Besides its epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kauravas and the Pandavas, the Mahabharata (whether absolute fact or utter fiction) contains much philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" (right action, purpose, pleasure, and liberation). Among the principal works and stories that are a part of the Mahabharata are: the Bhagavad Gita (a sacred text outlining the key tenets of Hinduism), the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Ramayana, and the Rishyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.
The works of the Mahabharata was originally attributed to the scribe Vyasa. However, this lengthy, ongoing poem of mythical madness was most likely composed by several writers between the 8th century BCE and the 4th century CE (a mere estimation of the time frame). Perhaps this is why many people still question if it was fictional, factual, or a mixture of both fiction and fact; blah! To read more about it via the elaborate version, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata
The reason why such a subject lands on this myths, legends, and folklore blog, is because the Mahabharata is a story of gods, demigods and men. Many people believe that the demigods and gods in this ancient manuscript were actually ancient astronauts who battled among each other for possession of this lovely blue planet known as Earth. In the past, I re-typed and/or copied a short story that covered this very same subject, and it was entitled "Ancient Star Wars." And you can find it here: [Link is no longer active, but it is now Part 2 of this post, below...]
Did the writings within the Mahabharata provide grammatical evidence of atomic warfare that occurred in our distant past? After reading the short story about ancient star wars, the weapons described in the Mahabharata didn't sound so primitive after all. It is an interesting concept to think about, to say the very least. Who knows for sure? Sometimes you're better off just using your creative imagination while leaving the rest for the pseudo-scientific creatures of today to pretend that they can unravel such things from ancient history... As the last part of the title asks: Fact or fiction??? Yeah, go get 'em, fellow brainiacs of ultimate knowledge and know-how... Either way, it sounds like this place has been under conflict from the very start. Cheers! Ha-ha!
Part 2: The Mahabharata & Ancient Star WarsIn 1952, the father of the atomic bomb, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, was at Rochester University to attend a conference of the world's top nuclear scientists. It was just seven years after the first A-bombs had mushroomed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During a question & answer session for the young college students, Oppenheimer gave a bombshell answer that was largely overlooked, or ignored, by the media. A student asked: "Was the bomb exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico, during the Trinity Project, the first one to be detonated?" Oppenheimer's reply: "Yes, it was the first one -- in modern times, of course."
Later, chemist Robert Warth, who attended the conference, said that Oppenheimer seemed "startled" by the question and that the students looked at each other in bewilderment. Did Oppenheimer believe that atom bombs had been exploded in an earlier time? We know that Oppenheimer was a complex man with many interests; he was deeply interested in the religions along with beliefs in ancient India, and had read the great sagas like the Vadas, the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
These ancient records contain startling and vivid references to tactical nuclear warfare, mentioning weapons all too familiar to us, most recently from Desert Storm in the Gulf War, like explosives, artillery and rocketry. [Hence the title, "Ancient Star Wars"]
An amazing section of the Mahabharata, called the Drona Parva, describes warfare between ancient armies on what is now the plains of northern India. The blasts of "final" (today we call them "ultimate") weapons to destroy entire armies.
In part, the Drona Parva reads: "The steeds and elephants and weapons were carried away as if these were the dry leaves of trees - borne away by a great wind. They looked highly beautiful, like flying birds, flying away from the trees..." The saga describes the mushroom clouds of tactical nuclear warheads: "They [the clouds] looked like the openings of giant, spreading parasols."
This is the nuclear battlefield described in all its horror from records written 8000 years ago! The Drona Parva also tells of the suffering that followed the bombs, when "the people's hair fell out and their food was spoiled." The survivors also washed their bodies often, which is a necessary survival precaution for people exposed to radioactive fallout.
Similar catastrophes have been reported in the records of other ancient civilizations, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is also detailed in this book. But it is only in India that ancient records, copied and recopied from the originals, describe in detail the great explosions and the terrible ensuing slaughter. The use and effect of tactical super-weapons like low-yield atomic warheads, strike aircraft, SCUD-type missiles and armored vehicles are also revealed in remarkable detail. References to what we think of as purely modern weapon systems like these, are scattered throughout the Indian texts - which mostly concern the adventures of gods and heroes.
The Mahabharata saga runs to 200,000 verses, making it seven times longer than Homer's ILLIAD and ODYSSEY put together. It was written in 1500 B.C., but describes events of a much earlier time, just as Homer wrote of the Trojan war, a conflict that ended more than 500 years before he was born. The Mahabharata was first translated into Sanskrit in 1834, and then appeared in English in 1884.
The Mahabharata is the story of gods, demigods and men. Again, many experts believe these gods and demigods, referred to in the ancient manuscripts, were ancient astronauts who battled among themselves for possession of this planet, and that man was almost destroyed in the process. Many historians say the Mahabharata describes the Aryan invasion of India which forced the original Dravidian inhabitants to the southernmost sections of the subcontinent, or to life as members of lower castes serving the Aryan masters.
...But time and time again, they are puzzled by references to weapons only easily identified as modern-day radar, fighter aircraft, smoke barrages, poison gas shells, armored divisions and nuclear missiles.
In Victorian times, British historians got around the puzzle by declaring that the super-weapons were "agneyastras" - great siege cannons used in antiquity to blast through the gates of castles and cities. They said that these references had been slipped into the Mahabharata in modern times in a prideful Indian attempt to say: "See, we invented cannon before you did." But this notion was completely disproved by the great Indian historian V. R. Ramchandra Dikshitar in his book "War in Ancient India."
Writing at the height of World War 2, Dikshitar said: "Aircraft and other weaponry is now just catching up on what the Mahabharata meant when it spoke of vimanas, fighting sky chariots; the mohanastra, which caused armies to fall unconscious without a wound; the tashtra, which killed large numbers of the enemy in one blast and the fog dart, which covered the battlefield in thick smoke and hid the movements of armored formations. To glibly characterize everything found in this ancient literature as imaginary, and summarily dismiss it as unreal...has been the practice of many scholars till quite recently."
Today, scientists and military men recognize the super-weapons described in the Mahabharata; but this wasn't the case 100+ years ago. One brilliant translator of the saga, P. Chandra Roy, said in the 1850s: "To the English reader, there is much in this book that will strike him as ridiculous." ...And in 1884, the translator Kisari Mohan Ganguli added: "There are verses in the Mahabharata which are exceedingly difficult to construe."
But what was mysterious or ridiculous in the 1800s seems perfectly understandable to us in today's world of high-tech weaponry. The following excerpt from the Mahabharata is chillingly familiar to all of us, even though it is separated from our own atomic age by 8000 years:
"A single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as 10,000 suns, rose in all its splendor. It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes...the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas."
---Editor's Interjection: Please note, the last quote seemed to be an extravagant exaggeration to denote the extreme force behind this particular weapon used during the times of ancient Star Wars. It didn't literally nor could it possibly be charged with all the power of the Universe... ---
Then, in a horror that invokes the memories of Hiroshima, the saga goes on: "The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out, pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours the foodstuffs were all infected, and to escape the fire...the soldiers threw themselves into the river..."
Do the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Mahavira Charita and other Indian classics, describe a war fought between armies of ancient astronauts for possession of this planet? Or does it describe an experiment that went terribly wrong? Did the extraterrestrials seek to advance mankind's knowledge by giving him the secrets of atomic energy for peaceful purposes? And did man misuse that knowledge, building not power plants, but weapons?
The ancient astronauts' bold experiment may have been destroyed on the plains of northern India in 6000 B.C., plunging man into a dark age that was to last almost 8000 years. Could it be that we are now, if we are not careful, on the brink of repeating that horror?
Editor's Comment:
This chapter provided relatively simple concepts that ultimately leads to the possibility of us repeating our past mistakes - which is very possible. What will throw many narrow minded folks for a loop, is the concept that suggests that the human race was assisted with the help of aliens from another planet. Most people stuck within the limits of mundane thoughts, will always be limited to a degree. Either way, we've been visited many times before. Life is all throughout the cosmos, not just stuck here on this lovely planet of ours.
---End of Post 'The Mahabharata & Ancient Star Wars - Fact or Fiction?'
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