Why one more date based on the astronomical evidence quoted from the Mahabharata? I have made this effort for the following reasons:

All the previous dates by various scholars are from misunderstood quotes, incorrect translations and incorrect conversions between the Gregorian calendar and the Indian astronomical calendar. These scholars here spent a lot of effort to come up with theses dates, and must be commended. However, these dates, if they do not match with all of the original quotes, cannot be accepted.

Mahabharata & Krishna have been declared as mythology by the Western Indologists from the 19th Century until now. Some Indian scholars and leaders also believe the same. Therefore, I decided to investigate further. I believe in the saying, "investigate before castigate," and Ronald Regan's famous quote, "trust but verify."

Without relying on the stories and myths, I wanted to investigate purely on astronomical and scientific facts and phenomena like the conjunctions, eclipses, earthquakes, meteor showers and comet sightings. Since the powerful PCs with very accurate astronomical programs like Planetarium have become available, it is possible to construct the sky map of any day and time in the past and review the positions of the planets and other astronomical events. A whole new science called "Archaeoastronomy" has now evolved. Eclipses have become very predictable and accurate now, and are a great tool to date the past events. There may be no written or archeological evidence of the ancient past, but the sun, moon and stars are still the same and move per the same natural rules. Therefore, I decided to research the past astronomical phenomena and verify if the epic is history or fiction.

Mahabharata is the closest epic to our time and is replete with many references to the astronomical phenomena. Krishna's Bhagvat Gita is the most unique philosophical gem; but it would be interesting to see if it came from a real person and time.

My research took me about 2 years of continuous study of the original critical Sanskrit Mahabharata (published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Studies Institute in Pune after 60 years of research).

I used 4-5 different computer programs to compare the accuracy before I finalized on the latest Cyber Sky Planetarium program based on JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) ephemeris 404, with an accuracy of ½ to 1 arc seconds for the periods 3000 BCE and older, and the Delta T value of less than 23 hours.

The full results of my research will be published in a forthcoming book entitled Astronomical Proof of the Mahabharata War and Sri Krishna. The book will include the original Shlokas (stanzas) with translation, detailed computer maps of each event, and its Panchang (Indian astronomical ephemeris) positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and comets.

This current article is a summary of the salient features in the book. I wish to take the readers on the same journey I took while researching.

The first item of the task was to find the century of the Mahabharata War. The Mahabharata epic is full of the time references right up to the war that Dwapar Yuga (the 3rd part of the 4 Yuga system) is ongoing and the Kaliyuga (the 4th part) would be coming soon. The Surya Sidhanta, a very ancient treatise on the Indian astronomy, mentions that when a new Yuga starts, all 7 planets will line up along the ecliptic (the Earth's annual path) in the constellation Pisces, just before Aries on a Phalguni Amavasya day (the last day of the year).

There could be a solar eclipse on that day. The Prajapati Smriti and the Matsya Puran provides the same prediction. Western translators of these scriptures doubted this; because it does not make sense that so many planets moving in their own orbits millions of miles apart at high speeds, can line up in one sign on the ecliptic line on a specific day and time.

The Gregorian calendar date for this event is February 18, 3102 BCE at 2:27:30 AM. Anybody with a good astronomy software can verify that this event if did indeed occur. Now, the eastern as well as the western astronomers have all accepted this date for the start of the Kaliyuga. A map on the last page will verify this. It does not show the North Node (Rahu), but both Rahu and Ketu (the south node) were in the same line 180 degrees apart.

This event has not happened for thousands of years before or thereafter. The closest recorded grand conjunction recorded, was in China in 1953 BCE, of 5 planets. With the establishment of the accepted Kaliyuga start date, the dates for Mahabharata War which were after 3102 BCE, are not applicable