Part I : Date of Mahabharat ; Use of Iron and the Saraswati River

[Anand M. Sharan]

Several discussions have taken place about the use of iron in India .
Notable are those of Farmer,  Banerjee etc  .

P propose that the date of Mahabharat be accepted as 1700 BCE or before.
The reasons are as follows:

Before the Mahabharat War started, Balarama, the brother of Lord Krishna,
went on a pilgrimage from Dwarka along the Saraswati River .

It has been established that the Saraswati river dried out due to the
change of course by the Sutlej river around 1700 BCE.

The use of iron is mentioned in the Mahabharat in the event when the
Pandavas retrned to the palace after the war, they went to meet
Dhritrashtra . Lord Krishna, asked that an iron dummy be replaced for
Bhima, who had killed all of the Dhritrashtra's sons .  When Dhritrashtra (
a blind person ) embraced this dummy, it got squeezed .

Second instance of the use of iron is in the Musalparva , as one of my
friends, has pointed out .

This pushed back the dates of RV etc