Is the Mahabharata an excellent drama or is it historically true?

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may not be one. Does that answer your question? Question, has Vyas Dev written such a perfect he is a perfect stage manager, he has written a perfect script that it is impossible to verify whether it is true or not, it is such a beautiful drama that we enter into it, we become absorbed in it, we don’t even understand whether it is real or not is there any way to verify what is described in the Mahabharata whether it is true or not the answer when we talk about truth we have to understand that this obsession with facts this happened at this time at this place, exact geography, exact history this obsession with facts is in terms of human history a relatively recent phenomenon it is only in the post-Newtonian times since Isaac Newton started measuring, he started the age of science when measurements became paramount so it is from that time onwards that history became a tool for literal fact keeping for recording numbers and facts and figures but before that not just in India but all over the world if you look at the historians in the west, the Greek historians the Roman historians and the way they wrote history they were not so obsessed with facts, history was seen not just as a means for factual record keeping, history was seen as a means for moral instruction so who did what and what were the consequences and what can we learn from it that was the primary purpose so therefore when the method of historiography that we use today was something which is not just present in the world in the past, so to try to ask for historical evidence through the prism of modern historiography is like it’s like asking to see one thing it’s like asking to see the love in the heart of a person by taking an x-ray of their heart the instrument and the object to be seen are not compatible and this does not mean that what is told in the Mahabharata is not historical it is just that it is a different kind of history so having said that there are geographically Kurukshetra is even now existing in various parts of the country for example especially in Dwarka there have been many seals and other artifacts found which indicate the historicity of Krishna that he was a historical person who lived and he lived in the same place called Dwarka of course this is not the Dwarka city that we have, it is underwater remains of an ancient city add to the magnificency that is described further if we consider many of the astro astrological formation astronomical formations that are described in the Mahabharata at the time so for example the war started at that time, it is said that the war started at this particular time when the nakshatras were like this when the celestial objects were in this particular way then on the 13th day this particular astrological event happened say an eclipse occurred and so now there are historians who have actually looked at the skies and now we have software by which we can measure map backwards and find out this eclipse happened at this time, this cosmological formation, star formation was like this so when did this happen and historians have found out that actually the astrological astronomical formations that are described in the Mahabharata they are actually factual, they happened thousands of years ago this is an emerging field of study called as archaeoastronomy archaeology is a study of the past primarily through fossils looking down into the earth astronomy is looking up at the sky, archaeoastronomy means to know the past by looking up at the sky, looking down into the ground, so archaeoastronomy is an emerging field, quite a strong field and through it it has been found that there are many celestial formations described in the Mahabharata which actually occurred thousands of years ago so there are research papers published on this also and so basically this is a whole different field but the important thing again is that even if there are certain elements in the Mahabharata which seem difficult for us to believe, say somebody having a mystical weapon by which fire is produced or some celestial beings such as the gods or the demons being there in the Mahabharata they are characters in the Mahabharata but the essential storyline of the Mahabharata is not affected by who is present and who is not present the essential storyline is about universal human interests, universal human weaknesses and universal human strengths therefore what Vyasdev has written is something from which is a story from which we all can learn at all times and if we just open our minds to understand that the world is not as limited, as simple as we think it to be then we will understand that many more things are possible if the progress of science has taught us anything, it has taught us humility that the world is much more complicated than what we think is possible so when just a few months ago I was in Dayton that is the place where the Wright brothers first flew the airplane and when they came up with the idea that we will have a flying machine, people just laughed at them, they said it’s not possible you cannot defy gravity but they did that so what was thought of as impossible before then, now it’s just a routine fact of life so we have certain conceptions of what is possible and what is not possible but our conceptions are limited and the reality is far more complicated than what our conceptions are teaching us so quantum physics is such a complicated field that a prominent scientist said that if you are not confused by quantum physics, then you have not understood it and if you understand it, you will be confused by it so that means reality is far more complex than what we think about so rather than being close minded and thinking that just because particular beings or particular powers don’t fit into our world view so we think it’s all imaginary rather than that we be humble, we be open minded, the world is much more complex than what we know and people can have powers and beings can exist beyond what is our current conception of the world, so with this open mindedness, we can see that the Mahabharata is a thrilling story but more than a thrilling story, it is a uplifting story, it is a story that can guide us in our life in our day to day decisions now