From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 57677
Date: 2008-04-19
----- Original Message -----
From: "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
>> If you write something claiming the Mahabharata was
>> written 3.000 BCE, then you're guilty of violating the
>> non-academic policy --
>Non-academic policy of this list which is limited to discussion of
>linguistics only. There are other sciences like astronomy and
>aracheology and geology that have independently valided the
>traditional date.
==========
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata
Because of its immense length, its philological study has a long history of
attempts to unravel its historical growth and composition layers. Its
earliest layers date back to the late Vedic period (ca. 5th c. BC) and it
probably reached its final form in the early Gupta period (ca. 4th c. AD).
In discussing the dating questions historian A. L. Basham says:
"According to the most popular later tradition the Mahabharata War took
place in 3102 B.C., which in the light of all evidence, is quite impossible.
More reasonable is another tradition, placing it in the 15th century B.C.,
but this is also several centuries too early in the light of our
archaeological knowledge. Probably the war took place around the beginning
of the 9th century B.C.; such a date seems to fit well with the scanty
archaeological remains of the period, and there is some evidence in the
Brahmana literature itself to show that it cannot have been much earlier."
Arnaud
=======