8/9/2019 Discussion JGSI

1/3

DISCUSSIONON SOME COMET OBSERVATIONS IN ANCIENT INDIA byR.N.Iyengar,Jour.Geo!.Soc.India, v.67(3),pp.289-294.

V.S.Krishnaswamy, 409, SouthLexington Avenue,WhitePlains,NewYork-10606;Email: ramasaranam@aol.com.comments:Dr. R.N. Iyengar deserves to be congratulated on his

painstaking and continuing efforts towards the collectionanddisseminationof usefulinformation, some ofwhichhasgreat geo-scientific value, which he has been cullingperiodically, from his studies of ancient Sanskrit literatureof India. I wish to benefit from his comments and hisresPQnsesto the following queries and thoughts of minethat arose from a study of his most interesting paper on thecometsof ancient India.

It isnot clear asto why all the 26comets, as listed inthe"Parasara Samhita", all of which had been sighted in thetotal timeframeof 1300years, have all been recorded onlyafter the "Great Flood". It does not seem to be because thatis the beginning of the record of comets; for, some othercometsof theVedictimeshavealsobeen listedby theauthor.The author has cited verses from the "Rig Veda" and the"Atharva Veda" that support the sighting of comets,which however, have been mentioned without any datesof their sighting. It seems either before or after the"Great Flood", as the Vedas have been assessed by someresearchers of Vedic literature as having been recordedorally and passed on from generation to generation orrecorded on palm-leaves, by the ancient sages and thinkersof India. in the different phases of the development ofVedic literature and continuously from 6000 B.C. to1000B.C. Therefore, it requires clarification by the authorwhether nor not the comet sightings of the Vedic times, asreferred to in his paper, are some in duplication of therecord in the "Prasara Samhita" and that some are thosethat were probably seen earlier to the Samhita sightingslisted in the paper, after the "great flood". The questionthereafter arises as to the reliability of the date that hasbeen computed for the "great flood", as 2500 B.C. Is thisdating rigid or is a pre-dating of this event possible on thebasisof availableinformationinVedicliterature?

It willbe a worthy attempt to arrive at the most reliableand plausible date of the "great flood" event of the Vedictimes, as this is a paleo-climatic event ofthe Holocene thatseems tohavebeen of a great areal extent in south Asia and

in the Middle East, provided this can be established as afactualoccurrenceonthebasisofmodemscientificevidence.In this connection it has to be stated that other than thecometary evidence cited by the author, all availablearchaeological, geological and geochemical evidences thatare known to me give a different date for the ancient floodswhich do not support the flood date of2500B.C. proposedby the author,unless it is a different flood event designatedas the "great flood".

It seems possible tome to assume that the "great flood"may have taken place about 500-1000 years earlier.This isbecause of the limitations to the accurate recording of thecomet sightingsby visualmeans alone, unaided by the typeof instrumental facilities that are available in the modemtimes, that can permit accurate recording of suchevents. Itis to be noted that the author has also indicated the roughassessment of the dates of the comet sightings and alsothat a 7 degree inaccuracy in the recording of the earth'scounter-clockwise axial rotation can result in a timedifferenceof 500years.

It does not seempossible tome todate the "great flood"forward by 500-1000 years, because this brings in otherdifficulties, such as the limited time span that is availablebetween the time of the "great flood" and the time ofKrishna's Dwaraka, the latter having been established bymodemthermo-luminiscencedating of the potteryfragmentsrecovered from the submerged fortress of the port-city ofDwaraka, which has given a date of around 1500 B.C.therefore, tome, predating the "great flood" seems tobe anecessity; the author's comments on this thought aremost welcome.. .

In so far asmy knowledge goes, the earliest flood datethat has been recorded by archaeological research in Indiais around 2000 B.C. in the Lothal area of the present-dayCambayBasin of Gujarat, where theHarappan civilizationhad thrived once and where there is adequate evidence forflood of 2000 B.C. to have driven the people of the Lothalarea tootherhigherplaces inGujarat (S.R.Rao etaI.1963).Ihave considered it necessary to record the apparentdiscrepancy in the dates relating to the "great flood" asevaluated from cometary evidence andthe date of thefloodevent as indicated by archaeological studies, although it isconceivable that the flood recorded in the Cambay Basin

JOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, VOL.68, DEC. 2006

8/9/2019 Discussion JGSI

2/3

may not have been the same as the "great flood" of theVedictimes.Another line of evidence, namely, oceanographic

sediment-dating by radioactive methods has establishedthe occurrence of two flood events, one in 1500B.C. andanother in 2000 B.C.(Nigam and Khare, 1982)the latterbeing considered to be the same as the Cambay Basinflooding, cited earlier. Nigam and Khare had based theirconclusions relating to the two flood events of the pastfrom their study of the C14dates of the foraminiferalremains in the ocean bottom sediments deposited at themouth of the Kalinadi river, at depths of plus 20 m offthe coast ofKarwar inKarnataka, in the Arabian Sea.

The third line of scientific evidence on the time ofoccurrence of the floods in the ancient times, which isgeochemicalinnature,pertainstoa verydetailedexaminationof averylargenumberof samplesof the laminatedsedimentsin thedeepsea,off thecoastof MakranCoastofBaluchistan,all of which were also dated by C14and Oxygen isotoperatios that weredetermined (Luckage et al.2001). This lineof geoscientific study related certain geochemical ratios ofthe elements present in the laminated sediments that wereconsidered to be indicators of the ambient temperature, thefluvial inflows and the monsoonal variation (vide Fig.2 ofLuckage et al. 2001) presenting graphs of the geochemicalratios versusvariousenvironmental factors for a 5000 yearperiod, that encompassed the sediments under study.This suggests possible flood flows close to 1500 and200B.C., butnonewith suchclear indicationsof significantflooding, in the time slot of 2500 to 3000 B.C. whichwastheendof thetimeslot encompassedby theMakranCoastalsedimentary studies.It is indeed unfortunate that so far, no studies havebeen taken up on land, specially in north and northwestIndia, to the best of my knowledge, with a view toestablish the veracity or otherwise of the prevailingthoughts on the occurrence of the "great flood" and on itsmost likelydateof occurrence,be it 2000B.C., 2500B.C. or3500B.C.It remains to beseen whether or not theextensiveHolocene sedimentary record that is available togeoscientists, in the northern and northwestern parts ofIndia, specificallyin thenowextinct Saraswathi riverbasinof theVedictimes andin thepresent-day basinsof theIndusandGangariver systemscan yieldsuitabledateablematerialthat cansupplyusefulgeologicaland geochemicalevidenceon the acceptabilityof the "great flood" as a paleoclimaticevent of South Asia and the Middle East and its date ofoccurrence.

Another important aspect of the study of comets is thegeoscientific information that it can provide on the incidenceJOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, YOL.68, DEC. 2006

DISCUSSION 1113

of marinetransgressions andon some earthquakeeventsofthe past towhich the sightings of cometshave been related,and the author has made a brief reference to the same inhispaper. It is not clear, however, whether or not he supportsthe belief of some researchers, expressed in the earlierdiscussed literature that some comets such as the "BrahmaDanda" comet of 1500 B.C. sighted near Dwaraka, washeld responsible for the inundation 'ofte city of Dwaraka.In this connection, the author of the paper is alreadyawareof myearlier contributionon the submergenceof thecity ofDwaraka (Krishnaswamy,2005) whereinI hadmadea detailed evaluation of some half-a-dozen alternativeexplanations that had been offered by other investigatorsof the problem of Dwaraka's submergence, excepting, ofcourse, the still poorly understood explanation referred toby the author that some researchers believe that there hasbeen some relationship between the submergence of thecity and the appearanceof the "BrahmaDanda" comet.Myown research of the problem of Dwaraka's submergencesupported the conclusion that the most probable andscientifically most acceptable explanation would be thepostulation of an earthquake of magnitude plus 8.3 andless than 9.3on theRichter scale, that may have originatedalong the already well known and seismically veryactivePlate Tectonicjunction between the continental andoceanic crust in the subduction zone in the Arabian Seaclose to the Makran Coast of Baluchistan, where from, thetsunami of 1945 is recorded to have impacted the coast ofGujarat andMaharashtra.

The author has cited recent scientific research byNapier in 1988 and by Mandelkhar in 2002 that supportthe climatological effects of comet dust blanketing thesunandaffectingtheclimate.There ishowever,no referenceto similar scientific work for assessing the real validity ofthe role of comets in causing sea-level and ground-level changes, concomitantly with the sighting ofcomets. I wonder whether the author is aware of anyinformation in the Vedic and Post-Vedic literature inSanskrit that can give some information on the sizeof the "Brahma Danda" comet of 1500 B.C. and thedistance between the earth and the comet at time of itssighting. For, such information, if at all it is available,mayindeed be of some help in evaluating the doubtful, butstill possible role of gravitational pull exerted by a largeplanetarybody comingclose to the earththan its closestsatellite, the Moon, which, despite the distance involved,is well known to cause the lunar tides in the ocean, whichare specially stronger on full moon nights. Whether ornot, likewise, the gravitational pull exerted by a closeenough planetary body of sufficient size could have

8/9/2019 Discussion JGSI

3/3

1114 DISCUSSION

caused the sea-swells and also land swells that arevisuallyimperceptiblebut thatstillcandisturb theprevailingbalance in the primary triaxial stress fields that act onthe rocks inside the earth, specially in the areas that arealready vulnerable to such disturbances affecting theirequilibrium, is a moot question, which the Science ofthe Future can alone can help to answer.R.N. Iyengar, Department of Civil Engineering, IndianInstituteofScience,Bangalore-560012; Email: aareni@yahoo.com,replies:I thank Shri Krishnaswamy for his appreciative words

and thought provoking discussion on my paper. He raisessome important questions about the accuracy of datingof the Floods. I confess that I have no clear cut answers tohis questions. Parasara's tradition holds that the era of theFlood was the initial point for the 26 comet observationsending with dhiima ketu. Fixing the era of Parasara asthe middle part of second millennium BC is based onstatements, which carry some limitations. The associationof seasonswithnaksatrais basedon naked eyeobservationsprone to errors. The identification of the first point ofDhanistha, with beta-delphini is not devoid of controversy.The BOO-year period for the 26 comet observations isagain not a rigid figure. The list has a sequence of eightshortperiodcometscovering 120years.Whether, thesearereal observations or not can only be commented upon byastronomers. Clearly, my intention was to point out thatthere is a tradition of the above type in our ancient

BHARADWAJ,.P. (1986) Studies in the Historical Geography ofAncient India, Sundeep Prakashan, Delhi.

IYENGAR,.N. (2006) Some Celestial Observations Associated withKrisna-lore. Indian Jour. Hist. Sci., v.41(1) pp.I-13.

KRISHNASWAMY,S. (2005) Active marine transgression anddestruction of the port-city of Dwaraka, Gujarat, India, in the2nd Millenium B.C. A geological evaluation. Gondwana GeoLMag., v.20(2), December 2005,pp.79-88.

LUCKAGE, A., DOOSE ROLINSKI,H., KHAN,A.A., SCHULZ,H. and VONRAD,U. (2001)Monsoonalvariability in theN.E.ArabianSeaduring the past 5000 years: Geochemical evidence from

literature that demands attention of the scientific communityinterested in palaeo-climate studies.In Vedic parlance, the word dhiima-ketu has been

traditionally interpreted asfire: the smoke bannered. It maynot be out of place to point out that meteors were denotedby a separate word ulka (RV IV.4.2 and X.68.3). This word isstill used in Indian languages in the same sense. Thus, thereis a case for ketu in the Rig Veda (RV) to have referred tocomets. This word and .its derivatives occur more thanseventy times in RV. However, the same word might havebeen used to mean differently in different places. Quiteinterestingly this word never occurs in the second mandalaof RV. Hence in-depth study of the voluminous Vedicliterature is needed before drawing conclusions about thesynchronism between comets of Parasara and Vedic wordsindicating celestial deities.Reference to the Great Flood in Vedic literature is linkedwith the escape of Manu from the deluge. Mahabharatarefers to this as an ancient event and hence it should not beequated with the inundation of Dwaraka as Krishnaswamyrightly points out. But this in no way goes against a comethaving been observed and getting temporally associatedwith the submergence of Dwaraka (Iyengar, 2006). Aninformation arising out of the epic (Vana Parvan 185.47) isthat during the Great Flood, Manu had tied his boat to thepeak famous as Nau-bandhana in the Himalayas. There arestrong reasons to identify this place with present day Nahan(30.5N:77.3E) in the Sirmur region of Himachal Pradesh(Bharadwaj, 1986). It would be interesting to see whetherthis region holds any dateable evidence for the Flood.

Referenceslaminated sediments: Palaeogeographgy, Palaeoc\matology andPalaeoecology, Elsevier Publications, 2001, No.167, pp.273-286.

NIGAM, R. and KHARE, N. (1992) Oceanographic evidences of thegreat floods in 2000 and 1500 B.C. in archaeological records:New trends in Indian Art and Archaeology, SpecialCommemorative Volume, VoL2, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi

RAO,S.R., LAL,B.B., NATH,B., GHOSH,S.S. and LAL,K. (1963)Excavation at Rangpur and other explorations in Gujarat.Ancient IndiaBulletin of theArchaeological Surveyof India,No.l8 and 19, pp.5-207.

JOUR.GEOL.SOC.INDIA, VOL.68, DEe. 2006