shukla Ekadashi of Margashirsha Month in 3139 BCE.

Most of the excavated sites, having carbon dates of samples and artefacts around 3000 BCE and associated with Harappan civilisation, were actually located within the territories of kingdoms which participated in Mahabharat war.

Also, this book takes note of different claims made by esteemed scholars on the date of Mahabharat war, and establishes that the war took place in the year 3139 BCE, adding to the healthy discourse on the timing of Mahabharat war.

The research for this book entailed detailed reading and interpretation of Mahabharat by Sanskrit scholars; getting exact sky-views through the software, calculating and adjusting for the changes in astronomical situations down thousands of years and re-visiting the findings to make them error-free.

A distinguished officer of the Indian Revenue Service, who retired as a Member of Central Board of Direct Taxes, Smt. Saroj Bala immersed herself in the multi-disciplinary scientific research to ascertain the historicity and antiquity of Vedas and Epics. She remained a Director of Institute of Scientific Research on Vedas (I-SERVE, founded in 2004) from 2009-2017.

Her first book “Historicity of Vedic and Ramayan Eras: Scientific Evidences from the Depths of Oceans to the Heights of Skies”, published in 2012, earned her a degree of Doctor of Science from Guru Jambeshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar. The research was undertaken by her under the guidance of Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.

In October 2018, her book “Ramayan ki Kahani. Vigyan ki Jubani' was released, a copy of which was later presented by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Shri Yogi Adityanath to our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Thereafter, hen book “Ramayan Retold with Scientific Evidences was released on 5th February 2019; and was discussed in the opening session of the Times Litfest in November 2019.

The author's research methodology is simple detailed, credible and unique. She extracts al astronomical references sequentially and then generates the corresponding sky-views using Planetarium software. Evidence from archaeolo gy and archaeo-botany, geography and geology oceanography and remote sensing, etc. is, thereaf ter, correlated with astronomical date sequence.

Ms. Saroj Bala ji's this book Mahabharat Retold with Scientific Evidence is a very significant book, just as her earlier work Ramayan Retold with Scientific Evidence was. In the ongoing, often motivated, intellectual-cultural debate about the typological status of the epic Mahabharata as a purely imaginative, though splendid and unequalled, narrative composition, or a knowledge text that is an actual record of cataclysmic events that took place in Bharatavarsha almost 5000 years ago, a characteristic text of India's oral culture composed anonymously and serially in every performance or retelling and that ended up as an encyclopedia of India's civilization that on its own assertion incorporates

“...deep meanings of the Vedas... the essence of Shastras...exposition of auxiliary sciences (vedangas)...itihasa, purana...the exposition of past, present and future...old age, death, fear, disease, and the reality or otherwise of objects...duties and stages pilgrimage, lands and peoples, rivers and mountains, forests and seas...buildings, forts and cities...languages and ethnic groups...arts and crafts...all that is necessary for a fulfilled life and all that is necessary to ensure the welfare of people... lineages and genealogies...all this has been expounded in this grantha... (MB 1.1.6270)".

To substantiate the “imperial' reluctance to accept either the antiquity or the knowledge-content of a non-Western text that might esteem its civilization above the contemporary, the Western academy swings the historicity parameter based on the self-acclaimed epistemology of 'scientific evidence'; it invalidates the knowledge-typology that classifies Mahabharata as itihasa, a record of events that actually happened. It is here that this book is a powerful counter-argument in that it provides astronomical, 'scientific' data to authenticate the chronological succession of events in the epic narration.

The book has the structure of a narrative - it tells the story of the Mahabharata war with exact dates of the important events in this catastrophic war determined by using pure scientific evidence which attests the major events by the astronomical configurations observable in the sky at that point of time.

This book is not just another story of Mahabharat! The book in your hand would display and prove how science can prove the truth behind traditional beliefs. For thousands of years, Indians have believed that the Mahabharat war was fought around 3139 BCE, profound sermon of Bhagavad Gita was imparted by Lord Krishna in the month of Margashirsha when Gita Jayanti is celebrated till date. We have believed that Kaliyuga started in February 3102 BCE, and most of the kingdoms of the Mahabharat era still exist in India. However, half-hearted scientific investigations carried out by many scientists and scholars only gave confusing and demoralizing results. Mahabharat contains more than one lakh verses and more than 200 references to planetary positions. However, many scientists and scholars read only 30-40 verses and then fixed many different astronomical and archaeological dates for Mahabharat war, spanning the period from 5567 BCE to 575 BCE. That only enabled the pseudo-scholars to declare that Mahabharat was only a mythological story composed by Poet Vyas and that it had nothing to do with the history of India!

Nevertheless, the question continually agitating my mind was what is the truth, and how could it be ascertained using comprehensive multi-disciplinary scientific means and evidence? The only way to put an end to this dilemma was to find scientifically valid answers to the under-mentioned questions -

1. Was Mahabharat war really fought in Kurukshetra? If yes; when, where and or why was it fought?

2. Can the exact dates of important events narrated in Mahabharat be determined from the astronomical references by making use of modern planetarium softwares and other similar computer programmes?

3. Are there any proofs from carbon dates of excavated samples, artefacts and is plants, and other scientific pieces of evidence to support that hundreds of 39 kingdoms mentioned in Mahabharat, actually existed in India 5000 years back?

4. What is the proof that various kinds of weapons, ornaments, utensils, plants, herbs and the things alike existed during astronomically determined dates of Mahabharat era?

5. Were Shri Krishna, five Pandava brothers and Duryodhana historical characters? Whether they had taken birth as human beings; if yes, is there any scientifically verifiable evidence?

**Contents and Sample Pages**