The first presentation of determining the Date of the Mahabharata War using Planetarium software was made thirteen years ago in 2001 at the International Conference in Montreal. The software could project the view of the sky at any time at any place. At that time the software did not have search capabilities. Yet the software could be used to discriminate and select from a plethora of dates from about 4700 BCE to 400 CE for a possible date of the war.
A set of astronomical data from Udyoga Parvan were chosen as benchmark data and if they could be reproduced on a given date proposed by a scholar, that date could be considered a candidate and rejected if the data were not reproduced. Four works by the following scholars, with the dates proposed by them in parentheses were chosen for this purpose: Kochhar (955 BCE), Sidharth (1131 BCE), Sengupta (2449 BCE) and Raghavan (3067 BCE). It was shown that the benchmark data could be reproduced only for Raghavan’s date and no other. A few more random checks with dates other than the four chosen also yielded negative results. It was proposed that 3067 BCE could be considered as the date of the war.
Subsequent work has shown that the astronomical information in Bhīṣmaparvan (which has been severely criticized by all scholars) can be interpreted in a consistent manner provided most of the astronomical references corresponded to comets and not planets and that a unique date of 3067 BCE for the war results. These results were presented at the seminar on the date of the Mahabharata war held at the Mythic Society in Bangalore in 2003.
This work is based on the astronomical information found in the epic itself and does not depend on any other outside information.
It uses the concepts of अभिधा abhidhā लक्षणा
Read on...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/238194696/Date-of-Mahabharata-War-using-planetarium-software
A set of astronomical data from Udyoga Parvan were chosen as benchmark data and if they could be reproduced on a given date proposed by a scholar, that date could be considered a candidate and rejected if the data were not reproduced. Four works by the following scholars, with the dates proposed by them in parentheses were chosen for this purpose: Kochhar (955 BCE), Sidharth (1131 BCE), Sengupta (2449 BCE) and Raghavan (3067 BCE). It was shown that the benchmark data could be reproduced only for Raghavan’s date and no other. A few more random checks with dates other than the four chosen also yielded negative results. It was proposed that 3067 BCE could be considered as the date of the war.
Subsequent work has shown that the astronomical information in Bhīṣmaparvan (which has been severely criticized by all scholars) can be interpreted in a consistent manner provided most of the astronomical references corresponded to comets and not planets and that a unique date of 3067 BCE for the war results. These results were presented at the seminar on the date of the Mahabharata war held at the Mythic Society in Bangalore in 2003.
This work is based on the astronomical information found in the epic itself and does not depend on any other outside information.
It uses the concepts of अभिधा abhidhā लक्षणा
lakṣaṇāand व्यञ्जना vyañjanā to properly understand the meanings of words such as graha and in so doing it is shown that the astronomical references are consistent and not contradictory as was alleged previously. A unique date is derived as the date of the war and there are given copious illustrations of star maps generated by the planetarium software. Many criticisms that have been hurled at this work have been shown to be of not much significance.Read on...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/238194696/Date-of-Mahabharata-War-using-planetarium-software