Kurukshetra War

The Kurukshetra War (Sanskrit: कुरुक्षेत्र युद्ध), also called the Mahabharata War, is a war described in the Hindu epic poem Mahabharata (Sanskrit: महाभारत), arising from a dynastic struggle between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura. The war is used as the context for the dialogues of the Bhagavad Gita.

Quotes

• According to the most popular later tradition the Mahabharata War took place in 3102 BCE, which in the light of all evidence, is quite impossible. More reasonable is another tradition, placing it in the 15th century BCE, but this is also several centuries too early in the light of our archaeological knowledge. Probably the war took place around the beginning of the 9th century BCE; such a date seems to fit well with the scanty archaeological remains of the period, and there is some evidence in the Brahmana literature itself to show that it cannot have been much earlier.
  • Basham, A. L. (1954), The Wonder that was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of the Muslims, ACLS Humanities E-Book, ISBN 978-1597405997

• More recently, Archar (2003) has argued for a date of 3067 B.C. for the war described in the Mahābhārata. He argues that the various astronomical events he has relied on to arrive at such a date must have been observed and could not have been back calculated by a clever astronomer to be interpolated into the text. And, indeed, the different points that are brought together to indicate a date of 3067 B.C. for the Mahābhārata war are too scattered and partial to indicate just a remembered tradition, as Witzel has argued for Achar’s Śatapathabrāhmaṇa date. His argument is indeed forceful, and I do not quite know what to make of it because it seems way too early.
  • Levitt, S. H. (2012). Vedic-ancient Mesopotamian interconnections and the dating of the Indian tradition. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 93, 137-192.
  • Achar 2003. “Date of the Mahābhārata War Based on Simulations Using Planetarium Software.” Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society 44.1-2: 65-115.