|
The Kurukshetra War (Sanskrit: कुरुक्षेत्र युद्ध) is a war described in the Indian epic Mahabharata as a conflict that arose from a dynastic succession struggle between two groups of cousins of an Indian kingdom called Kuru, the Kauravas and Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura. It involved a number of ancient kingdoms participating as allies of the rival groups. The location of the battle is described as having occurred in Kurukshetra in the modern state of Haryana. Despite only referring to these eighteen days, the war narrative forms more than a quarter of the book, suggesting its relative importance within the epic, which overall spans decades of the warring families. The narrative describes individual battles and deaths of various heroes of both sides, military formations, war diplomacy, meetings and discussions among the characters, and the weapons used. The chapters (''parvas'') dealing with the war (from chapter six to ten) are considered amongst the oldest in the entire ''Mahabharat''. ==Historical Context== Though the Kurukshetra War is not mentioned in Vedic literature, its prominence in later literature led historians such as A. L. Basham to conclude that, "certainly a great war took place and succeeding generations looked upon it as marking an end of an epoch". Popular tradition holds that the war marks the transition to Kaliyuga and thus dates it to 3102 BCE; another tradition places the war in 15th century BCE. However historians regard these dates as too early and inconsistent with the available archaeological and literary evidence. Basham considers the beginning of the 9th century BCE as a more plausible date for the events. Similarly, Michael Witzel concludes that the general setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE. A dynastic conflict of the period could have been the inspiration for the ''Jaya'', the foundation on which the Mahabharata corpus was built, with a climactic battle eventually coming to be viewed as an epochal event. Puranic literature presents genealogical lists associated with the Mahabharata narrative. The evidence of the Puranas is of two kinds. Of the first kind, there is the direct statement that there were 1015(or 1050) years between the birth of Parikshit (Arjun's grandson) and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda, commonly dated to 382 BCE, which would yield an estimate of about 1400 BCE for the Bharata battle. However, this would imply improbably long reigns on average for the kings listed in the genealogies. Of the second kind are analyses of parallel genealogies in the Puranas between the times of Adhisimakrishna (Parikshit's great-grandson) and Mahapadma Nanda. Pargiter accordingly estimated 26 generations by averaging 10 different dynastic lists and assuming 18 years for the average duration of a reign, arrived at an estimate of 850 BCE for Adhisimakrishna and thus approximately 950 BCE for the Bharata battle. B. B. Lal used the same approach with a more conservative assumption of the average reign to estimate a date of 836 BCE and correlated this with archaeological evidence from Painted Grey Ware sites, the association being strong between PGW artifacts and places mentioned in the epic. There have been a number of theories put forward: * The most widely accepted date is 10th century BCE or 950 BCE, according to archeological evidence. * B. N. Achar states a date of 3067 BCE using planetary positions listed in the ''Mahabharata''. * S. Balakrishna concluded a date of 2559 BCE using consecutive lunar eclipses. * P. V. Holey states a date of November 13, 3143 BCE using planetary positions and calendar systems. * R. N. Iyengar concluded a date of 1478 BCE using double eclipses and Saturn+Jupiter conjunctions. * P. R. Sarkar estimates a date of 1298 BCE for the war of Kurukshetra. * P. V. Vartak calculates a date of October 16, 5561 BCE using planetary positions. * K. Sadananda, based on translation work, states that the Kurukshetra War started on November 22 3067 BCE. The reconstruction of the history of Vedic India is based on text-internal details. Linguistically, the Vedic texts could be classified in five chronological strata as Rigvedic, Mantra, Samhita, Brahmana, Sutra, and Epic and Paninian. The Mantra language period includes both the mantra and prose language of the Atharvaveda (Paippalada and Shaunakiya), the Rigveda Khilani, the Samaveda Samhita(containing some 75 mantras not in the Rigveda) and the mantras of the Yajurveda. Many of these texts are largely derived from the Rigveda, but have undergone certain changes, both by linguistic change and by reinterpretation. Conspicuous changes include the change of ''vishva'' "all" by ''sarva'' and the spread of the ''kuru-'' verbal stem for Rigvedic ''krno-''). This is from the time of the early Iron Age in north-western India, corresponding to the Black and Red Ware(BRW) culture and the kingdom of the Kurus, dating from ca. the 10th century BCE. The Samhita prose period marks the beginning of the collection and codification of a Vedic canon. An important linguistic change is the complete loss of the injunctive. The Brahmana part ('commentary' on mantras and ritual) of the Black Yajurveda(MS, KS, TS) belongs to this period. Archaeologically, the Painted Grey Ware(PGW) culture from ca. 900 BCE corresponds and the shift of the political center from the Kurus to the Pancalas on the Ganges. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kurukshetra War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|