How an ancient astrological book points to the historical date for King Rama
A study of the Yuga Purana alongside expert sources and astronomical evidence about eclipses suggests a likely date
Today, we are familiar with the idea of celebrity astrologers doling out predictions about the rise and fall of leaders, and key world events. It turns out that millennia ago, astrologers in ancient India did exactly the same thing. This brings us to the Yuga Purana.
An astrological treatise so ancient that it predicts the Mahabharata war, the Yuga Purana, which also chronicles some dramatic events from the past (like Parashuram’s massacre of the Kshatriyas), focuses primarily on future events such as several future invasions, some of which we now know actually occurred. The most striking things it predicts, however, lay even further into the future. It says women would take over the economy and participate in trade and industry even though many men would have a hard time seeing them rise. It says many men would keep house and pay attention to wearing colorful clothes and predicts that people from the four varnas or castes would, some day, wear exactly the same kind of clothes and follow the same professions with no distinctions between them.
This astrological treatise is embedded in a much larger book on the closely related but more scientific discipline of astronomy, the Gargi-samhita. Could both texts have been authored by Gargi? This might seem surprising as Gargi’s fame lay in another direction, philosophy – she is mentioned especially in the Brihadaranyaka, one of the oldest Upanishads, as a noted philosopher who participated in debates and challenged other stalwarts like Yajnavalkya. She is even mentioned in the Grihya Sutras, which lay down rituals for householders. They mention Gargi among a small number of highly revered teachers whom householders need to pay their respects to before beginning important tasks. Why would a philosopher venture into the world of crystal gazing, or even into observational astronomy? This becomes less surprising as a possibility when we consider that some ancient scholars did indeed specialize in multiple fields. Patanjali, who is best known as the one who codified yoga in the Yoga Sutras, was also a grammarian of repute, second only to Panini. He even wrote a book on medicine! The eleventh century polymath monarch, King Bhoja of Dhara, wrote books on everything from poetry to yoga to mechanical inventions to architecture. So, it would not be too strange if Gargi, though primarily a philosopher, had an interest in astrology or astronomy, particularly considering the fact that she came from a famous family of astronomers.
The Yuga Purana provides one clue about the vintage of King Rama. Though it mentions past figures like Parashuram, and future ones like Krishna and some other characters of the Mahabharata war, it is completely silent on Rama or anyone whose time period overlapped with his (such as his father Dasharatha, or his father-in-law Shiradhwaja Janaka). Astrologers are chiefly interested in predicting future events so the present is unimportant to them. The author of the Yuga Purana could actually have been a contemporary of Rama, and thus, was not interested in discussing him. Now, it is known that Gargi was also a contemporary of Rama because the famous philosophical debates she participated in were held at the court of King Shiradhwaja Janaka of Mithila. Gargi or one of her family members of the same generation may have authored the Yuga Purana and, therefore, had no interest in talking about contemporaries, such as Rama.
The next piece of the puzzle is supplied by some recent research on aspects of archaic Indian astronomy. RN Iyengar and some co-authors have discussed two ancient astronomers named Parashar and Vriddha-Garga. Vriddha-Garga, the founder of the Garga family to which Gargi belonged, was also the original author of the Gargi-samhita (to which his descendants kept adding). Based on extensive research, Iyengar dates these two astronomers to around 1400 BCE. He reconstructed Parashar’s astronomical text (the Parashar-Tantra) based on detailed quotes of his work by later writers such as Varahamihira, Utpala and Ballala-sena. He and his co-authors also edited and translated the Gargi-samhita (also known by many other names including Vriddha-Garga Jyotisha) of which the Yuga Purana forms a part.
Later writers make it clear that, while Vriddha-Garga, the original founder of the Garga lineage or gotra, was a celebrated astronomer, his descendants included at least one other noteworthy astronomer. Intriguingly, Vriddha-Garga is also mentioned in the Mahabharata (Book 9.37 mentions how he had acquired knowledge of time-keeping, and of luminous bodies in the sky, and how many rishis went to him seeking knowledge. It even mentions that a tirtha was named after him, as the Garga-srotra). Parashar and Vriddha-Garga are always mentioned together by later astronomers, and seem to have shared the same kinds of observations and theories. They started the astronomical tradition that maintained that, on the first day of winter solstice, the sun and moon occupy the first point of asterism β-Delphini. This was observationally valid for the period 1400-1300 BCE (Iyengar et al 2019). In addition, Parashar mentions that his teachers observed a series of seven lunar eclipses separated by six-monthly intervals (now known to be a very rare occurrence). Using data maintained by NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak, Iyengar found that, while this phenomenon of seven six-monthly lunar eclipses did not occur at all during 1400-1100 BCE, it did occur between 1439-1442 BCE, and was visible from northwest India (both Parashar and Vriddha-Garga were located in Rajasthan). Thus, if Parashar’s teachers observed this series, that would place him towards the beginning of the 1400-1300 BCE interval mentioned earlier (around 1400 BCE).
Besides starting the astronomical tradition about the winter solstice, both Parashar and Vriddha-Garga were similar to each other, and distinct from later astronomers, in their great interest in comets, which they elaborately classified and recorded details about. They also followed the same classification of meteors and had similar views on why eclipses might occur (Iyengar 2016). All this along with the point about the observational validity period of the winter solstice tradition, and the fact that they were generally mentioned as a pair by later astronomers, suggests that they worked roughly in the same time period. Vriddha-Garga may however have been a slightly younger contemporary of Parashar, because he added a new comet to Parashar’s list, which he named after Parashar!
Since Gargi and Rama were contemporaries, and Vriddha-Garga was an ancestor of Gargi, we can now say – following our train of logic – that Rama’s time would have been after 1400 BCE. But how much later would depend on how many generations separated Gargi (or her siblings or cousins) from Vriddha-Garga.
We now turn to another link in the chain – the Anukramanis, or lists of composers of individual Rigvedic hymns. Vriddha-Garga, as the founder of the Garga lineage – itself descended from the Bharadwaja clan – contributed a hymn (6.47) to the Rigveda, as we can verify by examining Shrikant Talageri’s (2000) list of composers provided by the Anukramanis. A reading of Griffith’s translation of this hymn unexpectedly reveals some historical evidence. Vriddha-Garga mentions two royal patrons: Divodasa Atithigva, who, he says, shared treasure chests with him and Srinjaya, from the same royal family, who he mentions as bestowing gifts on Vriddha-Garga’s younger family members. Were Divodasa Atithigva and Srinjaya actual kings or princes? We find that they were.
Extensive genealogies compiled and synchronized by FE Pargiter (1910) show that Divodasa and Srinjaya were real. A civil servant and judge in British India, Pargiter became interested in the fact that extensive genealogical records of different royal families were maintained in various Puranic and epic sources. He compiled this information and worked to establish synchronicities among the various royal families, so that he was able to number royals from different families by a generation number. This was difficult work because, often, multiple kings had the same names, and these were not even necessarily kings from the same family or dynasty. From Pargiter’s 1910 paper, we find that both Divodasa Atithigva and Srinjaya are listed as kings of the North Panchala dynasty, being two generations apart (Srinjaya could have been Divodasa’s grandson.
The list also has two other kings named Divodasa, who belong to the Kashi dynasty, but they are not called “Atithigva” and they do not have a near descendant named Srinjaya. Thus, Divodasa Atithigva was Vriddha-Garga’s contemporary, while Srinjaya (two generations later) was contemporary with Vriddha-Garga’s young descendants. Now, according to Pargiter’s generation numbers, Rama, as a king of the solar dynasty (Ayodhya), was in the same generation as Srinjaya. Since Gargi was a contemporary of Rama, she would likely have been Vriddha-Garga’s granddaughter (two generations after him).
Pargiter establishes the synchronicity between Srinjaya and Rama quite rigorously. To follow this, we may delve into the history of the ancient city of Mathura. The Yadu royal family initially controlled the territory from Gujarat all the way up to Madhuvan – on the banks of the Yamuna. However, King Rama’s brother Shatrughna seized control of the Madhuvan area and built the city of Mathura at the site. He then asked his sons to guard Mathura. After Rama’s death, the Yadus regained control of Mathura, and the Yadu king Andhaka ruled there at the time that Kush (Rama’s son) was ruling over Ayodhya. Pargiter finds that Srinjaya’s daughter married Andhaka’s brother; since Andhaka was a contemporary of Kush, this makes Srinjaya and Rama contemporaries. All this indicates that Rama was about two generations after Vriddha-Garga’s time. Assuming that one generation of rulers ruled for 25 years, a date of 1350-1400 BCE for Vriddha Garga would therefore translate into 1300-1350 BCE for King Rama.
There have been many recent attempts to date Rama or the events of the Ramayana, and these usually rely on astronomical software. However, these attempts do not appear to give us a unique answer, and there is no consensus. Using logic, and relying primarily on four expert sources (Pargiter, Iyengar, the Rig Veda and its Anukramanis), and the Yuga Purana of the Gargi-samhita, we can conclude that King Rama lived some time around 1300 to 1350 BCE.
Brishti Guha has a PhD in economics from Princeton and is currently an associate professor at the School of International Studies, JNU.
Indrani Guha is a psychotherapist and a Harvard-Radcliffe alumnus.