Re: Reclaiming the chronology of Bharatam: Narahari Achar

From: Francesco Brighenti
Message: 59397
Date: 2008-06-23

Dear Koenraad,

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "koenraad_elst" <koenraad.elst@...>
wrote:

> About that skull, the stuff of the latest Indiana Jones movies, I
> have no idea at all. But frankly, as a paleface's prejudiced
> opinion, I wouldn't take it seriously nor spend another minute of
> my time on it.

On the contrary, you should better spend a few minutes of your time
on this story because it has been now clarified thanks to a link
posted by Katherine Reece to the Indo-Eurasian_research List, to
which I had forwarded the same message on N-bombs and the
Mahabharata I had formerly posted here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/10362

This URL links to a page of the Hall of Ma'at forum, a discussion
group owned and moderated by Katherine, and whose mission is to
debunk the fantasies of all the pseudo-archaeologists this world is
amazingly peopled with. Read the two message from that forum
archived at

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,163722,163722#msg-163722

and

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,163722,163729#msg-163729

Case closed.

> A date of >3000 BC for a clearly post-Rg-Vedic episode like the
> MBh (some of whose older characters are mentioned in the Yajur-
> Veda) seems unacceptable to me. However, there may be a way of
> reconciling that concern with Achar's thesis. This is where
> Francesco Brighenti's claim comes in, viz. that the MBh battle is
> really the Rg-Vedic Battle of the Ten Kings in disguise. For
> *that* battle, >3000 may be more acceptable, and would indeed fit
> the Rg-Vedic astro-chronology as worked out by Wever, Jacobi,
> Umapada Sen et al.

Of course, the Mahabharata war, assuming it was a real battle fought
at a certain time in the proto-history of northwestern India, cannot
be dated to 3000 BCE (or earlier) simply because of the essential
role played by horses and chariots in its much later literary
account. What would the Mbh be without horses and chariots?

Moreover, even its possible prototype, which, as I had pointed out,
could have been the Battle of the Ten Kings described in RV 7.18,
was fought with horses and chariots according to the author of that
Rgvedic hymn (I provide here Griffith's translation of the concerned
verse):

http://flaez.ch/rv/rv.pl?nr=534&txt=shppgr
"They who drive spotted steeds, sent down by Prsni, gave ear, the
Warriors and the harnessed horses."

Horses and chariots in India at 3000 BCE?

Regards,
Francesco