We are passing through a dark time. Many have lost their life-savings in the market crash. The excesses of the IT bubble are being wrung through other sectors of the economy, and it is not clear when the market will recover. There is a war hanging in the air. If it breaks out, what will that do to jobs? Will this be the war against terror or the war for oil? Will the al-Qaeda hiding in Pakistan show their hand? If there is civil war in Pakistan, who will safeguard the nukes? So many troubling questions!

Since it is getting hard to make sense of the present, it may be good to be reminded that we do not always understand the past. Here are a few examples of the textbook view that don't square up:

1. There was no image worship in the Vedic times

I was reminded of this recently in Delhi by an earnest young Englishman, an archaeology and anthropology lecturer, who was certain that image-worship in India started only with the Imperial Guptas. Indeed, “Hindu Art and Architecture” published by Thames and Hudson, London, informs that there were tentative beginnings of sculptural forms with Hindu themes in the 2nd century BC followed by a gap in the 3rd and the 4th centuries, and Hindu images reached quick development only during the time of the Guptas.

But what do the texts say? Hold it, you'll say, the texts do not matter because references therein must be later interpolations. But there are texts that we are certain have been free of interpolation.

One such text is the “Ashtadhyayi” of Panini, the great grammarian of the 5th or 4th century BC. Its terse sutras are written in a technical language in which changes would alter meaning, and its commentaries are attested back to the 4th century. In this text there is clear mention of images. The ordinary images were called pratikriti and the images for worship were called archa (see As. 5.3.96-100). Patanjali, the 2nd century BC author of the “Mahabhashya” commentary on the “Ashtadhyayi”, tells us more about the pratikriti and archa.

Amongst other things we are told that a toy horse is called ashvaka. (This means that the queen who lay down with the ashvaka in the Ashvamedha did not sleep with the dead horse.) Deity images for sale were called Shivaka etc., but an archa of Shiva (Rudra of the earlier times) was just called Shiva. Patanjali mentions Shiva and Skanda deities. There is also mention of the worship of Vasudeva (Krishna). We are also told that some images could be moved and some were immoveable. Panini also says that an archa was not to be sold and that there were people (priests) who obtained their livelihood by taking care of it.

Panini and Patanjali mention temples which were called prasadas. There is no mention of the term mandira. The earlier Shatapatha Brahmana which is smack in the period of the Vedas, informs us of an image in the shape of Purusha which was placed within the altar (I have described this in my recent column on temples).

So what doesn't square up? If temples and images were an important part of the social and economic life in the times of Panini and Patanjali, where is the evidence in terms of images to back it up? If there were social reasons that religious sculpture was not produced until the 4th century AD, what were they?

Is it possible that the earliest images have been misassigned chronologically? The technology of photoluminescence can help answer that question.

2. The Mahabharata is late (400 BC-400 AD)

The Mahabharata is generally assigned the period of 400 BC-400 AD, and the Ramayana is assigned a narrower 200 BC-200 AD.

The Mahabharata tradition itself claims that the text was originally 8,800 verses by Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa when it was called the Jaya. Later, it was enlarged to 24,000 verses and it came to be called the Bharata. It was transmitted by Vyasa to Vaishampayana and finally recited by Ugrashravas as the Mahabharata of the 100,000 verses; the two latter rishis appear thus to be responsible for its enlargements.

Now, the Upanishads speak of texts called Itihasa-Purana and although the Mahabharata is called Itihasa, there is no certainty that this was the only such Itihasa text that has ever existed. The experts will concede that there may have been an old kernel of the story going back to the Mahabharata War (its date is another question that is best left to another occasion), but the expansion of the text into the three phases of the Jaya, the Bharata, and the Mahabharata took place only after 400 BC.

This is where Dakshiputra Panini throws a curveball. He speaks of the Bharata and the Mahabharata in one of his sutras (6.2.38). This means that the epic was substantially complete by 500 BC, although it may have undergone further modifications and interpolations in subsequent centuries. The evidence of the sutra by Panini seems to have escaped most historians.

You: "This is only one piece of evidence. We can't go against authorities. What other proof do you have?”

Let's examine the contents of the Mahabharata. Large sections of the epic are devoted to diverse topics-- it really was an encyclopaedia of its times. One of the most revolutionary things happenings in the religious life of the people during 400 BC to 400 AD was the rise of Buddhism. But examine the hundreds of pages of the epic on religion and there is no mention of it. The only religions mentioned in the text are: Vedic, Sankhya, Yoga, Pashupata, and Bhagavata. We cannot argue that the rishis who wrote the Mahabharata kept one of the most important religious ideas of their times out of the story just because they knew this would become controversial in the 20th century.

Even the political life described in the Mahabharata does not correspond to the imperial phase of the 400 BC - 400 AD. Cattle raids are the big thing in it, not imperial conquest. There are also no references in the epic to the Sishunaga Kings, the Mauryas, the Shungas, or the later dynasties. The Buddhist Jatakas that were written during these royal dynasties, on the other hand, are aware of the characters of the epic. One Jataka, for example, speaks disparagingly of Draupadi for having had five husbands.

Given that Panini (say, 400 BC) knows of the Mahabharata, how can we say that the epic was completed only in 400 AD? It doesn't square up.