Ancient India in a New Light

SUPPLEMENT ONE

THE TRUE DATES OF THE BHĀRATA WAR AND OF THE

KALIYUGA MARKED BY KRISHNA'S DEATH

To round off our chronology in terms that are prominent in the Indian tradition we should arrive at an estimate of the epoch in which the Bhārata War was fought and in whose wake the Yuga traditionally designated Kali commenced, essentially marked by the death of Krishna who had been the centrally determinative figure in that critical carnage.

We have fastened on the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. for the start of the Imperial Guptas as the sole feature of the old Purānic chronology which is absolutely certain, and regarded with near-certainty the history of a little over 6 centuries preceding this event. Aśoka for us stands at 950 B.C. and his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya at 999 B.C., with his intervening reign of 24 years and Bindusāra's of 25 according to the Purānas, or slightly earlier if the numbers from the Ceylonese Chronicles are adopted. Aśoka's age is of importance for us here because by means of the traditional hints at our disposal it is through him we reach the approximate time of Buddha and through that time the epoch of the Bhārata War.

We have fixed the bracket 1248-1168 B.C. as the most probable length of Buddha's life of 80 years. With our point de depart there, we may follow Raychaudhuri in what obviously strikes him as the most credible calculation leading to the period of the struggle between the Kauravas and the Pahdavas. Of course, we do not assent to his actual result, since we reject modern historians' 543, 486 or 483 B.C. for the Parinirvāna. We are concerned only with the number of years from this event back to the Bhārata War.

Raychaudhuri¹ refers to "the end of the Kaushītaki or Śānkhāyana Āranyaka [Ādhāya 15]" where "we find a vamśa or list of the teachers by whom the knowledge contained in that Araiiyaka is supposed to have been handed down." The passage "makes it clear that Gunākhya Sankhāyana was separated by two generations from the time of Uddālaka who was separated by five or six generations from the time of Janamajaya", the son of Parīkshit

1. The Political History.... (1950), p. 33.

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"whose accession, according to tradition, took place shortly after the Bhārata War".¹

Raychaudhuri² further writes: "Gunākhya, therefore, lived seven or eight generations after Parīkshit. He could not have flourished much later than Aśvalāyana because the latter, or preferably his pupil, honours his guru Kahola [Aśvalāyana Grihya Sūtra, III.4.4]. It is to be noted that we have no personal name prefixed to Aśvalāyana as we have in the case of Sānkhāyana. This probably suggests that Vedic tradition knew only of one great teacher named Aśvalāyana. It is significant that both in Vedic and Buddhist literature this famous scholar is associated with one and the same locality, viz., Kosala, modern Oudh. The Praśna Upanishad tells us that Aśvalāyana was a Kausalya, i.e., an inhabitant of Kosala, and a contemporary of Kabandhī Kātyāyana. These facts enable us to identify him with Assalāyana of Savatthi (a city in Kosala) mentioned in the Majjhima Nikāya [11.147, et seq.] as a famous Vedic scholar, and a contemporary of Gotama Buddha and, hence, of Kakuda or Pokudha Kachchayana." "Kachcha-yana" is the Pall for "Kātyāyana", and "Kabandhī" equates to "Kakuda": see The Indian Historical Quarterly, 1932, 603 ff. Apropos of this equation, Raychaudhuri³ notes: "Kabandha in the Atharva Veda, X.2.3 means srona and uru (hips and thighs). According to Amara kakudmati has substantially the same meaning." Raychaudhuri⁴ goes on: "The reference to Gotama's contemporary as a master of ketubha, i.e., kalpa or ritual, makes it exceedingly probable that he is to be identified with the famous Aśvalāyana of the Grihya Sūtras."

Consequently the latter must have lived in Buddha's time, which for us is the 12th century B.C. "Gunākhya Śānkhāyana, whose teacher Kahola is honoured by the famous GrhyaSūtra-kāra, cannot be placed later than that century. That the upper limit of Gunākhya's date is not far removed from the lower one is suggested in the first place by the reference in his Āranyaka to Paushkarasādi, Lauhitya and a teacher who is styled Maghadha-vasi. The first two figure in the Ambattha and Lahichcha suttas,

1.Ibid., p. 12.

2.Ibid., pp. 33-34.

3.Ibid., fn. 3.

4.Ibid., p. 34.

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among the contemporaries of the Buddha."¹

Now the task we have to attempt is the measuring of the time between Gunākhya and Parīkshit. Rhys Davids, as mentioned by Raychaudhuri,² assigns in his Buddhist Suttas (Introduction, p. xlvii) 150 years to the 5 Theras from Upali to Mahinda. Jacobi, in his Pariśishtaparvan, 2nd edition, p. xvii, informs us that the average length of the generation of a spiritual teacher is, according to Jain and Buddhist evidence, about 30 years.³ Rightly Raychaudhuri⁴ concludes: "We may, therefore, assign 240 or 270 years to the eight or nine generations from Parīkshit to Gunākhya Śānkhayāna..." This means, by our chronology, the 15th century B.C. for the Bhārata War.

Taking our stand in Buddha's 36th year - 1212 B.C. - in which he started his ministry and before which Assalāyana of Sāvatthi could not have been one of his interlocutors, and going back by 240 or 270 years, we touch 1452 or 1482 B.C. for the approximate epoch of the great conflict.

Then, if the conflict happened, as traditionally computed, 36 years before the Kaliyuga, the latter must fall in c. 1416 or 1446 B.C. and thereby indicate the probable year of Krishna's departure from the earth.

1.Ibid., p. 34.

2.Ibid., 36 and p. 32, fn. 1.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid., p. 36.

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