The first revelation from this sequence is that the Great War of the Bharatas did not take place until the Full-moon of Margashira! There is a hint from Vyasa’s version that that war didn’t start anytime in the lunar month of Margashira. In his conversation with Dhritarashtra before the war started, Vyasa makes a statement (among many nimittas), māṃsavarṣaṃ ...
Last year, 2020, may well end up as a landmark one, not only because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but due to the running feud between the US and China that set many prairie fires in global politics. Sadly, even though it was the 75th year of the founding of the United Nations, it will be one of its most forgettable years for non-performance, when most internati...
Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak of US National Security Agency (NSA) information helped the world see more clearly what the US – in its current manifestation – really is. Its extensive, abusive surveillance network targeted friends and foes alike around the globe but also pointed inward at America’s own population. It provided the clearest picture to date of the ...
The three nimittas stated by Karna about the moon and Rahu suggested a calamitous impact on the moon by which Amawasya advanced. The same version that Amawasya advanced unnaturally was expressed by Vyasa in his conversation with Dhritarashtra before the war started. The phase that had seen the comet hit ended up on Trayodasi when Amawasya occurred in Vi...
Some time back it became known that a data analysis company named Cambridge Analytica worked in the election campaign of US President Donald Trump based on Facebook data of 87 million people and this company played an important role in Trump’s victory. The question is, from where did Cambridge Analytica get Facebook’s data? It is clear that it was obtained f...
“Pakistan continues to embrace terror and terrorism as an instrument of state policy, however, we are clear that we have zero tolerance for terror and we have reserved our right to respond at a time and place of our choosing. This is a clear message that we have sent across that we will not tolerate such activity.” - “Pakistan and China form a very potent th...
The 5th nimitta expressed by Karna sounds strange. 5] The sign on Moon’s disc had changed. Karna: somasya lakṣma vyāvṛttaṃ [Mbh: 5-141-10] This observation looks bizarre but it refers to some abnormality with reference to the features found on the lunar disc. Not a shred of evidence of an eclipse in this meaning, but most researchers had treated this as evid...
The measures actively taken by Ankara in its chess gambit at the end of 2020 to rapidly develop and reinforce its relations with Tel Aviv have so far, unfortunately for Turkey, not scored it any victories. The Turkish president himself noted that by the end of December, “the main problem now is the individual people that are present in the relationship with ...
Karna’s talk with Krishna continued. He referred to three nimittas – all related to the moon. Sequencing them one by one, we can see continuity with a related observation by Vyasa which is crucial, as that marked the beginning of the tradition of Bodhayana Amawasya by Krishna. The sky chart of Pushya day when a massive calamity struck the earth is...
At the beginning of December China’s Xi Jinping officially declared that China had eliminated poverty entirely, part of his priority program. Western financial pundits have praised the remarkable economic recovery of China following the severe lockdowns a year ago to combat the coronavirus. Predictions that China would once again, as it did in 2008, lead the...
Jammu and Kashmir has suffered tremendously in the shadow of the gun for the last almost three decades. The youth of the region were worst affected. Their education and development suffered as families were engrossed in the daily challenge of survival. As a result, they lost out on employment opportunities and entrepreneurship. It is to the credit of the I...
The first set of astronomy references appear in the dialogue of Karna with Krishna before Krishna left Hastinapur on the day of Uttara Phalguni. This day is deduced from the words of Krishna to Karna that Amawasya was going to occur on the seventh day from thence in the star of Indra - referring to the star Jyeṣtha whose lord was Indra. [Mbh: 5-140-18] ...
China would like the world to believe that the Middle East and North Africa region does not rank high on its totem pole despite its energy dependence, significant investment and strategic relationships with the region. In many ways, China is not being deceptive. With relations with the United States rapidly deteriorating, China’s primary focus is on what it ...
McFaul was Obama’s briefer in preparation for the President’s historic visit to Moscow and his first encounter with Putin. Indeed, he personally accompanied Obama in the long private one-on-one session the two men had. That helps to explain Obama’s primitive understanding of Putin and of post-Communist Russia. He believed that he had taken the...
Picking up Barack Obama’s The Promised Land, one’s first impression is of its heft. It is 750 pages long despite covering the period only through 2011. It is highly detailed and comprehensive in scope. Key elements are left out, though. The book manages to trek through the calendar methodically while remaining neither wholly candid nor seriously...
Recently, more and more often in various media reports one can find information about the increased terrorist threat to Tajikistan coming from Afghanistan. To objectively understand the emerging situation, it is necessary to recall that Afghanistan and Tajikistan have quite close relations, due to a largely common historical past, traditions, culture and rel...
The events starting from the time Krishna left Upaplavya until his return are described in Mahabharata in three different view-points: as a general overview, from Sanjaya’s version given to Dhritarashtra, and Krishna’s version to the Pandavas on his return. We have to combine all three to construct the sequence of events. Perhaps this was Vyasa’s technique o...
Sheikh Rohani is a member of the Shiite clergy, like Ayatollah Khamenei, but not the Revolutionary Guards, who are soldiers. The Guardians of the Revolution are followers of Imam Rouhollah Khomeiny. They intend to export his anti-imperialist revolution and liberate the world from the Anglo-Saxon empire (USA + UK + Israel) from which their country has suffe...
President Trump was decisively beaten, if not fair and square. The hopes of millions of American voters were squashed and extinguished. The saga of the Orange Man is over. The victors used a gambit: they sacrificed the sanctity and security of the Capitol, allowed intruders in, permitted them to take selfies in the Speaker’s office, and then faked horror and...
The Pandavas completed their exile on Ashadha Krishna Dasami in the year Krodhi (3136 BCE). This was 17 days after Dakshinayana began and 11 days before the Greeshma ritu ended. Here we come across the term ‘ritu’, meaning season. This word appears again as we progress with the events, prompting us to define how seasons were calculated in Mahabharata times. ...
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ushered in the new year, pledging to employ his country’s military to secure Turkey’s place in a rebalanced new world order. Mr. Erdoğan spelled out his vision when he inserted himself on December 30 into an address by his defense minister, Hulusi Akar, to several hundred masked Turkish and Azeri military officers in the Azerba...
It is a well known fact that the COVID-19 pandemic, which began at the end of 2019, has resulted in a global economic downturn and a fall in trade between nations, including the Russian Federation and India. The two countries have been partners for a long time. Economic ties, in strategic spheres such as defense, nuclear energy and space, have brought these ...
The sequence of events before the identity of the Pandavas became known is narrated in Mahabharata along with the tithis when such events occurred. This greatly helps in deducing the start and the end date of the exile period.
Ø Susarma, king of Trigarta, started seizing the cattle of Matsya country on a Krishna Saptamī. The month name is not given. Ø Ma...
The year 2020 will go down as a tumultuous and inglorious year in Sri Lanka’s history. It was a bleak year on many fronts, after huge public expectations were kindled by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election 2019. No doubt, the global Covid-19 pandemic contributed to the President’s woes. Its disastrous effect on the already debt-laden economy brought thr...
With China being the most powerful competitor of the US in the 21st century, it is but natural to see various US administrations and the more permanent US defense establishment obsessed with China’s rise and the question of maintaining the balance to their advantage. The US, under the Trump administration, decided to confront China on the economic front and ...
The Uttarayana that Bhishma was waiting for, must have started in Shukla Trayodasi of Magha. But Bhishma says, “The lunar month of Magha has come. This is, again, the lighted fortnight and a fourth part of it ought by this according to my calculations be over”. [Mbh: 13-167]
māgho ‘yaṃ samanuprāpto māsaḥ puṇyo yudhiṣṭhira
tribhāgaśeṣaḥ pakṣo ‘yaṃ śuklo b...
The incoming administration of United States president elect Joe Biden sends a clear signal to the world. Notwithstanding his rhetoric his list of appointments to key positions has a strongly 2008-2016 administration feel to it. The first lesson to be drawn from the Biden administration therefore is that one would be very unwise to expect any radical changes...
This year the world celebrated the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, seeking through its work and existence to epitomize a commitment to multilateralism in international affairs. As José Antonio Ocampo, former Colombian Minister of Finance and UN Under-Secretary-General, rightly noted, “The UN was built on three pillars: First of them – peace. Its prim...
For two generations society has been built of the concept of the regular wage earner. Housing, commercial development and politics have all been based on the presumption that most people will have regular jobs, bringing in regular incomes, and that they can expect this to continue until they retire. This presumption was being put under considerable str...
When we founded the Voltaire Network in 1994, our first concern was to defend freedom of expression in France, and then around the world. Today, however, this concept is, in our view, distorted and fought against. We will therefore try to define this ideal further. The circulation of ideas experienced a considerable boom with the invention of modern typograp...
Calendar is the basis for time computing. We have to first decipher the calendar used by the people of the Mahabharata period. Mahabharata does give a decipherable calendar that was in vogue at that time. Once we are able to decode it, many inputs on time mentioned here and there in Mahabharata do fall in place. The major evidence for the type of calendar...