Historical Dates From Puranic Sources
by Prof. Narayan Rao
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-- A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature So Far As It Illustrates The Primitive Religion of the Brahmans, by Max Muller, M.A., Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford: Correspondant de l'Institut Imperial de France; Foreign Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy; Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Literature; Corresponding Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and of the American Oriental Society; Member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and of the Oriental Society of Germany; and Taylorian Professor in the University of Oxford, Printed by Spottiswoode and Co., 1859
-- Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on The Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc. of the Nations of India, by Sir William Jones, 1824
-- Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle, M.A., Principal of the Government College, Patna, Member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the University of Calcutta, With Introduction, Notes and Map of Ancient India, Reprinted (with additions) from the "Indian Antiquary," 1876-77, 1877
-- Errors in Arrian, by A. B. Bosworth
-- Bias in Ptolemy's History of Alexander, by R. M. Errington
-- Chandragupta Maurya, by Purushottam Lal Bhargava, M.A., Shastri, With a Foreword by Dr. Radha Kumud Mookerji, M.A., Ph.D., P.R.S. 1935
-- Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya?, The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions, by Vedveer Arya
-- Astronomical Dating of the Mahabharata War, by Dieter Koch
Highlights:
Sheet Anchor Date
Professor Max Muller improved upon the work of Sir William Jones by trying to correlate the Indian history with Greek history. One ancient event the date of which is well known in the Christian era is the invasion of Alexander. However, there is no mention whatsoever of Alexander or anything connected with his invasion in any Purana or any other ancient Indian account including the Buddhist Chronicles.
Professor Max Muller then searched the Greek accounts and the narrations of the other classical European writers for the name of any Indian ruler who could be located. One such name is Sandrocottus. He is said to have succeeded Xandramese who was a contemporary of Alexander. Sir William Jones had suggested that Chandragupta of Mudra Rakshasa could be the Sandrocottus of Greek history. Professor Max Muller confirmed this identification. His main purpose was to arrive at a chronology acceptable to the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. In fact his motives and methods are best described in his own words. In his “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (Allahabad Edition 1859 A.D)” Professor Max Muller writes as follows …There is but one means through which history of India can be connected with that of Greece, and its chronology be reduced to its proper limits. Although we look in vain in the literature of the Brahmanas or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander’s conquest, and although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events, related by Alexander’s companions, with the historical traditions of India, one name has fortunately been preserved by classical writers who describe the events immediately following Alexander’s conquest, to form a connecting link between the history of the East and the West. This is the name of Sandrocottus or Sandrocyptus, the Sanskrit Chandragupta.
We learn from classical writers Justin, Arrian, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Quintus Curtius and Plutarch, that in Alexander’s time, there was on the Ganges a powerful king of the name of Xandramese, and that soon after Alexander’s invasion, a new empire was founded there by Sandrocottus who was succeeded by Sandrocyptus. These accounts of the classical writers contain a number of distinct statements which could leave very little doubt as to the king to whom they referred.
Indian historians, it is true, are generally so vague and so much given to exaggeration, that their kings are all very much alike, either all black or all bright. But nevertheless, if there ever was such a king of the Prasii, a usurper, residing at Pataliputra, called Sandrocottus; it is hardly possible that he should not be recognized in the historical traditions of India. The name of Chandragupta and the resemblance of this name with the name of Sandrocottus was first, I believe, pointed out by Sir William Jones. Dr. Wilford, Professor Wilson and Professor Lassen have afterwards added further evidence in confirmation of Sir William Jone’s conjecture; and although other scholars and particularly M. Troyer, in his edition of the Rajatarangini, have raised objections, we shall see that the evidence in favor of the identity of Chandragupta and Sandrocyptus is such as to admit of no reasonable doubt.
From this identification, the coronation of Mourya Chandragupta around the year 327 B.C. was taken as the sheet anchor date for Indian chronology. Though most of the modern scholars of Indian history do not know it, all the dates of ancient Indian history have been arrived at by calculating backward and forward from this sheet anchor date. For example Lord Buddha (according to some of the Buddhist chronicles) was born nearly 340 years before the coronation of Mourya Chandragupta. Accordingly his year of birth was fixed as 567 B.C.
Later, as more and more Puranic and Buddhist documents were discovered, those which did not conform to the aforesaid chronology were either ignored or stated to be unreliable. For example among the different documents on Lord Buddha the Ceylonese chronicles have been accepted as most reliable though those were written much later in the Christian era in Pali language. The orientalists who have continued the research after Professor Max Muller have only tried to add to the earlier chronology without questioning its validity.
Having worked out a chronology acceptable to the Europeans, the indologists started looking for archeological and other evidence to confirm it and this they thought they found in plenty in the form of stone inscriptions attributed to emperor Ashoka ... Their failure to arrive at the correct dates and details of the events was only due to the firm belief among the intellectuals of their time that the universe is less than 6000 years old. Unfortunately, in the process they have altered certain verses and otherwise mutilated the texts of the Puranas in their editions, such as Wilson’s Vishnu Purana, which are today most widely read.
The Christian missionaries have also been unintentionally guilty of such vandalism as they have often destroyed some of the manuscripts of Puranas which fell in their hands. They were doing so with the firm belief that by such destruction they are saving the posterity from these sin-provoking documents....
According to Puranic evidence, there had expired 1500 odd years after Parikshit, when Mahapadmananda was coronated.
Between Parikshit and the Nandas, there were 3 royal dynasties, namely the Brihadratha, Pradyota and Sisunaga families. The ten kings of the Sisunaga dynasty ruled for 360 years, beginning from 1994 BC and ending with 1634 BC At this time, an illegitimate son, Mahapadma-Nanda, of the last Sisunaga emperor, Mahanandi, ascended the throne of Magadha. The total regnal period of this Nanda dynasty was 100 years. After this with the assistance of Arya Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne of Magadha, in the year 1534 BC.
The Mauryas ruled for a total of 316 years, and were replaced by the Sungas. The Kanvas, who succeeded the Sungas, were themselves overthrown by one of the Andhra chiefs, which dynasty reigned for a period of 506 years. Then followed the reign of the Sri Guptas for a period of 245 years, a period also referred to as the (last of the) golden ages of Bharata. It was Samudragupta of the Sri Gupta dynasty, who was known as Asokaditya Priyadarshin. The inscriptions of Asoka belong to this Gupta emperor and not to the Asoka Maurya who came to power 218 years after the Buddha....
The Hypotheses Of Sir William Jones...
That the Sandracottus mentioned in Megasthenes’ Indika was Chandragupta Maurya. He based this on two observations of Megasthenes: one, that Pataliputra was situated at the confluence of two rivers which he wrongly read to be the Sone and the Ganges. There are two wrong inferences made in this statement: a) Megasthenes never mentions Pataliputra, but he uses the term Palibothra as the capital and b) Megasthenes mentions the two rivers as the Ganga and the Erannoboas, which was the Greek word for Yamuna. The equivalent Sanskrit name of Yamuna was Hiranyabahu, as prevailed in those times. While Megasthenes mentions the Sone elsewhere in his work, he clearly does not associate it with Palibothra. But Sir William deliberately chose to associate the capital Palibothra with the confluence of the Sone and the Ganga, and hence read it as Patliputra...
After studying the fragments of Megasthenes’ Indika in detail, Pandit Bhagavad Datta offers another similar plausible explanation, and concludes: “Yamuna was flowing thru Palimbothra, known in ancient times as Paribhadra, the capital of the Prassi kingdom. Palimbothra was 200 miles from Prayag on the way to Mathura. The Kshatriyas were known as Paribhadrakas or Prabhadrakas. Their King was Chandraketu. The capital city of Paribhadra was near Sindhu Pulinda, which is in Madhya desa and is today known as Kali-Sindha. The Karusha reservoir was between Sindhu Pulinda and Prayag.”
However, after Sir William’s announcement, notwithstanding the aforesaid facts, Max Mueller anointed the identification of Sandracottus with Chandragupta Maurya and proceeded to declare Alexander’s invasion, and the subsequent visit of Megasthenes, as the sheet anchor of Indian History, neither of which events are of great significance in Indian history....
What Does Megasthenes Say About The Kings Who Ruled
1. He calls Sandracottus the king of the Prassi and he mentions the names of Xandramus as predecessor and Sandrocyptus as successor to Sandracottus. There is absolutely no resemblance in these names to Bindusara (the successor to Chandragupta Maurya) and Mahapadma Nanda, the predecessor.
2. He makes absolutely no mention of Chanakya or Vishnugupta, the Acharya who helped Chandragupta ascend the throne.
3. He makes no mention of the widespread presence of the Baudhik or Sramana tradition [Rishi tradition] during the time of the Maurya empire.
4. He claims the capital is Palimbothra or Palibothra, and that the city exists near the confluence of the Ganga and the Eranaboas (Hiranyabahu). But the Puranas are clear that all the 8 dynasties after the Mahabharata war had their capital at Girivraja (Rajagriha), located in the foothills of the Himalayas. There is no mention of Pataliputra in the Puranas. So, the assumption made by Sir William that Palimbothra is Pataliputra has no basis in fact and is not attested by any piece of evidence. If the Greeks could pronounce the first P in (Patali) they could certainly have pronounced the second p in Putra, instead of bastardising it as Palimbothra. Granted the Greeks were incapable of pronouncing any Indian names, but there is no reason why they should not be consistent in their phonetics.
5. The empire of Chandragupta was known as Magadha Empire. It had a long history even at the time of Chandragupta Maurya. In Indian literature, this powerful empire is amply described by its name but the same is absent in Greek accounts. It is difficult to understand as to why Megasthenes did not use this name “Magadha” and instead used the word Prassi, which has no equivalent or counterpart in Indian accounts....
That a person with such a scant knowledge of Sanskrit would have the audacity to rewrite the entire history of the Indian Civilization, based merely on scraps and remnants of a travelogue, written by an individual who is not even highly regarded by more revered Greek historians, is astonishing...
Surely such a sloppy, baseless conjecture would be reason enough to discredit the thesis. The Indics should have cringed when they were told that the undecipherable scrap of paper left of “Indika” was more credible than the Puranas written in a language with very little ambiguity; but such are the depths to which the Indic has sunk. He is apt to believe the words of a conqueror, who is not qualified to tell the story with any degree of accuracy and who is himself qualifying his proposal as something of a speculation, than the words of the great Rishis of yore, who wrote in the precise language of Sanskrit...
Megasthenes (ca. 350 BC – 290 BC) was a Greek traveler and geographer from Ionia in Asia Minor or present day Turkey. He became an ambassador of Seleucus of Syria to the court of Sandracottus (mistakenly believed to be Chandragupta Maurya) of India, in Pataliputra. However the exact date of his embassy is uncertain. Scholars place it before 288 BC. Arrian explains that Megasthenes lived in Arachosia, with the satrap Sibyrtius, from where he visited India: “Megasthenes lived with Sibyrtius, satrap of Arachosia, and often speaks of his visiting Sandracottus, the king of the Indians.” Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri.
We have more definite information regarding the parts of India which Megasthenes visited. He entered the country through the district of the Pentapotamia of the rivers, of which he gave a full account (thought to be the five affluents of the Indus, forming the Punjab region), and proceeded from there by the royal road to Pataliputra. There are accounts of Megasthenes having visited Madurai (then, a bustling city and capital of Pandya Kingdom), but appears to have not been to any other part of the country. His observations were recorded in Indika, a work that served as a source to later writers such as Strabo and Arrian. He describes such geographical features as the Himalayas and the island of Sri Lanka.
Megasthenes also mentioned the country’s caste system, more in terms of profession, status and personality descriptor. But the problem from an Indic perspective is that very little of the Indika survives intact today and we are left with second hand accounts of Greek historians. In fact McCrindle, in “Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arian,“ says that the Greek writers such as Megasthenes were not highly regarded and were prone to lying. Strabo was of the opinion that Megasthenes simply created fables and as such no faith could be placed in his writings. In Strabo’s own words: “Generally speaking the men who have written on the affairs of India were a set of liars. Deimachos is first, Megasthenes comes next.”
Diodorus also held similar opinions about him...
The Greek records mention Xandramas and Sandrocyptus as the kings immediately before and after Sandracottus. These names are not in any way phonetically similar to Mahapadma Nanda and Bindusara, who were respectively the predecessor and successor of Chandragupta Maurya. However, if Sandracottus refers to Chandragupta “Gupta”, Xandramas could be his predecessor Chandrashree alias Chandramas (the last of the main dynasty of Andhra Satavahana Kings) and Sandrocyptus to be Samudragupta. The phonetic similarity becomes quite apparent and other supporting evidence too confirms the identity of Sandracottus with Chandragupta Gupta...
In the Puranic and other ancient texts, there is no allusion to any invasion or inroad into India by foreign people up to the time of Andhra kings. The only person who bore a name similar to “Sandracottus” mentioned by the Greeks, who flourished at the time of Alexander, was Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty, who established a mighty empire on the ruins of the already decayed Andhra dynasty. His date from puranic records is 2811 years after the Mahabharata War, which corresponds to 328 B.C. His current place on the historical dateline is 4th Century AD, which is an obvious error.
It is also interesting to note that the accounts in the life of Sandracottus of the Greeks, the political and social conditions in India at that time, match with those of Chandragupta Gupta era. Therefore, the Greek and Puranic accounts agree only with the identity of Chandragupta Gupta and Sandracottus...
The truth of the matter is that the proto-historical thought prevailing in entire Western world until 18th Century was circumscribed by the Biblical premise: God’s creation was begun about 4000 BC! Nobody was without this limiting perspective while interpreting historical evidence -– written, oral or archeological. Jones remained true to the Biblical dogma of Genesis, which he took to be a literal account. His chronology for ancient India, including the dating of Chandragupta Maurya to the period of Alexander’s invasion of India, was dictated at least in part by the Biblical dogma....
As may be the case, there are two major disservice that Jones did to the Indic Civilisation. One was the possible misdating of Chandragupta Maurya by several centuries and the other was postulating the assumption of a PIE [Proto Indo European], which implied an Urheimat (ancestral home) from where the Indo Europeans fanned out to the four corners of the Eurasian landmass. By so doing, he laid the seeds for a fractured historical narrative for the Indics, which was not supported by any Indian legend, tradition or folklore. In short, he saddled the Indics with perpetually having to refute dual falsehoods: a false chronology and an imposed ‘Aryan Invasion’ or what has been light heartedly called the “Aryan Tourist theory.”
When it came to synchronism, the only significant data that Sir William could utilise was the Greek invasion under Alexander. This was the earliest date that he could come up with, and the data he had was the notes kept by Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to India by Seleucus Nikator, one of the generals of Alexander who broke away from the main Alexandrian empire to set up his own Satrapy....
Jones’ speech informs us of his fancies: that he has found a classical but nameless Sanskrit book of about 2,000 years before; that, Chandragupta Maurya was no other than the very Sandracottus who is described by Megasthenes to have made a treaty with Seleucus around 312 BC; and, to establish that Chandragupta belonged to the Maurya dynasty, he mentions about some poem by Somdev which speaks of the murder of Mahapadma of the Nanda dynasty and his eight sons by Chandragupta in order to usurp the kingdom.
In this way Jones created an arbitrary and fictitious connection between Chandragupta Maurya and Sandracottus.
-- Historical Dates From Puranic Sources, by Prof. Narayan Rao
Sheet Anchor Date
Professor Max Muller improved upon the work of Sir William Jones by trying to correlate the Indian history with Greek history. One ancient event the date of which is well known in the Christian era is the invasion of Alexander. However, there is no mention whatsoever of Alexander or anything connected with his invasion in any Purana or any other ancient Indian account including the Buddhist Chronicles.
Professor Max Muller then searched the Greek accounts and the narrations of the other classical European writers for the name of any Indian ruler who could be located. One such name is Sandrocottus. He is said to have succeeded Xandramese who was a contemporary of Alexander. Sir William Jones had suggested that Chandragupta of Mudra Rakshasa could be the Sandrocottus of Greek history. Professor Max Muller confirmed this identification. His main purpose was to arrive at a chronology acceptable to the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. In fact his motives and methods are best described in his own words. In his “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (Allahabad Edition 1859 A.D)” Professor Max Muller writes as follows …
There is but one means through which history of India can be connected with that of Greece, and its chronology be reduced to its proper limits. Although we look in vain in the literature of the Brahmanas or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander’s conquest, and although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events, related by Alexander’s companions, with the historical traditions of India, one name has fortunately been preserved by classical writers who describe the events immediately following Alexander’s conquest, to form a connecting link between the history of the East and the West. This is the name of Sandrocottus or Sandrocyptus, the Sanskrit Chandragupta.
We learn from classical writers Justin, Arrian, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Quintus Curtius and Plutarch, that in Alexander’s time, there was on the Ganges a powerful king of the name of Xandramese, and that soon after Alexander’s invasion, a new empire was founded there by Sandrocottus who was succeeded by Sandrocyptus. These accounts of the classical writers contain a number of distinct statements which could leave very little doubt as to the king to whom they referred.
Indian historians, it is true, are generally so vague and so much given to exaggeration, that their kings are all very much alike, either all black or all bright. But nevertheless, if there ever was such a king of the Prasii, a usurper, residing at Pataliputra, called Sandrocottus; it is hardly possible that he should not be recognized in the historical traditions of India. The name of Chandragupta and the resemblance of this name with the name of Sandrocottus was first, I believe, pointed out by Sir William Jones. Dr. Wilford, Professor Wilson and Professor Lassen have afterwards added further evidence in confirmation of Sir William Jone’s conjecture; and although other scholars and particularly M. Troyer, in his edition of the Rajatarangini, have raised objections, we shall see that the evidence in favor of the identity of Chandragupta and Sandrocyptus is such as to admit of no reasonable doubt.
From this identification, the coronation of Mourya Chandragupta around the year 327 B.C. was taken as the sheet anchor date for Indian chronology. Though most of the modern scholars of Indian history do not know it, all the dates of ancient Indian history have been arrived at by calculating backward and forward from this sheet anchor date. For example Lord Buddha (according to some of the Buddhist chronicles) was born nearly 340 years before the coronation of Mourya Chandragupta. Accordingly his year of birth was fixed as 567 B.C.
Errors In Dating
Later, as more and more Puranic and Buddhist documents were discovered, those which did not conform to the aforesaid chronology were either ignored or stated to be unreliable. For example among the different documents on Lord Buddha the Ceylonese chronicles have been accepted as most reliable though those were written much later in the Christian era in Pali language. The orientalists who have continued the research after Professor Max Muller have only tried to add to the earlier chronology without questioning its validity. Certain observations about the sheet anchor date are given in Appendix II.
Having worked out a chronology acceptable to the Europeans, the indologists started looking for archeological and other evidence to confirm it and this they thought they found in plenty in the form of stone inscriptions attributed to emperor Ashoka (and some other kings such as Kharabela). Here it must be emphasized that the European indologists deserve all the credit for their efforts to work out a detailed history of ancient India. Their failure to arrive at the correct dates and details of the events was only due to the firm belief among the intellectuals of their time that the universe is less than 6000 years old. Unfortunately, in the process they have altered certain verses and otherwise mutilated the texts of the Puranas in their editions, such as Wilson’s Vishnu Purana, which are today most widely read.
Many of the extant manuscripts were written on palm leaf or copied during the British India colonial era, some in the 19th century. The scholarship on Vishnu Purana, and other Puranas, has suffered from cases of forgeries, states Ludo Rocher, where liberties in the transmission of Puranas were normal and those who copied older manuscripts replaced words or added new content to fit the theory that the colonial scholars were keen on publishing.
-- Vishnu Purana, by Wikipedia
The Christian missionaries have also been unintentionally guilty of such vandalism as they have often destroyed some of the manuscripts of Puranas which fell in their hands. They were doing so with the firm belief that by such destruction they are saving the posterity from these sin-provoking documents.
Because...the content of this literature is partly extremely unpleasant... it is precisely for that reason that it is all the more desirable that the original and the old are emphasized. -- August Blau
-- Frederick Eden Pargiter: Excerpt from The Puranas, by Ludo Rocher
However, sufficient number of the different versions of the different Puranas is still available in the monasteries in India, as well as the libraries in Great Britain, Germany, America and other countries for a complete and correct chronology of Indian history to be worked out.
In calculating the dates from the Puranas the following procedure should be adopted to rectify the errors and discrepancies.
1. Proper distinction should be made between the Puranas and the other ancient texts. For example, Abhigyana Shakuntalam, Mudra Rakshasa, Raghu Vansa, Harsha Charita etc. are magnificent literary works and not historical documents.
2. In some Puranas the dates are given in more than one era. In such cases comparison should be made to detect any possible error. Possible grammatical errors as well as the consistency and continuity of the verses should be carefully checked.
3 The dates of events worked out from different Puranas should be tallied and compared with the dates worked out from astronomical data.
The iron pillar in the Qutb complex near Delhi, India. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Indian History And Its Historians
Coin of the Gupta king Chandragupta II
Part IV: Who Ruled North India During Megasthenes’ Visit? (contd)
According to Puranic evidence, there had expired 1500 odd years after Parikshit, when Mahapadmananda was coronated.
Mahapadma Nanda (IAST: Mahāpadmānanda; c. 4th century BCE), according to the Puranas, was the first Emperor of the Nanda Empire of ancient India. The Puranas describe him as a son of the last Shaishunaga king Mahanandin and a Shudra woman, and credit him with extensive conquests. The different Puranas variously give the length of his reign as 28 or 88 years, and state that his eight sons ruled in succession after him.
The Buddhist texts don't mention him, and instead name the first Nanda ruler as robber-turned-king Ugrasena, who was succeeded by his eight brothers, the last of whom was Dhana Nanda.
-- Mahapadma Nanda, by Wikipedia
Between Parikshit and the Nandas, there were 3 royal dynasties, namely the Brihadratha, Pradyota and Sisunaga families. The ten kings of the Sisunaga dynasty ruled for 360 years, beginning from 1994 BC and ending with 1634 BC At this time, an illegitimate son, Mahapadma-Nanda, of the last Sisunaga emperor, Mahanandi, ascended the throne of Magadha. The total regnal period of this Nanda dynasty was 100 years. After this with the assistance of Arya Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne of Magadha, in the year 1534 BC.
The Mauryas ruled for a total of 316 years, and were replaced by the Sungas. The Kanvas, who succeeded the Sungas, were themselves overthrown by one of the Andhra chiefs, which dynasty reigned for a period of 506 years. Then followed the reign of the Sri Guptas for a period of 245 years, a period also referred to as the (last of the) golden ages of Bharata. It was Samudragupta of the Sri Gupta dynasty, who was known as Asokaditya Priyadarshin. The inscriptions of Asoka belong to this Gupta emperor and not to the Asoka Maurya who came to power 218 years after the Buddha.
Narahari Achar of Memphis University has confirmed several of these dates, including that of the Buddha, using the Planetarium software that has its algorithms based on Celestial Mechanics. The method has established that the Puranic dates are correct based on the sky observations that were recorded by the ancients. This must be regarded as an independent verification since the principles of celestial mechanics were unknown to the ancient Indic.
The eighteen major and eighteen minor purāṇās make up an enormous body of Sanskrit literature, not easy to read, much less to synthesize to see the common cultural threads linking them to the Ṛgveda... All the important purāṇas describe the night sky and present ancient astronomical models based on Meru and the Pole Star. In a few of the available texts the nucleus of this sky model can be traced back to the Vedas. The BP one of the earliest among the eighteen purāṇa explains the waxing and waning of moon as part of its astronomy...
Since, at present, the texts are inflated and have many errors due to transmission and copying problems, it is difficult to discuss the numbers mentioned differently in some of these texts....
It is known that no absolute dates can be put forth for any of the eighteen Purāṇa texts, which have grown over time with bulky additions. But, all or most of them retain the story of Dhruva as the Pole Star with variant readings. This is a clear indication of the branching of the Purāṇas from a nucleus which lies in the Vedic texts such as the TA and the ekāgni-kāṇḍa which knew the prominent constellation Śiśumara with 14 stars, the fixed Dhruva and the Meru connecting the earth with the NCP. Among the Purāṇas it is in BP we find matter of fact statements about Dhruva. As far as ancient astronomy and cosmology are concerned, BP preserves the original concepts, out of which the Viṣṇu, Vāyu, Lińga and Matsya Purāṇa have bifurcated with further variations. This chronological perspective finds support in the works of a few indologists also...
In the identification of the equinox day, BP mentions that when Sun is in the first quarter of kṛttikā (Alcyone) and Moon in the fourth quarter of viśākha (α-Libra), the day and night are equal. Similarly when Sun is in the third quarter of viśākha and Moon is at the beginning of kṛttikā it is viṣuvam (equinox). This statement appears in several of the Purāṇas and hence cannot be ignored as spurious. This has been discussed in detail in relation to other ancient astronomical statements by Koch123, to show that the record preserved in the Purāṇas holds valid for 1885-1645 BCE.
-- Ancient Indian Astronomy in Vedic Texts, by R.N. Iyengar
The Hypotheses Of Sir William Jones
He made the following inferences from the work of Megasthenes, which were in retrospect colossal errors …
1. That the puranic chronology was completely erroneous.
2. That the Sandracottus mentioned in Megasthenes’ Indika was Chandragupta Maurya. He based this on two observations of Megasthenesa : one, that Pataliputra was situated at the confluence of two rivers which he wrongly read to be the Sone and the Ganges. There are two wrong inferences made in this statement : a) Megasthenes never mentions Pataliputra, but he uses the term Palibothra as the capital and b) Megasthenes mentions the two rivers as the Ganga and the Erannoboas, which was the Greek word for Yamuna. The equivalent Sanskrit name of Yamuna was Hiranyabahu, as prevailed in those times. While Megasthenes mentions the Sone elsewhere in his work, he clearly does not associate it with Palibothra. But Sir William deliberately chose to associate the capital Palibothra with the confluence of the Sone and the Ganga, and hence read it as Patliputra.
It seems necessary to fix with precision the sense in which we mean to speak of advantage or utility....nor should we wholly exclude even the trivial and worldly sense of utility, which too many consider as merely synonymous with lucre, but should reckon among useful objects those practical, and by no means illiberal arts, which may eventually conduce both to national and to private emolument. With a view then to advantages thus explained... [and] consistent with our chief object already mentioned, we may properly begin with the Civil History of the Five Asiatic Nations, which necessarily comprises their geography, or a description of the places where they have acted, and their astronomy, which may enable us to fix with some accuracy the time of their actions...
In the first place, we cannot surely deem it an inconsiderable advantage that all our historical researches have confirmed the Mosaic accounts of the primitive world; and our testimony on that subject ought to have the greater weight, because, if the result of our observations had been totally different, we should nevertheless have published them, not indeed with equal pleasure, but with equal confidence; for truth is mighty, and, whatever be its consequences, must always prevail; but, independently of our interest in corroborating the multiplied evidences of revealed religion, we could scarce gratify our minds with a more useful and rational entertainment than the contemplation of those wonderful revolutions in kingdoms and states which have happened within little more than four thousand years...
That no Hindu nation but the Cashmirians, have left us regular histories in their ancient language, we must ever lament; but from the Sanscrit literature, which our country has the honour of having unveiled, we may still collect some rays of historical truth, though time and a series of revolutions have obscured that light which we might reasonably have expected from so diligent and ingenious a people. The numerous Puranas and Itihasas, or poems mythological and heroic, are completely in our powers and from them we may recover some disfigured but valuable pictures of ancient manners and governments; while the popular tales of the Hindus, in prose and in verse, contain fragments of history; and even in their dramas we may find as many real characters and events as a future age might find in our own plays, if all histories of England were, like those of India, to be irrecoverably lost. For example: A most beautiful poem by Somadeva, comprising a very long chain of instinctive and agreeable stories, begins with the famed revolution at Pataliputra, by the murder of king Nanda with his eight sons, and the usurpation of Chandragupta; and the same revolution is the subject of a tragedy in Sanscrit, entitled, the Coronation of Chandra, the abbreviated name of that able and adventurous usurper. From these once concealed, but now accessible, compositions, we are enabled to exhibit a more accurate sketch of old Indian history than the world has yet seen, especially with the aid of well attested observations on the places of the colures....Now the age of Vicramaditya is given; and if we can fix on an Indian prince contemporary with Seleucus, we shall have three given points in the line of time between Rama, or the first Indian colony, and Chandrabija, the last Hindu monarch who reigned in Bahar; so that only eight hundred or a thousand years will remain almost wholly dark...while the abstract sciences are all truth, and the fine arts all fiction, we cannot but own, that in the details of history, truth and fiction are so blended as to be scarce distinguishable.
By collating many copies of the same work, we may correct blunders of transcribers in tables, names, and descriptions.
Geography, astronomy, and chronology have, in this part of Asia, shared the fate of authentic history; and, like that, have been so masked and bedecked in the fantastic robes of mythology and metaphor, that the real system of Indian philosophers and mathematicians can scarce be distinguished: an accurate knowledge of Sanscrit, and a confidential intercourse with learned Brahmens, are the only means of separating truth from fable; and we may expect the most important discoveries from two of our members, concerning whom it may be safely asserted, that if our Society should have produced no other advantage than the invitation given to them for the public display of their talents, we should have a claim to the thanks of our country and of all Europe. Lieutenant Wilford has exhibited an interesting specimen of the geographical knowledge deducible from the Puranas, and will in time present you with so complete a treatise on the ancient world known to the Hindus, that the light acquired by the Greeks will appear but a glimmering in comparison of that he will diffuse; while Mr. Davis, who has given us a distinct idea of Indian computations and cycles, and ascertained the place of the colures at a time of great importance in history, will hereafter disclose the systems of Hindu astronomers, from Nared and Parasar to Meya, Varahamihir, and Bhascar; and will soon, I trust, lay before you a perfect delineation of all the Indian asterisms in both hemispheres, where you will perceive so strong a general resemblance to the constellations of the Greeks, as to prove that the two systems were originally one and the same, yet with such a diversity in parts, as to show incontestibly that neither system was copied from the other; whence it will follow, that they must have had some common source.
The jurisprudence of the Hindus and Arabs being the field which I have chosen for my peculiar toil, you cannot expect that I should greatly enlarge your collection of historical knowledge; but I may be able to offer you some occasional tribute; and I cannot help mentioning a discovery which accident threw in my way, though my proofs must be reserved for an essay which I have destined for the fourth volume of your Transactions. To fix the situation of that Palybothra (for there may have been several of the name) which was visited and described by Megasthenes, had always appeared a very difficult problem, for though it could not have been Prayaga, where no ancient metropolis ever stood, nor Canyacubja, which has no epithet at all resembling the word used by the Greeks; nor Gaur, otherwise called Lacshmanavati, which all know to be a town comparatively modern, yet we could not confidently decide that it was Pataliputra, though names and most circumstances nearly correspond, because that renowned capital extended from the confluence of the Sone and the Ganges to the site of Patna, while Palibothra stood at the junction of the Ganges and Erannoboas, which the accurate M. D'Ancille had pronounced to be the Yamuna; but this only difficulty was removed, when I found in a classical Sanscrit book, near 2000 years old, that Hiranyabahu, or golden armed, which the Greeks changed into Erannoboas, or the river with a lovely murmur, was in fact another name for the Sona itself; though Megasthenes, from ignorance or inattention, has named them separately. This discovery led to another of greater moment, for Chandragupta, who, from a military adventurer, became like Sandracottus the sovereign of Upper Hindustan, actually fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra, where he received ambassadors from foreign princes; and was no other than that very Sandracottus who concluded a treaty with Seleucus Nicator; so that we have solved another problem, to which we before alluded, and may in round numbers consider the twelve and three hundredth years before Christ, as two certain epochs between Rama, who conquered Silan a few centuries after the flood, and Vicramaditya, who died at Ujjayini fifty-seven years before the beginning of our era.
-- Discourse X. Delivered February 28, 1793, P. 192, Excerpt from "Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on The Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc. of the Nations of India", by Sir William Jones, 1824
We quote the following passage of Sunil Bhattacharya from his paper:
“Even though Megasthenes had specifically mentioned Sone separately, yet Sir Jones conveniently stated that Megasthenes mentioned about Sone negligently. But there was none in those days to protest against such horrendous accusation hurled at Megasthenes. Present day well-informed historians know that there was indeed the city of Pratisthanpur at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna, which was also mentioned by the great poet Kalidasa of the 8th century BCE, in his drama “Vikramorvashiya”. The city of Pratisthanpur was destroyed completely about one thousand years ago by a devastating fire and from that time onward that city has been known as Jhusi (or Jhunsi), a name derived from the Hindi word Jhulasna or “to burn.” Megasthenes stated that in those days all buildings / houses near rivers and the sea were made of wood and Palibuthra, being at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna, was no exception; and that the structures with brick and clay were built only in places far away from the rivers and the sea. Thus it appears possible that the fire destroyed all the traces of the ancient wooden structures, if any of these at all survived till the time of the devastating fire. Jhusi is located towards the east of Allahabad, just across the river Ganga. Archaeologists have found grains and other artifacts in the mounds of Jhusi, which dates back to before the 4th century BCE. The Asoka pillar found in Jhusi had inscriptions of Samudragupta and it was shifted to the Allahabad Fort and the emperor Jahangir also made his inscription on it. The Asoka inscription on it was of Samudragupta, after he had converted to Buddhism and had assumed the name of Asokaditya. All the Gupta kings had their second names ending in “-aditya”.'
After studying the fragments of Megasthenes’ Indika in detail, Pandit Bhagavad Datta offers another similar plausible explanation, and concludes: “Yamuna was flowing thru Palimbothra, known in ancient times as Paribhadra, the capital of the Prassi kingdom. Palimbothra was 200 miles from Prayag on the way to Mathura. The Kshatriyas were known as Paribhadrakas or Prabhadrakas. Their King was Chandraketu. The capital city of Paribhadra was near Sindhu Pulinda, which is in Madhya desa and is today known as Kali-Sindha. The Karusha reservoir was between Sindhu Pulinda and Prayag.”
However, after Sir William’s announcement, notwithstanding the aforesaid facts, Max Mueller anointed the identification of Sandracottus with Chandragupta Maurya and proceeded to declare Alexander’s invasion, and the subsequent visit of Megasthenes, as the sheet anchor of Indian History, neither of which events are of great significance in Indian history.
Troyer did not agree with this conclusion and noted this fact in the introduction to his translation of Rajatarangini of Kalhana. He even communicated his views to Prof. Max Mueller in a letter but did not receive a reply. Max Mueller ignored the objections of Troyer and Colebrook, and hailed the discovery and Sir Jones’ inferences as authentic!
What Does Megasthenes Say About The Kings Who Ruled
1. He calls Sandracottus the king of the Prassi and he mentions the names of Xandramus as predecessor and Sandrocyptus as successor to Sandracottus. There is absolutely no resemblance in these names to Bindusara (the successor to Chandragupta Maurya) and Mahapadma Nanda, the predecessor.
2. He makes absolutely no mention of Chanakya or Vishnugupta, the Acharya who helped Chandragupta ascend the throne.
3. He makes no mention of the widespread presence of the Baudhik or Sramana tradition [Rishi tradition] during the time of the Maurya empire.
4. He claims the capital is Palimbothra or Palibothra, and that the city exists near the confluence of the Ganga and the Eranaboas (Hiranyabahu). But the Puranas are clear that all the 8 dynasties after the Mahabharata war had their capital at Girivraja (Rajagriha), located in the foothills of the Himalayas. There is no mention of Pataliputra in the Puranas. So, the assumption made by Sir William that Palimbothra is Pataliputra has no basis in fact and is not attested by any piece of evidence. If the Greeks could pronounce the first P in (Patali) they could certainly have pronounced the second p in Putra, instead of bastardising it as Palimbothra. Granted the Greeks were incapable of pronouncing any Indian names, but there is no reason why they should not be consistent in their phonetics.
5. The empire of Chandragupta was known as Magadha Empire. It had a long history even at the time of Chandragupta Maurya. In Indian literature, this powerful empire is amply described by its name but the same is absent in Greek accounts. It is difficult to understand as to why Megasthenes did not use this name “Magadha” and instead used the word Prassi, which has no equivalent or counterpart in Indian accounts.
The Colossal Error In Indian Historiography
This is indeed a remarkable tale even when viewed from the different perspectives of the Indic and the Occidental. That a person with such a scant knowledge of Sanskrit would have the audacity to rewrite the entire history of the Indian Civilization, based merely on scraps and remnants of a travelogue, written by an individual who is not even highly regarded by more revered Greek historians, is astonishing and bespeaks a degree of hubris that matches the grandeur of the Himalayas. In fairness to Sir William, it must be said that he himself may be utterly surprised at the seriousness with which his speculations were received and subsequently anointed by scholars at home. This is in addition to the great weight that is given to Greek historians’ writing about India, despite their atrocious bastardisation of Sanskrit terms.
And even if Sir William believed he had a good cause to stand by, what of the Indics of the modern era? Have the Indics taken leave of their senses? Surely such a sloppy, baseless conjecture would be reason enough to discredit the thesis. The Indics should have cringed when they were told that the undecipherable scrap of paper left of “Indika” was more credible than the Puranas written in a language with very little ambiguity; but such are the depths to which the Indic has sunk. He is apt to believe the words of a conqueror, who is not qualified to tell the story with any degree of accuracy and who is himself qualifying his proposal as something of a speculation, than the words of the great Rishis of yore, who wrote in the precise language of Sanskrit.
There is a palpable sense of frustration when we see that more than 50 years after Independence we still teach the chronology that was erroneously derived from the torn fragments of Indika.
… to be continued