Puranic chronology

The Puranas are oriented at a cyclical understanding of time. They contain stories about the creation and destruction of the world, and the yugas (ages).[14] There are four yugas in one cycle:

• Satya Yuga (a time of truth and righteousness)
• Treta Yuga
• Dvapara Yuga
• Kali Yuga (a time of darkness and non-virtue)

According to the Manusmriti (c. 2nd CE),[15] one of the earliest known texts describing the yugas, the length of each yuga is 4800, 3600, 2400 and 1200 years of the gods, respectively, giving a total of 12,000 divine years to complete one cycle. For human years, they are multiplied by 360 giving 1,728,000, 1,296,000, 864,000 and 432,000 years, respectively, giving a total of 4,320,000 human years. These four yugas have a length ratio of 4:3:2:1.[16]

The Bhagavata Purana [3.11.18-20] (c. 500-1000 CE) gives a matching description of the yuga lengths in divine years.

The Kali Yuga is the present yuga. According to Puranic sources, Krishna's departure marks the end of Dvapara Yuga and the start of Kali Yuga,[note 2] which is dated to 17/18 February 3102 BCE,[17] twenty years after the Bharata War.[18]

The Dashavatara refers to the ten primary (i.e. full or complete) incarnations (avatars) of Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation which has Rigvedic origins. Vishnu is said to descend in the form of an avatar to restore cosmic order. The word Dashavatara derives from daśa, meaning 'ten', and avatar (avatāra), roughly equivalent to 'incarnation'.

Various versions of the list of Vishnu's avatars exist, varying per region and tradition.[19][20][21][22] Some lists mention Krishna as the eighth avatar and the Buddha as the ninth avatar,[19] while others – such as the Yatindramatadipika, a 17th-century summary of Srivaisnava doctrine[21] – give Balarama as the eighth avatar and Krishna as the ninth.[21] The latter version is followed by some Vaishnavas who don't accept the Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu.[23] Though no list can be uncontroversially presented as standard, the "most accepted list found in Puranas and other texts is [...] Krishna, Buddha."[24][25][26][27][28][note 3]

The following table summarises the position of avatars within the Dashavatara in many but not all traditions:[20][21][22][29]

Matsya (fish) rescues the Saptarishi and Manu from the great Deluge

In traditional Hindu astronomy, seven stars of Ursa Major are identified with the names of Saptarshis

The Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana contain lists of kings and genealogies,[12] from which the traditional chronology of India's ancient history are derived.[34] Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Maurya court at Patna at c. 300 BCE, reported to have heard of a traditional list of 153 kings that covered 6042 years, beyond the traditional beginning of the Kali Yuga in 3102 BCE.[35] The royal lists are based on Sūta bardic traditions, and are derived from lists which were orally transmitted and constantly reshaped.[35]

The first king is Shraddhadeva Manu, the seventh and current Manu of the fourteen manus of the current kalpa (aeon), the progenitor of humanity. According to the Puranas, the genealogy of Shraddhadeva is as follows:[36]

1. Brahma
2. Marichi, one of the 10 Prajapatis ("lord of creation and protector") created by Brahma, and one of the Saptarishis.
3. Kashyapa, son of Marichi and his wife, Kala. Kashyapa is one of the Saptarishis, the seven ancient sages of the Rigveda[note 11] who are the patriarchs of the Vedic religion, and the ancestors of the Gotras of Brahmins.
4. Vivasvan or Surya (sun, solar deity), son of Kashyapa and Aditi.
5. Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Vivasvan and Saranyu (Saṃjñā). He is also known as Satyavrata and Shraddhadeva.

Shraddhadeva had seventy children, including Ila and Ikshvaku, the progenitors of the Lunar and Solar dynasties of the kshatriyas, which play a prominent role in the origin stories of the royal families of the Vedic period.[39] The Mahabharata states that "it is of Manu that all men including Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Sudras, and others have been descended."[40][note 12]

The Puranas have been used by some to give a tentative overview of Indian history prior to the Bharata War.[41] Gulshan (1940) dates the start of the reign of Manu Vaivasvata at 7350 BCE.[41] According to Ganguly, the Puranic gives 95 kings between Shraddhadeva Manu (aka Manu Vaivasvata), the progenitor of humanity, and the Bharata War.[42] Dating the Bharata War at 1400 BCE, A.D. Pusalkar (1962) uses this list to give the following chronology:[42]

1. Pre-flood tradition and the dawn of history
2. The great flood and Manu Vaivasvata
3. The period of king Yayāti (c. 3000-2750 BCE)
4. The period of king Mandhatri (c. 2750-2550 BCE)
5. The epoch of Parashurama, the sixth avatar of Vishnu (c. 2550-2350 BCE)
6. The era of Rama, the seventh avatar of Vishnu (c. 2350-1750 BCE)
7. The period of Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu (c.1950-1400 BCE)
8. The Bharata War (c. 1400 BCE)

According to Subhash Kak,

[T]he Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BCE).[1][note 13]

The historicity of the Mahabharata War is subject to scholarly discussion and dispute.[43][44] The existing text of the Mahabharata went through many layers of development, and mostly belongs to the period between c. 500 BCE and 400 CE.[45][46] Within the frame story of the Mahabharata, the historical kings Parikshit and Janamejaya are featured significantly as scions of the Kuru clan,[47] and Michael Witzel concludes that the general setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE.[47] According to Professor Alf Hiltebeitel, the Mahabharata is essentially mythological.[48] Indian historian Upinder Singh has written that:

Whether a bitter war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas ever happened cannot be proved or disproved. It is possible that there was a small-scale conflict, transformed into a gigantic epic war by bards and poets. Some historians and archaeologists have argued that this conflict may have occurred in about 1000 BCE."[44]

Despite the inconclusiveness of the data, attempts have been made to assign a historical date to the Kurukshetra War. Popular tradition holds that the war marks the transition to Kali Yuga and thus dates it to 3102 BCE. A number of other proposals have been put forward:

• P. V. Holey states a date of 13 November 3143 BCE using planetary positions and calendar systems.
• K. Sadananda, based on translation work, states that the Kurukshetra War started on November 22, 3067 BCE.
• B. N. Achar used planetarium software to argue that the Mahabharata War took place in 3067 BCE.[49]
• S. Balakrishna concluded a date of 2559 BCE using consecutive lunar eclipses.
• R. N. Iyengar concluded a date of 1478 BCE using double eclipses and Saturn+Jupiter conjunctions.
• P. R. Sarkar estimates a date of 1298 BCE for the war of Kurukshetra.

The Vedic Foundation gives the following chronology of ancient India since the time of Krishna and the Bharata War:[web 1][note 14]

• 3228 BC – Descension of Krishna[note 15]
• 3138 BC – The Mahabharata War; start of Brihadrath dynasty of Magadha; start of Yudhisthir dynasty of Hastinapur
• 3102 BC – Ascension of Krishna; start of Kali Yuga
• 2139 BC – End of Brihadrath dynasty
• 2139–2001 BC – Pradyota dynasty
• 2001–1641 BC – Shishunaga dynasty
• 1887–1807 BC – Gautama Buddha[note 16]
• 1641–1541 BC – Nandas[note 17]
• 1541–1241 BC – Maurya dynasty[note 18]
• 1541–1507 BC – Chandragupta Maurya[note 19]
• 1507–1479 BC – Bindusara[note 20]
• 1479–1443 BC – Ashokavardhan
• 1241–784 BC – Shunga and Kanau dynasty
• 784–328 BC – Andhra dynasty[note 21]
• 328–83 BC – Gupta dynasty[note 22]
• 328–321 BC – Chandragupta Vijayaditya[note 23]
• 326 BC – Alexander's invasion
• 321–270 BC – Ashoka[note 24]
• 102 BC – AD 15 – Vikramāditya, established Vikram era in 57 BC

The Epic-Puranic chronology has been referred to by proponents of Indigenous Aryans, putting into question the Indo-Aryan migrations at ca. 1500 BCE and proposing older dates for the Vedic period. According to the "Indigenist position", the Aryans are indigenous to India,[51] and the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations.[51] According to them, the Vedas are older than second millennium BCE,[52] and scriptures like the Mahabaratha reflect historical events which took place before 1500 BCE. Some of them equate the Indus Saraswati Civilisation with the Vedic Civilization,[51] state that the Indus script was the progenitor of the Brahmi,[53] and state that there is no difference between the people living in (northern) Indo-European part and the (southern) Dravidian part.[52]

The idea of "Indigenous Aryanism" fits into traditional Hindu ideas about their religion, namely that it has timeless origins, with the Vedic Aryans inhabiting India since ancient times.[note 25]

M.S. Golwalkar, in his 1939 publication We or Our Nationhood Defined, famously stated that "Undoubtedly [...] we — Hindus — have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land for over eight or even ten thousand years before the land was invaded by any foreign race."[54] Golwalkar was inspired by Tilak's[note 26] The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), who argued that the Aryan homeland was located at the North Pole, basing this idea on Vedic hymns and Zoroastrian texts.[55] Gowalkar took over the idea of 10,000 years, arguing that the North Pole at that time was located in India.[55][note 27]

Subhash Kak, a main proponent of the "indigenist position," underwrites the Vedic-Puranic chronology, and uses it to recalculate the dates of the Vedas and the Vedic people.[56][57][web 4] According to Kak, "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BC)."[56] According to Sudhir Bhargava, the Vedas were composed 10,000 years ago, when Manu supposedly lived, in ashrams at the banks of the Sarasvati river in Brahmavarta, the ancient home-base of the Aryans. According to Sudhir Bhargava, people from Brahmavarta moved out from Brahmavarta into and outside India after 4500 BCE, when seismic activities had changed the course of the Sarasvati and other rivers.[58][59]

The idea of 10,000 years of Hindu presence in South Asia stands in stark contrast to mainstream scholarship, according to which proto-Vedic culture entered India starting 1500 BCE with the Indo-Aryan migrations, and Hinduism developed as a synthesis of Vedic-Brahmanic and indigenous religious traditions after 500 BCE.