FINDING KING JANAMÉJAYA’S ECLIPSE

Abstract

: There are innumerable records on stone and metal found in India detailing grants of land and donations made by kings and chieftains to Brahman priests, many on the occasions of eclipses and on the cardinal days. In this paper we investigate one such grant, first written about by Henry Colebrooke in 1809. It is from Gauj, the modern Gowthamapura in Shivamogga district in Karnataka state. Spread over three copper plates, the inscription is in mixed Sanskrit and Kannada and records a charitable grant of several villages made to thirty-two thousand Brahmans on the occasion of a sarpa yagna (snake-sacrifice) and a solar eclipse by Janaméjaya, the Puranic monarch who reigned over Hastinapur at the commencement of Kaliyuga. The eclipse was in the lunar month of Chaitra, on a Sunday, in Asvini naksatra. The grant further specified the circumstances such as Vyatipata ( pata – aspect), and that on the following day the naksatra was Bharani and the karana (the half-tithi ) was Kimstughna. These specifications make it the rarest of the rare eclipses. However, there is no eclipse mentioned in Janaméjaya legends, so was the eclipse in the grant genuine or an invented one? There were attempts made in the 1860s to identify the eclipse and possibly date the grant, but the identifications are not valid. In this paper we examine all such eclipses that occurred between 601 and 1699 CE and were visible from India. There are six such eclipses, in 712, 739, 851, 1027, 1372 and 1548 CE. Of these, we find the eclipse of 1027 CE as historically the most suitable one.