Author: Atul Sethi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 10, 2007
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/SUNDAY_SPECIALS/Deep_Focus/True_legends/articleshow/msid-1746526,curpg-1.cms
Mythology, it is said, often has its roots
in reality. Or, does it? Take the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata,
for instance. The tantalising question that crops up time and again is whether
the events mentioned in these epics actually happened? Did the characters
described in them actually exist? How much of the epics is fiction and how
much history?
"There are no easy answers to these questions,"
says historian K M Shrimali. "Historically speaking, I have apprehensions
about subscribing to the view that Rama was a historical figure. The scale
of the event described as the Mahabharata war and its historicity is also
suspect," he says.
This view is echoed by R S Sharma, professor
emeritus of the department of history at Patna University, who believes, "Although
Krishna plays an important role in the Mahabharata, inscriptions and sculptural
pieces found in Mathura dating back to 200 BC and 300 AD do not attest to
his presence. Because of this, ideas of an epic age based on the Ramayana
and Mahabharata have to be discarded."
Not everybody, however, agrees. N S Rajaram,
author of the book Search for the Historical Krishna, says that we are on
fairly firm ground when it comes to the historicity of Krishna and the Mahabharata
war.
"There is sufficient evidence available
now to suggest that Krishna was indeed a historical figure, who lived about
5000 years ago. This evidence is not just literary but also archaeological,
geographical as well as astronomical," he claims.
According to Rajaram, we now know more about
Krishna than about any other ancient figure with the arguable exception of
Rama. Even about Rama, there is significant information available to prove
that he was a historical personality, claims Pushkar Bhatnagar, author of
the book, Dating the era of Lord Ram.
According to Bhatnagar, the clues to the authenticity
of the Ramayana and its characters have been provided by Valmiki himself.
"Valmiki, who wrote the Ramayana, was a contemporary of Rama. While narrating
the events of the epic, he has mentioned the position of planets in the sky
at several places.
Using recent planetary software, it has been
possible to verify that these planetary positions actually took place precisely
as specified in the Ramayana. Not just a stray event but the entire sequence
of the planetary positions as described by Valmiki at various stages of Rama's
life can be verified today as having taken place," he says.
"This information is significant, since
these configurations do not repeat for lakhs of years and cannot be manipulated
or imagined so accurately, without the help of sophisticated software. The
inference that one can draw is that someone was present there to witness the
actual happening of these configurations, which got recorded in the story
of Rama," Bhatnagar adds.
Literary evidence abounds for the existence
of Krishna also, says Rajaram. This is because, he says, ancient authors have
taken enormous pains to preserve accounts of Krishna's life, times and philosophy
even if they did embellish some details like the presence of Radha, who was
probably never a historical figure.
Although later literature attributed as many
as 16,000 wives to Krishna, there's no evidence to show that he had any other
wife, apart from Rukmini.
Beginning with the Mahabharata, says Rajaram,
there are numerous works belonging to the tradition of itihaas-puraan or religious
texts, which when viewed objectively, reveal several other facts about the
man, which have to be sifted from later mythological additions to his personality.
"If we look beyond the myths accumulated
over millennia, we can get a clear picture of who Krishna actually was. e
emerges as a human figure a practical philosopher par excellence who moved
away from the ritualistic practices of the Vedic religion of his time to the
action-oriented Sankhya philosophy, embodied in his philosophy of karma yoga
of the Bhagavad Gita, which till date remains his transcendent legacy.
Contrary to popular imagination, which portrays
him as a romantic hero, the image of Krishna that we get from ancient sources
is that of an impeccable statesman. He was an austere and studious man, whose
main concerns were political stability and ethical and religious reform,"
he says.
There are a number of non-sectarian, secular
works like Panini's grammar and the Chandogya Upanishad which mention Krishna
and provide independent support for his historicity, according to Rajaram.
Further clinching literary evidence, he adds, is the reference to Krishna
as an asura in contemporary Buddhist works like Sutrapitaka and Lalitavistara.
The very fact that Buddhists of the time who
viewed Krishna's teachings of nishkama karma (detached action) as inimical
to their own teachings, emphasising renunciation found it necessary to try
to discredit him by referring to him as an asura shows that he was recognised
as a historical figure even by them, says Rajaram.
Geographical evidence for the epics is also
abundant, says Bhatnagar. There still exist many places like Rameshwaram,
Kishkindha, Kurukshetra, Hastinapura etc where the visits of Rama and Krishna
are part of local folklore, he says.
If the epics are indeed true, which period
of history can they be placed? "In all probability, the society described
in the Mahabharata corresponded to the early Harappan period, before 3000
BC, since this period was a rich one with numerous urban centres, while the
society described in the Ramayana was less urbanised and more agrarian.
Most scholars today place the Mahabharata
war around 3100 BC. The Mahabharata also states that Brihadbala, 32nd in descent
from Rama, was killed by Arjuna's son, Abhimanyu in the war. So we may tentatively
place Rama 650 to 750 years before the war," says Rajaram.
According to Bhatnagar however, a period of
at least 2000 years separates the two personalities. "This is because
on the basis of astronomical dating, we can now say that Rama lived during
the 5th century BC, while Krishna is believed by scholars like Aryabhatta
to have belonged to the 3rd century BC."
But, why is there not much archaeological
evidence that points towards their existence? Because such an effort has not
been made in India and systematic excavations have never been carried out,
says historian Nandita Krishnan.
"Nobody believed that Homer's Iliad was
a true story till Troy was discovered after extensive archaeology. Unfortunately,
the sites of the Ramayana and Mahabharata have now been built over many times
and it may never be possible to excavate extensively either at Ayodhya or
Mathura," she adds.
Lack of archaeological evidence is no excuse
for denying the existence of history, sums up Bhatnagar. "If the buildings
of that time over 7000 years ago do not exist today, can we just infer that
civilisations and personalities of that time also did not exist?"