Dating of Mahabharat and Ramayan

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Debate
Dating of Mahabharat and Ramayan
How far back in the past did the events described in the epics really take
place?

Posted On:

19 Jan 2017

Participants:
Koenraad Elst & Nilesh Oak

Koenraad Elst (Leuven 1959) distinguished himself early on as eager to learn

and to dissent. After a few hippie years, he studied at the KU Leuven, obtaining
MA degrees in Sinology, Indology and Philosophy. After a research stay at
Benares Hindu University, he did original fieldwork for a doctorate on Hindu
nationalism, which he obtained magna cum laude in 1998. As an independent
researcher, he earned laurels and ostracism with his findings on hot items like
Islam, multiculturalism and the secular state, the roots of Indo-European, the
Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute and Mahatma Gandhi's legacy. He also published on
the interface of religion and politics, correlative cosmologies, the dark side
of Buddhism, the reinvention of Hinduism, technical points of Indian and Chinese
philosophies, various language policy issues, Maoism, the renewed relevance of
Confucius in conservatism, the increasing Asian stamp on integrating world
civilization, direct democracy, the defence of threatened freedoms, and the
Belgian question. Regarding religion, he combines human sympathy with
substantive skepticism.

Nilesh holds BS & MS in Chemical Engineering and Executive MBA. He is interested

in Astronomy, Archeology, Geology, Genetics, Quantum Mechanics, Economics,
Ancient narratives and Philosophy. He published his first book, When did the

Mahabharata War Happen?:The Mystery of Arundhati in 2011, his second book, The
Historic Rama Indian Civilization at the end of Pleistocene in 2014 and is in
the process of completing his third book, Bhishma Nirvana. Nilesh is also
Adjunct Assistant Professor at School of Indic Studies, Institute of Advanced
Science, Darthmouth, MA, USA.

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The dating of the Mahabharat and the Ramayan is a puzzle that refuses to yield a
simple answer. Conferences after conferences have been held in India and abroad
for historians to arrive at a consensus, which has remained elusive so far.
Although it may interest the hobbyist historian or the lay reader only in
passing, it is serious business nonetheless. For it has deep implications on the
very worldview promulgated by the dominant schools of academic history.

Koenraad Elst, the Belgian historian with a phenomenal grasp of Indian (and
world) history favours the mainstream consensus that the Mahabharata war and
other historical events described in the text took place sometime in the second
millennium BC. His view is based on a combination of archaeological, literary
and other corroborative evidence. Others, like Narahari Achar with more
traditionalist leanings, place it near 3000 BC or thereabout. However, Neelesh

Oak s analysis of the astronomical information available in the text,

corroborated by geological, seismic and climatic data that has now emerged,
pushes the date further back to the sixth millennium BC, a good four thousand
years ahead of the mainstream academic consensus. The disagreement is even
starker in the case of Ramayana as Nilesh places it way back in antiquity in the
14th millennium BC, more than 10,000 years apart from the mainstream consensus.

In this debate, held in the winter of 2016 in New Delhi, Dr. Elst and Nilesh
take time off from their respective touring schedules in India to sit and talk
to each other, in an attempt to arrive at some convergence of views or at least,
to understand each other s arguments better.

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Aryan-Dravidian Culture & Critique of Sheldon Pollock

Distortion of Indian History

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