Since I’ve been building a Paurāṇika chronology, I’ve encountered a range of counter-opinion and counter-arguments online- which is fair and welcome, of course. The framework I propose is by no means water-tight, is admittedly speculative at places, and tries to establish macro-historic links more than precise, chronological certitudes. I see it as a best-fit framework because when taken in the whole, beyond just dates for Mahābhārata and/or Rāmāyaṇa, it establishes linkages which must be accounted for in any chronology of ancient India. But the current literature focusses on the Epics alone, such that a date for, say, the Mahābhārata, throws no questions and thus no answers on dates for Vaivasvat, for Samudra Manthana, for Pṛthu Vainya or even for Svāyambhuva.
In reality, the tradition we talk of is the itihāsa-purāṇa tradition, not the itihāsa tradition alone. Most current chronologies for ancient India either do not address the Paurāṇika tradition, or address only that of the 7th manvantara.
One way to understand this is by looking at Nilesh Oak’s dates of 12209 BC and 5561 BC for Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata respectively. The Purāṇas are explicit in their genealogies for the dynasties of the 7th manvantara. To imply a temporal distance of 6648 years between Rāma and Kṛṣṇa is to completely dismiss the Paurāṇika tradition (regardless of how the genealogies are reconciled). This is not meant to be an all-winning argument against Oak’s dates, but it highlights that a best-fit framework must acknowledge the entire tradition and explains reasons for dismissing/modifying parts of it. There are several other problems with Oak’s dates, which we will address in the forthcoming.
A disclaimer- I don’t think there will ever be an end or consensus to ancient Indian chronology that satisfies everyone, or is entirely water-tight. We are dealing with the deep past, and our speculations often take us beyond disciplinary epistemological event horizons. This acknowledged, there is a common set of issues plaguing astronomically-derived and/or high-chronologies for ancient Indian history. In this article I will try to list them, and provide what are my resolutions/refutations for them. The intent is not to dismiss or degrade anyone. The intent is to explain why I personally do not subscribe to their work(s).
1. On the Issue of Astronomy as the Guiding Light
This indeed is a fundamental issue, and one’s take on this is salient on what chronology one eventually subscribes to. To begin, we may acknowledge that archaeoastronomy is a legitimate field, and ought not to be dismissed entirely in objective studies of the past. We also agree that astronomical timestamps are data points of hard science, since the stars don’t lie. Thus, any critique or refutation of astronomically-derived dates is not a dismissal of the field itself- similar to how pointing to gaps in Indo-European studies is not akin to dismissing comparative linguistics as a discipline.
But we must account for the possibility of transmission of time-stamps. This is the circumstance where an accurate time-stamp is used for an event manifested much later to the time of astronomical recording. It’s an issue intrinsic to the epistemology in question, and it must cause us to be circumspect when taking astronomical readings in the itihāsas as literal chronological markers. This is true even when there is internal consistency to a series of readings taken from the same text- for the entire set could plausibly be a transport from a previous era, eternally recycled for new stories among a people with millennia-spanning continuities and disruptions.
Deeper within, there is the issue of identifying what defines an astronomical time-stamp. For example, Oak’s Vasiṣṭha-Arundhatī evidence takes the description of an omen as a time-stamp of hard science, and is rightly refuted by Talageri here. Other issues in his methodology are exposed by Ram Mohan Roy beginning here and by Saranathan here. Practically, it means that any chronology/dating with astronomical readings at its core is approach-flawed. Astronomy cannot be a guiding light, not because it’s not a hard science, but because its data points in literature cannot be demonstrably identified.
The best example of issues in astronomically derived chronologies comes from the famous date of 3102 BC, declared by Āryabhaṭa as the day Kali Yuga began. And the Paurāṇika tradition tells us that Kali Yuga began on the day Kṛṣṇa Yādava died.
There it is then, it seems- we have a definite astronomical marker for a major epoch in ancient Indian history. But let us note that the Purāṇas themselves do not give this astronomical marker. In other words, it is not a part of the itihāsa-purāṇa tradition. Secondly, the date of 3102 BC is derived through Āryabhaṭa, who lived in the 5th century AD. Even when derived from the Sūrya Siddhānta, we must remember that astronomical dating of this text itself is not a consensus field- though again refutations exist for high chronologies. Within Paurāṇika tradition, as we will elaborate, there are various Yuga layers operating. How then can we conclude, with any certainty, which layer/calculation was Āryabhaṭa referring to, when he spoke of it several millennia after the fact in any scenario? At the epistemological and macrohistorical levels, the most we can reasonably speculate is that something of significance occurred in 3102 BC. But what that was, or what the reading itself was transmitted to, can never be certified.
Further, even if the astronomical consensus is accepted, it runs against archaeological and geological evidence in unresolvable ways. Kṛṣṇa’s death, and by extension the Mahābhārata in ~3100 BC holds implications for findings at sites like Hastinapura and the accumulating evidence on Sarasvatī River’s timelines. It is true that high chronologies seem to “incorporate” the Sarasvatī evidence in curious ways.
But in the section on epistemological event horizons we will examine why the above is problematic. In the main, there are enough geological linkages chronicled by Ravi, Danino and Sastry and Kalyanasundaram that evidence the congruence of Balarāma’s pilgrimage and the Sarasvatī’s decline near ~1900 BC and after. Adding to this, Benedetti’s paper demonstrates how Paurāṇika information ought to be truly reconciled with mainstream archaeological and historical findings. What this means is that even the singular evidence of Sarasvatī timelines refutes any attempt to place the Mahābhārata near ~3100 BC. To add is the issue of material technology, on which the Mahābhārata is as vivid as it is on other historical data-points. The date of ~3100 BC argues for a spatio-temporal band to war-chariot invention and horse-domestication that is not attested through any other field- archaeology and linguistics for example. Dates reaching into the 6th millennium BC appear far fetched for the same reasons.
Finally, there is the issue of disciplinary consensus. This is not to say that a lone voice among many could not be right, or that democracy dictates the truth. This is to point out that the sum result of the above problems is that no two serious scholars are entirely in agreement on what can be astronomically certified. The range of dates offered for the Mahābhārata, for example, begins with Lele at 6228 BC, runs through Vartak at 5567 BC and Oak at 5561 BC, finds a gravitational centre between 3201 BC and 3000 BC, and settles briefly around ~2400 BC before reaching the lower bounds between 1200-900 BC.
All of this is to reiterate that astronomical data, even if its identity is certain, can only be supplementary to that accumulated through archaeology, linguistics, literature and other fields. It cannot be the guiding light. If you disagree with this, then no refutation of 5000 or 12000 BC will satisfy you.
2. On the Issue of Archaeological and Linguistic Implications
Too few high chronologies for Indian history give credence to archaeologically determinable truths for human macrohistory. We’ve seen above how even the seemingly conservative date for Mahābhārata near ~3100 BC violates the Sarasvatī evidence. Equally does it violate accumulated findings on material technology such as chariots or the usage of horses in warfare. But while we may intellectually concede that new findings could compel reassessment of the 3100-2400 BC temporal band, the 6th millennium BC position appears indefensibly untenable. To assert that the Mahābhārata occurred in 5561 BC is to, by extension, assert that chariots and horses were already employed for warfare in the 6th millennium BC; and that organised agriculture and urban habitation were rampant across northern India. But this is not found in the archaeological record of Mehrgarh, Bhirrana or Rakhigarhi during the same period. Conversely, one could argue that nothing in the Mahābhārata can be taken literally, and that later renderings incorporated contemporary material technologies into an existing text. This is certainly plausible, but then it also refutes any astronomical information on the same grounds.
High chronologies for the period of Ṛgvedic composition and assembly reveal their amateurish base when we assess them under the lens of linguistic origins and dispersals. It’s important here to approach the field rationally, and indeed as a humble student. It may be tempting, but is ultimately useless, to deny comparative linguistics as a whole, or the hypothesis of a proto-Indo-European linguistic unity. We may express valid skepticism on any specific conclusions, and indeed there is no real data to back the conviction held by likes of Witzel and Parpola on these matters. But fact remains that any framework for ancient Indian history must acknowledge emergent paradigms on linguistic origins and dispersals. With its archaic Saṃskṛta preserved in unaltered fashion for thousands of years, the Ṛgveda is significant evidence on point of Indian chronology. We must respect comparative linguistics enough to acknowledge that the Ṛgveda is a post-PIE timestamp, which is to say that its temporal window comes much after that of hypothetical proto-Indian-European.
Further, there are legitimate conclusions on the nature of PIE and its vocabulary, that give us hints on the archaeological and technological condition of PIE-speaking people. For example, Mallory-Adams use the reconstructed lexicon to conclude that PIE people “possessed a Neolithic economy with extensive references to domestic livestock (cattle, sheep, goat, pig; possibly horse).” Such conclusions are not limited to Indo-European alone. We may remember that ancient India contained several other language families, each with its own trajectory of development and interchange with others. When Oak gives a band of 22000 BC - 6th millennium BC for the Ṛgveda, it implies taking PIE back to the last glacial maximum, more than 25000 years ago! This is so untenable that it throws the entire model into question. Vedveer Arya similarly dates the Vedic period to 14500 - 10000 BC, and Vaivasvat Manu to 11200 BC. This latter date is interesting, for the Holocene onset conditions near 11200 BC are linked in my framework to the flood myth of Svāyambhuva Manu. Who can say which is correct, or whether either of them are? This is where we must examine the notion of epistemological event horizons to understand why my framework appears best-fit.
3. On the Issue of Epistemological Event Horizons
For every discipline that may throw light on aspects of human history, there is a limit to how far back in time it can help us peek- a point beyond which it ceases to be of relevance as a discipline, or beyond which speculations that pass on its territory cease to have salience. For example, it is widely accepted by linguists that the epistemological temporal window for their field lies mostly in the Holocene era. Prior to the Holocene, they may well speculate on the proto-forms of proto-languages, but even these loose bearing by the last glacial maximum. This means that the linguistic epistemological event horizon does no go beyond the Holocene. A model that dates the Ṛgveda, and by implication both PIE and proto-Dravidian by some degrees, beyond the event horizon is not even falsifiable- or not even wrong!
By comparison, the genetic epistemological event horizon goes beyond the last glacial maximum, though today’s discernible genetic lineages have post-LGM origins. Archaeological event horizons are much shorter, even if new discoveries force existing paradigms to be questioned. But the archaeology of the Gangetic Plains is highly salient in any chronology to the Rāmāyaṇa, for example. This includes minutiae such as the floral and faunal subsistence of people, the trajectory of metallurgical development, and that of organised agriculture. When these intersect with what can be discernibly known in geology, hydrology and zoology, the degree of certainty we may assert to speculations that reach into the deep past lowers exponentially. This is precisely why any model that dates the Ṛgveda to 22000 BC, and takes geological timelines for the Sarasvatī back as far as 70000 BC cannot be taken seriously.
Take the case of Lahuradewa near Ayodhya, where evidence of possible rice cultivation goes back to the 7th millennium BC. Or Jhusi near Prayagraj, where microliths are dated to 9000 BC. Or even Bagor with its mother goddess worship in the 10th millennium BC. Think of what it means to claim that Rāma Dāśarathi lived a full two thousand years even before Bagor!
A digression is merited here to remind us how high and/or astronomically-derived chronologies simply disrespect and dismiss the Paurāṇika tradition. The works of multiple scholars have established irrefutable synchronisms, consistently found in Purāṇas, Brāhmaṇas, Vedas and other literature. For example, it is demonstrable that the Ṛgvedic Divodāsa and Rāmāyaṇa’s Daśaratha were contemporaries. The Purāṇas claim the presence of Divodāsa’s son, Pratardana, at Rāma’s coronation, and both Divodāsa and Daśaratha battled against Śambara. To put Ṛgveda before the LGM and Rāmāyaṇa at 12000 BC is to claim that literally everything in the Paurāṇika tradition is nonsense and must be ignored. Of course, this is the true nonsense!
A complete chronology of India’s Paurāṇika past must work within bounds of accepted, consistent tradition and the above-mentioned epistemological event horizons, and it cannot make claims drawing on one discipline that violate/ignore event horizons of others. Only when it plays within these bounds can it be called a plausible fit. This is not to say that we possess a singular, definite version of the Paurāṇika tradition or genealogy. We have the likes of Witzel, who do not allow for more than 25 generations from Vaivasvat Manu to the Mahābhārata; or Pargiter who reconciled 94 generations; or Mishra who settled at 63. These already give us a band of 500-2500 years, too wide for certainties to take shape. But a band of more than 10000 years, as Oak or Arya rely on (with differing models) cannot be reconciled in any scenario.
4. On Yugas and Manvantaras
If there will never be one, definite chronology for ancient Indian history, a singular and definite framework for yugas and manvantaras is even more elusive. This is because to think that all of ancient Indian literature- across time, space and personalities- works on a singular framework is incorrect. As a means of cosmic time-keeping, there were many yuga layers- esoteric, astronomical, historic. Within the philosophical tradition, it is understood that different phenomena in reality are set to different time-scales. The division of a time-scale into four yugas is a general application, but the real dates and bands can only be talked of in specific applications. The four yugas of reality itself- or the life of Brahmā- are not the same as four yugas of a discernible period of human history.
It would have been entirely convenient for us, if the Purāṇas had limited yugas for cosmic scales and not talked of historic events in the same language- but such is not the case.
In reality, the tradition tells us of both- a time-scale of 4.32 million years, and in which yuga was the Ṛgveda composed- for example. This makes the historical task much tougher, for no serious work can realistically consider Rāma to have lived more than 2 million years ago- which would be the case if we used the yuga framework at face value. In this paper here, Parthasarthy chronicles the various yuga-systems that are found in Indian tradition, including a 5-year yuga cycle. He goes on to distinguish between two primary cycles- a long yuga cycle and a short yuga cycle. The long cycle is the face-value one, where a mahāyuga is of 4.32 million years. The short yuga cycle involves removing the “daivika” layer from the long cycle, and results in a mahāyuga of 12000 years. To Parthasarthy, the Purāṇas only use the long cycle whenever they refer to yugas. But he also points out the work of Yogi Yukteshwar Giri, who insisted that the short cycle was the original one.
In effect, we can continue to quote a variety of scholars who reconcile the yuga confusion in different ways. But for a historical framework of ancient Indian history this problem seems moot. There is no plausible framework in which we could use the long cycle as is, and pretend to map all of Paurāṇika history along it. When considering that the short cycle essentially covers the period from Younger Dryas/Holocene onset onwards, it becomes obvious that this is the cycle to adopt in a historical framework. In my opinion, any chronology that even attempts to reconcile Indian history along the long cycle is flawed from outset, even malicious and deliberate in attempt to undermine.
But is it as simple as adopting the short cycle? Let us accept for a moment that Kali Yuga began in 3102 BC. Can we subtract 10800 years from this and conclude that the Satya Yuga began in 13902 BC?
Mapping Paurāṇika tradition to the above would imply that the primary period of Ṛgvedic composition was 13902-9201 BC in the Satya Yuga; that Tretā started in 9201 BC with the killing of Arjuna Kārtavīrya by Rāma Jamadāgneya; and that Dvāpara commenced in 5601 BC with the coronation of Rāma Dāśarathi. For the reasons enumerated above, these dates are not tenable at all. What is the persistent historian to do in this scenario? I find that the best-fit solution lies in reconciling Parthasarthy’s findings on multiple yuga-scales with Nadumuri Ravi’s frame of the Mārkaṇḍeya Mahāyuga, to which I add the concept of nested yugas and the historical mahāyuga of Vaivasvat. But before we reach there, what of manvantaras?
As with yugas, to take the cosmic time-scale of manvantaras as a historical reference is approach-flawed at outset. If we map the layer as is, we find ourselves claiming that Svāyambhuva Manu, the first Manu, lived more than 8 billion years ago! Clearly there is an allegorical nature to the notion of manvantaras, even if in-principle we cannot deny that there might be a continuity of culture and transmission in human beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Remember that anatomically modern human beings have been around for more than 350,000 years- as capable as we are today. Surely they too told stories to their children, danced to tribal ballads around the camp-fire, had great rulers and ruthless villians, and lived lives as experientially rich as we might today. Even something as basic as the wheel- where the supposed intuition is only that a round object moves easier- could have occurred to any homo sapien at any point of time.
So when we speak of epistemological event horizons, we do not mean to say that all of human history, culture and civilisation itself began only in the Holocene. There were meticulous star gazers even in 15000 BC, for example, or humans conducting experiments on the science of vocalisation during the LGM, or even a tribal warlord forging a great coalition in 70000 BC. Take the curious speculation that the ancient Paurāṇika Deva-Asura wars are memory of the inter-species conflicts of prehistory! In this frame, Devas become Neanderthals, Asuras become Denisovans, and Manuṣyas are us- homo sapiens. As fascinating as this sounds, there is nothing beyond speculative latitude that could lead us here. In my own framework, I speculate that the memory of Priyavrata, elder son of Svāyambhuva, could in fact be a memory that precedes Svāyambhuva and the Holocene. This is because stories of Priyavrata and his descendants map well to the known genetic dispersals out of India between LGM and the Holocene. I also place Brahmā and the earliest ṛṣis as a pre-Holocene memory.
The correct resolution for a manvantara-framework is to delink it from cosmic time-scales and understand it as a historical continuity. Manvantaras are the ages of man, or the ages of the rise and fall of cultural transmission. Each new manvantara refers to a cultural reset, a break in continuity and a civilisational restart of a kind. To reinforce this, I point to geological synchronisms in Indian tradition. These are geological, so they are not to be taken salient on contemporary personalities or incidents, but only on macrohistoric plausibilities. The synchronisms are:
Geological Varāha: while it is commonly taken that Varāhāvatāra is inextricably linked to Hiraṇyākṣa, in some Paurāṇika tales there is no Hiraṇyākṣa at all- and Varāha incarnates simply at plea of Svāyambhuva. What is Svāyambhuva’s plea? To reclaim the earth from submerged waters and make land available for Svāyambhuva and his people. In stories where Hiraṇyākṣa is present, the flooding and submerging happens due to him beating the earth down with his club, but in stories where he is absent the flooding happens nonetheless. All these tales combined paint the Holocene-onset picture, where sea levels were rising and melted glaciers were releasing world rivers.
In the Ṛgveda, Vṛtra is a dragon who holds the world’s waters, or maho arṇah, locked in place. It is through his defeat at hands of Indra that these waters are released. The Sarasvatī cannot flow until Vṛtra is vanquished- which is an allusion to the glacial conditions pre-Holocene. At Holocene-onset, the glaciers from Pamir to Tibet finally melted and released world rivers in all directions.
Dating the three Tamil Sangams is an inexact art, but if we simplistically add their durations up we are again taken to near 12000-11000 BC. Along coastal India, the rising sea levels at Holocene-onset would have been acutely felt. And indeed does Tamil tradition speak of these Sangams being “lost to the sea”.
What these synchronisms show is that ancient Indians remembered the seminal event that Holocene-onset would have been for homo sapiens, and it allows us to establish that the 1st manvantara, as the marker of the commencement of cultural continuity, began with the Holocene. And with this, we can return to yugas.
There are, for a historical analysis, 2 mahāyuga cycles to think of. The first is the Mārkaṇḍeya Mahāyuga, which began with Holocene-onset as Ravi shows and I agree. And the 1st manvantara (historical) did not begin with the awakening of Brahmā 8 billion years ago, it began with the Mārkaṇḍeya Satya/Kṛta Yuga. To this we add the notion of nested yuga cycles. Inside each larger yuga is a smaller mahāyuga cycle, such that the Mārkaṇḍeya Satya Yuga, for example, contains four smaller yugas within it. The second yuga cycle of historical interest then is the Vaivasvat Mahāyuga, which commences with the 7th and current manvantara. Paurāṇika data deals with the 1st and 7th manvantaras in similar ways- for example having them both commence with a great flood.
Historical references in the Purāṇas, when clocking time according to yugas, are speaking of the Vaivasvat Mahāyuga, not the Mārkaṇḍeya Mahāyuga. In my framework I date the commencement of 7th manvantara to ~4500 BC, but I am now in the process of re-examining this, and whether 3102 BC is the correct date. Either way, it allows for dates to the Ṛgveda, Mahābhārata, Rāma and others that violate no epistemological event horizons and are increasingly compatible with what emerges through archaeology or linguistics. Further, this best-fit resolution opens a window for aspects of Paurāṇika memory that have scarcely received the attention they deserve:
The clear picture of Neolithic revolution that emerges with Pṛthu Vainya, first cakravartin. This can now satisfactorily be placed between ~6000-5000 BC, with additional support coming from the 8.2 kiloyear event.
The clear picture of proto-Neolithic cultural consolidation that emerges with Samudra Manthana, dateable between ~7000-6000 BC.
The twelve great Deva - Asura wars, with many a macrohistorical memory in them.
Summary
To reiterate- there is unlikely to be consensus on a singular chronological framework for ancient Indian history. The best we can hope for is degrees of historic/macrohistoric certainty for key markers of Paurāṇika tradition. When we do this, astronomically-derived and/or high chronologies are untenable for a variety of reasons:
Astronomical timestamps, however accurate, can and do get transmitted to different events. Further, there is no standard for what constitutes astronomical “hard-data.” The best we can do is use it complementary to other fields.
A variety of archaeological and linguistics truths are violated by high chronologies, for example bands for the proto-versions of IE and Dravidian languages.
Disciplinary epistemological event horizons provide zones of falsifiability for data, and beyond these zones any and all speculations are patently not worthy of our time. If they are not even falsifiable, or make disciplinary claims far exceeding the certainties of those disciplines, we must move on and look for better frameworks.
High chronologies work with a flawed interpretation of yugas and manvantaras, or often try to map history to the large cycles at face value. These are untenable.