Mahabharata question

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Thanks to Profs. von Simson and Hiltebeitel for their responses. My query
was provoked by reading a recent attempt to date the Mbh war on astronomical
grounds. The author claims that the episode where Krishna made the sun
disappear for a while, so that Arjuna could kill Jayadratha, is a reference
to a solar eclipse. Apparently, no one else  knew that there was going to be
an eclipse that day. However, as a solar eclipse can happen only on a new
moon day, and as the war started on a new moon day, this seems totally
impossible. Unless, of course, the war lasted for more than 30 days...

Another example of a false application of science. Sadly, the said author is
a reasonably well-known scientist himself. He also places the composition of
the Rgveda somewhere in Turkey, but puts its date around 7000 BCE, based on
astronomical information. So I don't think he is going to be well-received
by anybody involved in the debate on Indo-Aryan origins.

Vidyasankar
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