Recently, a short video clip of Romila Thapar went viral. In this, she talks about the Mauryan emperor Ashoka.



In the video clip Prof. Thapar is heard saying that ‘Yudhishstra’’s remorse at the fratricidal war, according to some historians, could have been inspired by Ashoka’s remorse after the Kalinga war.



Naturally, Hindu Twitterati has reacted strongly to this clip, with reactions ranging from anger to sarcasm.

Essentially, the reactions are based on the fact that Mahabharata events happened long before the period of Ashoka (304 to 232 BCE).



Many seasoned historians like Dr B B Lal and the late Prof. S P Gupta, considering a holistic look at the literary sources, epigraphy and archaeology, generally consider the core events of Mahabharata to have happened around 1200 (+/- 200 years) BCE.



Those who go by the astronomical data gleaned from the epic itself usually take the dates to be around 3100 BCE, which in turn go well with the traditional dates of the start of Kaliyuga mentioned in the fifth century Gupta and seventh century Chalukya (Aihole) inscriptions.

But, the real contention here is the composition of Mahabharata itself.



Even historian R C Majumdar is of the opinion that the standardisation of the text in the present form happened around fourth century CE.



It was not some new radical discovery. Prof. S P Gupta, one of the finest archaeologists and a great scholar, wrote in his introduction to ‘Mahabharata: Myth and Reality’: