Re: Reclaiming the chronology of Bharatam: Narahari Achar

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
wrote:

>
> > 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?
>

Indeed. Incidentally, the chariots close the MBh time bracket on
both sides: they only appeared at some point in time, terminus
postquem for the MBh events, and also disappeared at some point. As
a military historian explained to me, everywhere the use of cavalry
only comes after a phase in which chariots were used, but once
cavalry appeared, chariots went out of use very fast. Thus, chariots
in the Trojan war, but not in Greece's classical age anymore.

(As for the Trojan war's date, or at least that of Ulysses'
homecoming, vide this new insight from the much-maligned discipline
of archaeo-astronomy:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080623_odyssey )

> 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?
>

I am entirely resigned to the idea that if ancient india's horse
question will ever be solved, it won't be by me. Meanwhile, I don't
think anyone else has decided the matter at present. If the absence
of horse finds in the BMAC is compatible with the BMAC being
inhabited by the proverbially horse-loving Aryans, then the absence
of horse finds in Harappan-age India is similarly compatible with the
presence there of Aryans as well as horses. But apart from that
hunch, I don't think I have anything to add to this question.

Kind regards,

KE