At 22:45 2000-03-21 -0800, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

>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...

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Two other fragments of the text confirm, indirectly, the information about
the new moon day as the time for the beginning of the battle (as indicated
by KRSNa in Mbh. V.140.18: saptamAc cApi divasAd amAvAsyA bhaviSyati/
saMgrAmaM yojayet tatra tAM hy AhuH zakradevatAm). They also seem to point to a solar eclipse, but not on the day of Jayadratha's death.

Consider V.141.10: rAhur arkam upeSyati - "the Moon's node (rAhu) approaches
the Sun (arka)" (KarNa, right after KRSNA, seven days before the battle), and -

VI.3.11: arkaM rAhus tathAgrasat - "also the Moon's node (RAhu) swallowed
(eclipsed) the Sun" (VyAsa, describing the situation sometime in the morning
hours of the first day of the battle, before the start of the hostilities).

NB: At VI.3.11 the Bombay ed. has arkaM rahurupaiti ca, suggestive of an approaching eclipse. (I don't have the Calcutta ed. on hand.)

With regards,

Artur Karp
University of Warsaw
Poland