N-bombs and the Mahabharata (kind attention: Kishore Patnaik)

Kishore Patnaik wrote:

> I remember reading about 25 years ago [...] that a skull was
> retrieved from Kuruksetra [the site where the Mahabharata war
> would have been fought according to the Indian tradition -- FB]
> which had traces of nuclear reaction. The article had argued that
> this was an indication of astras [supernatural weapons -- FB] used
> in the MBh war. The article went on to claim that the skull was
> removed to USSR under a shroud of secrecy. Unfortunately, I do not
> remember the reference.

And in the same vein, a couple of days later:

> I am trying to find out about the skull that I have mentioned from
> professional circles ,whether it was true or at least there is
> such a rumor in their circles.

The following mail from an anonymous author, which someone forwarded
to the Audarya Fellowship forum in the year 2000, is the only
Internet source for this story I could trace so far:

http://tinyurl.com/6oju3q

> Another archeologist from the former Soviet Union, Professor A.A.
> Gorbovsky unearthed from the fields of Kurukshetra (north of New
> Delhi) a human skull. He took this skull back with him to his
> country to study and carbon date it. His evidence revealed that
> this skull belonged to a man who died in a war 5,000 years ago --
> the approximate date of the battle of Kurukshetra. Amazingly, the
> skull emitted radiation similar to that of an object exposed
> to a nuclear blast.
>
> In the Mahabharata, there is a graphic description of the
> explosion that follows the use of a Brahma-astra (nuclear weapon).
> The vivid Sanskrit prose describes in great detail the classical
> mushroom shaped cloud, the intense heat and radiation, the nuclear
> winter that follows, and the horrible effects on its miserable
> survivors.
>
> It is only recently after Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the modern
> world was able to understand all the horrors of nuclear war that
> Veda Vyasa [the supposed author of the Mahabharata according to
> the Hindu tradition -- FB] recorded in the Mahabharata 5,000 years
> ago.

The source of this anonymous author could be the same article,
dating from the 1980s, that you mentioned in your posting quoted
above -- check out the following:

http://www.sanskritweb.net/sansdocs/balakanda.pdf

> O.A.Vijayan, the eminent Indian journalist has reflected in _The
> Illustrated Weekly of India_, [w]hat the Soviet scholar Dr. A.A.
> Gorbovsky said in his article with heading "Ancient India may have
> had N-arms", in the _Statesman_, with dateline Moscow, Sept. 8,
> 1986. Among other things, the scientist observes by the stanzas
> that describe the disaster caused by such astras, now loosely
>termed as a well-crafted bow and sky-rocketing arrows, as below:
>
> "A blazing shaft which possessed all the effulgence of smokeless
> fire was let off... all directions were enveloped by darkness...
> the very elements seemed to be perturbed... the sun seemed to
> turn... the universe, scorched with heat, seemed to be in fever...
> the survivors lost their hair and nails... for years the sun and
> sky remained shrouded with clouds..."
>
> Thus the narration goes on. This is the account of Brahma astra,
> as in Mahabharata…

But who is this Russian guy, A.A. (= Alexander) Gorbovsky? After a
long and tedious Web search, I found he is variously characterized
by his fans as a "scientist", an "archaeologist", and even "an
expert at the Russian Munitions Agency"! (N.B. The latter is almost
certainly a case of misidentification due to homonymy with another
Alexander Gorbovsky.) Yet, he came out to be actually one of the
many fake historians, active in all the countries of the world, who
in their publications rave about incredibly technologically advanced
ancient civilizations, whose technical know-how -- derived to them
from an "antediluvian" common source (often said to be
extraterrestrial!), and usually including electricity, nuclear
weapons, aircrafts, submarines etc. -- were later lost.

Gorbovsky’s most cited work (on the Web) is _Riddles of Ancient
History_ (Moscow 1966, in Russian). According to another book of
this genre I have accessed through my Web search, Gorbovsky wrote in
that book that the skeletons found scattered about the streets in
the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro during the old excavations at that
site would have revealed a high incidence of radiation (evidence of
N-bombing of that Harappan city by invading Aryans?). The Russians
scientists who, according to Gorbovsky, examined those skeletons
(did they, really? when?) would have found that at least one of them
showed a level of radioactivity approximately 50 times greater than
it should have been due to natural radiation. These alleged
scientific measurements formed the basis of Gorbovsky’s absurd
hypothesis about the discovery and use of nuclear weapons by ancient
(c. 4000 BCE) Indians, which would have been recorded in the Hindu
epics referring to "astras" (supernatural, incredibly powerful
weapons bestowed by different gods on the most distinguished heroes
featured in the Hindu epics).

According to another Internet source, Gorbovsky’s 1966 book was,
oddly enough, prefaced by a professor of the Soviet Academy named
J.B. Fedorov. This is strange to explain, unless (fake) "alternative
history" was more popular than I would have expected in the Soviet
academia in the 1960s.

Regards,
Francesco

P.S. Sorry to have posted this message, which is totally alien to IE
linguistics, to this forum; however, some members of the List may
not know that absurd theories about the existence of N-bombs and
flying machines in ancient India are by now widely current over the
Internet, and that a lot of gullible Indians, including Kishore
Patnaik, think they may contain some truth!