ANCIENT PEOPLE COULD NOT MEASURE TIME

The dates of ancient events and legendary personages greatly agitate people concerned with religion and history. All such dates are however very dubious because till fairly recently people had no way to accurately measure the passage of the years. Thus the dates of the Mahabharat, Ramayana, Iliad, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and others were all very unreliable.

Calculating the passage of time had always been very difficult as one orbit of the earth around the sun takes precisely 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds while one orbit of the moon needs exactly 27 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes and 28 seconds. People in every land had been very conscious of the moon and had marked their changing seasons according to moon cycles. People had roughly noted the orbit of the sun to make a year but found it absolutely impossible to divide this by the lunar months because they had no means to divide or multiply until the discovery of the `Zero’, a concept that is attributed to an Indian mathematician named Aryabhatta dated to about 500 AD. In 628 AD another Indian mathematician named Brahmagupta is believed to have developed the symbol for Zero that had been first recorded as a dot under other numbers. This concept of Zero only reached Europe in the 11^th century through the Muslim scholar Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avisenna. He is reported to have learned his mathematics from an Indian grocer in Baghdad.

Till the Zero people could only count with the fingers of their hands and all ancient cultures like those of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome as well as ancient India had therefore been unable to of conceive of time beyond ten thousand years. There was also a slow shifting of the historic dates with leap years or extra months every four years in many ancient cultures. The methods of measuring time kept changing over the ages.

The seven day week was probably first defined in the old Babylonian calendar where the roughly 28 day lunar month was divided into four. It later became part of the Jewish, Julian, Gregorian and Islamic calendars but had been completely alien to ancient India. With the advent of the Zero, Indian legends suddenly become astonishingly old as more and more zeros were added during each retelling of legendary stories. The dates of the Yugas, Mahabharata, Ramayana and other legends therefore have very little historic basis. Even the religious sanctity attached to the days of the seven day week is alien to ancient Indian texts. If there were no week days there could not have been any auspicious or inauspicious week days in ancient times. Thus the sacredness of fasting on Tuesdays or of not buying metals on a Saturday cannot have any scriptural sanctity.

The old Babylonian calendar used to also have a 60 hour day because the number 60 had been considered to be a sacred number that could be divided by 2, 3 and 5 (the largest number of prime numbers). Ancient Sanskrit texts in India used to also follow this system and measure the day in 60 ghatas (hours) of 24 minutes each. These used to be measured by water clocks where a small earthen pot (ghara) with a small hole that was designed to take exactly 24 minutes to fill up and sink after which a bell (ghanti) would then be struck to announce the `ghanta’ or hour. The apparatus was called a `ghari’. Today, except for Indian astrologers, nobody remembers this old Indian system but it was very precisely detailed in the Persian traveler al - Baruni’s chronicle that is dated to 1020 AD at about the time when Mahmud Ghazni was looting Indian temples.

Indian astrology however went beyond the 12 planets of the zodiac and measured the year with 27 (sometimes 28) Nakshatras of 13.5 days each. They were linked not only to constellations but to many other stars that each had beneficial of malefic influences. This astrological system is not mentioned in the Rig-Veda or early Vedas but only in the Artha-veda that seems to have included a large number of pre Vedic traditions. All these created a very complicated system of astrology. Though this system has mesmerized the gullible in India over the years it is clear that none of it had any intrinsic scriptural sanctity. All people are entitled to their beliefs but they should know that many popular beliefs cannot stand the scrutiny of empirical science or unbiased historical research

THE MYSTERIOUS TEMPLE OF MASRUR

Every summer many thousand people drive on holidays to Kulu, Manali or Daharamshala but very few know that a small detour from their usual destinations will take them to one of the most amazing temples of India. It is also perhaps the oldest Hindu temple in north India. India’s earliest temples were cut inside caves of hewed out of living rock until the south Indian technology of building with prefabricated pillars, beams and panels became popular after the 9^th century.

The Kailash temple at Ellora is the biggest and most famous temple of this type that was cut from top down out of a huge single rock face. Masrur is the only such temple in north India and is roughly dated to the 8^th century. It is also built in the classic old style with fifteen shikaras and a big water tank in front of it. The shikaras like the peaks of the mythical Mount Meru look remarkably similar to the famous Hindu temples of Ankor Vat in Cambodia.

You will need about four hours to reach Masrur from Mandi so it is recommended that you break your journey to spend the night at Kangra or Dharamshala and then do an easy day trip to Masrur and back. After driving on the national highway towards Mandi on the road to Kulu there is a excellent road to Pathankot that runs just south of Dharamshala. You can also go via Jullundur, Hoshiarpur and Una to connect to this road. You then drive west for just over an hour. It is 32 Kms west of Kulu on the Nagotra - Surian link road. It is a very picturesque drive through rocky Shivalik hills and small patches of cultivation with the majestic Dhauladar mountain range to the north. The drive is through some very rugged country with deep ravines and thorny trees that look as if dinosaurs are lurking in the shadows but visitors will be struck speechless when they see the magnificent edifice.

As there is no inscription or mention in any ancient text, nobody knows who built this great structure or when. It is also a mystery as to why this gigantic symbol of devotion was built in such a remote and unfertile area. There is no record of what king was the patron to build such a large temple that must have needed millions of man hours of devoted labour to say nothing of huge funds that could not have been squeezed out of farmers in such a rugged area.

The elaborate carvings despite huge damage from the 1905 earthquake show that it was originally a Shiva temple that had been completely abandoned because wandering priests quite recently made it into a Ram Lakshman temple with three black stones representing Ram, Lakshman and Sita inside the inner sanctum. The drive is a little off the beaten track but it is a most picturesque and rewarding experience with lovely spots for a picnic on the way.