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COTY -From the Cutting Floor #1 The difference between mythology and history

 This is the 1st in a series of posts written originally as part of 'Shadows Rising' but that were dropped from the final version. This piece was written after reading an article about including certain myths as part of the Indian history syllabus.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MYTHOLOGY AND HISTORY?

This was a question I felt I would like to pen down some thoughts on 

 At the time of writing this, The NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) in India has recommended that the Ramayana and Mahabharata be included in History. It is unclear if this is ignorance or simple stupidity, but the point stands – there are enough and more examples of people being unable to distinguish between the two.

History is written by the victors but based on objective fact. The propaganda that creeps into a historical narrative when written by the victors rarely becomes fantastical.

Mythology, on the other hand, is an oral tradition that evolved. It isn't meant to remain static and unchanging because it would change based on cultural nuance. . It would include tantalising tales, dastardly deeds and usually battles with more impressive CGI. Mythology, more often than not, also contains moral and ethical lessons that it seeks to impart and educate through characters experiences and dilemmas. The Mahabharat is an obvious example of this approach, particularly the conversation between Arjun and Krishna just before battle begins.

My opinion is that events in the Mahabharata and Ramayana would have a kernel of truth. The tree that has sprouted from them, however, is a bundle of contradictions when you think of all the magical stories within. The sixteen thousand wives of Krishna that he slept with by splitting himself into sixteen thousand separate parts is a good example of this. Believing this happened is a matter of faith. Considering it history is absurd.

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Rohan is an amateur photographer, an open water scuba diver, a mountaineer, an obsessive bibliophile, an intrepid traveller and a highly successful mutilator of the Spanish and French languages (often at the same time), a consultant in the fields of market research, client partnerships and Artificial Intelligence, an author, and more recently, a dad. Among other hobbies, he can also lay claim to half-baked cooking attempts (no pun intended), chess, computer gaming, badminton, swimming,board gaming, indoor wall climbing, poker, adventure sports, reading fantasy novels, and a string of other very forgettable endeavours. His first novel Keep Calm and Go Crazy - a true story of how he met his wife, was published by Harper Collins India in 2016. His second published piece was a short horror story The School that featured in the Best Asian Speculative Fiction of 2018 anthology. Curse of the Yaksha is his latest novel which is an Urban Fantasy series set in modern day Mumbai. Roha...
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Shadows Rising -From the Cutting Floor #2 - Dating the Mahabharata

  This is the 2nd in a series of posts written originally as part of 'Shadows Rising' but that were dropped from the final version. This piece is about the likely dates when the Mahbharatha took place . As part of the story and because I am occasionally neurotic about some details, I decided to attempt to calculate the most likely date for when the Mahabharata took place. The primary reason for doing so was that the very first diary entry by Akran mentions a date and I didn't want to get it wrong. However, I found myself enjoying the research process immensely, so let me breakdown my hypothesis as to when the event actually occurred. According to Hindu scriptures, the Kali Yuga began when Krishna left this realm .  The length of the Yugas is almost certainly an exaggeration—432,000 years is the number that gets thrown around most often because a day in heaven was equivalent to one year on Earth. (To put that into perspective, a day on Venus is approximately 243 days on Eart...
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