ACADEMIA Letters

Did the Cosmic impact described in the Hindu Epic

Mahabharata cause the Piora Oscillation?
Jayasree Saranathan

The Piora Oscillation is a climatic period of a sudden drop in temperature in the Northern
Europe and flooding in lower latitudes around 3200 BCE that lasted for 200 to 300 years.
Named after the Piora Valley of Switzerland giving the strongest evidence for this climate
change with a sudden increase in glaciation, this phenomenon has been the focus of active
research from different quarters.
Among the various causes debated, such as the orbital change of the earth around the
sun, a drop in solar insolation, the explosion of Supernova W44 (Sokeland 2017), the end of
the Atlantic Climate Regime etc., the cosmic impact theory put forth in the paper “Climate
pattern recognition in the Mid-Holocene (4800 BC to 2800 BC, Part 3)” (Seifert et al. 2015)
finds a parallel in the literary account of the Hindu Epic called “Mahabharata”. The focus of
the current paper is to highlight that a cosmic collision simultaneously on the earth and the
moon on 3136 BCE, suggested by this Epic, offers scope for further research in identifying
the cause for the Piora Oscillation.
The cosmic impact is detected in an abrupt break in the EOO-wave (Earth Orbital Oscil-
lation) around 3200 BCE causing a Z-shaped temperature pattern that lasted till 2900 BCE.
The impact location at the Andaman Sea as suggested by the paper is not convincing in the
wake of all evidences appearing in Europe and Greenland and not anywhere on the regions
around the Andaman Sea.
The acid spike noticed in the ice cores of Greenland around 3150 BCE and the Belfast
tree-ring chronology around the same time, signaled the onset of cold conditions. The Ötzi
man found his icy grave at the heights of the Alps in this period. The beginning of horse
domestication in Europe started around the same time signaling a shift to colder climate.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Jayasree Saranathan, jayasree.saranathan@gmail.com

Citation: Saranathan, J. (2021). Did the Cosmic impact described in the Hindu Epic Mahabharata cause the
Piora Oscillation? Academia Letters, Article 1385. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1385.

1
 The increase in swamp oak in Germany associated with flooding occurred around the
same time. Similar water logging in other places and flooding of the Nile coincided with this
date. The water level at the Dead Sea rose up by 300 feet. At the same time the rainfall pattern
was affected causing desertification of the Sahara.
With most of the imprints localized in the northern hemisphere covering Europe, the lit-
erary inputs from Mahabharata offer supportive evidence for a major impact in Europe by a
disintegrating comet that broke into several pieces and fell over a vast region including North
India in the year 3136 BCE.

Simultaneous cosmic impact on the earth and the moon

The description appearing in the 5th book of Mahabharata conveys intermittent shower of me-
teors for thirteen days with a major impact on the ninth day that corresponds to 2nd September,
3136 BCE in the astronomical Gregorian calendar. A south-westerly wind hit the city of Hasti-
napur (close to New Delhi) with a thunderous noise on the first day and impacted the region
between the rivers, the Ganga and the Indus in North India causing the east flowing rivers to
reverse the direction of the flow. Explosions were often heard in the Himalayan range too.
Thunderous roars from the cloudless sky, rain of fragments, fires everywhere, atmosphere
filled with dust causing all-round haze, the trembling of the earth, rains in the absence of
clouds noticed somewhere behind, the sudden change in the direction of seven east flowing
rivers and the spilling out of water from the wells and the vessels were reported on the first
day of impact. All these can occur simultaneously in the event of a cosmic impact – of an
object or fragments of an object colliding with the earth.
If several such asteroids are falling on the earth, it could be the case of broken parts of
a larger asteroid or a comet. The dust thrown into the air blurs the directions. The asteroid
hitting the ocean would cause an increase in water vapor in the air that pours down as rains
following the path of the falling fragments, which is expressed as rains at the rear.
These events had repeated at sunset time on the ninth day (Sep 2, 3136 BCE). This time
the text explicitly states that a comet pressed down horribly on the day, the moon crossed the
star Beta Cancri.[1] It was the 6th day of the waning phase when moon had not yet risen in the
Hastinapur sky. Strange sightings were reported in the text, such as the right-ward movement
of Polaris, two rising planets seen with red-crest and a shift in the position of the planet Mars
to the right in Scorpio, which cannot be the case of retrogression because the Sun was also
present in the same sign. A momentary interchange of positions in the binary of Alcor and
Mizar was also seen, followed by a complete blur of the northern sky.
A shocking sight further awaited the observers as the moon arose around mid-night in

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Jayasree Saranathan, jayasree.saranathan@gmail.com

Citation: Saranathan, J. (2021). Did the Cosmic impact described in the Hindu Epic Mahabharata cause the
Piora Oscillation? Academia Letters, Article 1385. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1385.

2
Hastinapur. The waning sixth phase of the moon was seen reduced to the seventh phase. The
dark feature on the lunar disc was seen shifted. This was reported by two different observers
in Mahabharata. The picture below was taken from a location in India as it appears on the 6th
day of the waning phase of the moon. The picture shows the only probable location on the
visible disc where a new feature could have appeared.

Lunar disc with shift in the feature

That phase ended earlier than normal, upsetting the calendar of the time. In the Vedic time
scale, the moon’s phase is divided into 30 parts known as ‘tithi’ with each part measuring a
distance of 12 degrees in the lunar orbit. Counted from the Full Moon Day, the 15th part
occurs on the No-moon day at 168 to 180 degrees. At times the No-Moon had started before
168 degrees but ended up between 168 and 180 degrees (from 14th to 15th phase), but it
can never start in the 13th phase (between 156 and 168 degrees). The No-moon following
this weird appearance started on the 13th phase, which clearly implies that the moon’s orbit
had changed. The ascending node of the moon was also seen to have shifted to the right
(clockwise) following the cosmic impact.[2]
A combined reading of this with the 13th phase No-moon implies that the lunar orbit had
drifted to a shorter orbit than usual. This is a clear indication of a massive hit on the moon by
a comet, shaking it from its path.
Mahabharata continues to narrate how the next phase was keenly observed only to find out
that the lunar surface appeared reddish and devoid of any marks! This waxing phase ended
up quickly and surprisingly in the same star in which the Full Moon appeared in the previous
month. This is yet another evidence for the shorter than the normal orbit of the moon, besides
indicating the faster than normal speed of the moon.
However, the moon came back to the regular 15 tithi phase following this. All these events
give rise to a hypothesis that the moon was badly battered by a comet whose fragments had
fallen on the earth too. This is like the comet Shoemaker-Levy that rammed into Jupiter in
1994. After getting caught in the gravitational field of Jupiter it broke into several pieces and
started falling on Jupiter over a span of seven days with the biggest fragment falling on the

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Jayasree Saranathan, jayasree.saranathan@gmail.com

Citation: Saranathan, J. (2021). Did the Cosmic impact described in the Hindu Epic Mahabharata cause the
Piora Oscillation? Academia Letters, Article 1385. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1385.

3
3rd day. In a similar way the comet of 3136 BCE was trapped by the combined pull of the
earth-moon system and started falling as broken fragments over thirteen days with the biggest
fragment landing on the moon on the 9th day.
A cosmic collision simultaneously on the earth and the moon has a probability ratio of
23:1 (Terada et al. 2020). On an average the lunar surface receives 140 new craters every
year with diameters of 10 meter and more (Speyerer et al. 2016). The powerful collision or
3136 BCE must have left a recognizable crater on the seemingly featureless (as seen from
the earth) part of the earth. Crater Moretus in this region is found to be deep enough to have
caused massive ejecta that exceeds the total thickness of ejecta of all the lunar basins (Ivanov
et al. 2018). Lunar samples from this crater might throw up surprising connections with
samples found on the earth.
A major sampling site on the earth is in the Lower Town area of Mohenjo-Daro where
40 skeletons were found scattered on the streets and in the houses. The findings of David
Davenport show a la pompei kind of devastation caused by a cosmic impact (Gillan 2020).
The date is Early Harappan, close to 3136 BCE.
Another probable candidate is the water filled carter like Kara bogaz Gol adjacent to the
Caspian Sea, the focus of researchers of the Noah of Ark. The impacted region on the earth
anywhere in Europe during the day when it was sunset at Hastinapur, this water body is needed
to be probed well in the search for the cause for Piora Oscillation.

References
1. George F.Dales, (1964), “The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-Daro” https://www.penn.
museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/6-3/The%20Mythical.pdf

2. Gillan.Joanna, UPDATED 30 APRIL, 2020 - 20:55, “Was the Mohenjo Daro ‘Massacre’
Real?” https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/mohenjo-daro-massacre-00819

3. Ivanov et al, (2018) “Geological characterization of the three high-priority landing sites
for the Luna-Glob mission”, Planetary and Space science, p.195

4. Poschlod. Peter, (2015), “The Origin and Development of the Central European Man-
made Landscape, Habitat and Species Diversity as Affected by Climate and its Changes –
a Review”, IANSA, Volume VI, Issue 2/2015, Pages 197–221

5. Seifer. J et al., (2015), “Climate Pattern Recognition in the Mid-Holocene (4800 BC to

2800 BC, Part 3)”.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Jayasree Saranathan, jayasree.saranathan@gmail.com

Citation: Saranathan, J. (2021). Did the Cosmic impact described in the Hindu Epic Mahabharata cause the
Piora Oscillation? Academia Letters, Article 1385. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1385.

4
6. Sokeland.W, (2017), “Supernova and Nova Explosion’s Space Weather: Correlated Megafauna
Extinctions, Antarctica Ice Melts and Biosphere Mega-disturbances—Global Warming”,
Journal of Earth Science and Engineering 7, 136-153. doi: 10.17265/2159-581X/2017.03.003

7. Speyerer, E., Povilaitis, R., Robinson, M. et al. (2016) Quantifying crater production
and regolith overturn on the Moon with temporal imaging. Nature 538, 215–218 (2016).
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19829

8. Terada et al., (2020), “Asteroid shower on the Earth-Moon system immediately before the
Cryogenian period revealed by KAGUYA”, Nature Communications, DOI:10.1038/s41467-
020-17115-6

[1] The star is known as Pushya in Vedic astronomy.

[2] The ascending and the descending nodes of the moon are the points of intersection of
the lunar orbit with the ecliptic. These points keep moving very slowly in anti-clockwise
direction. These points are noted down till this date in Vedic astrology.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Jayasree Saranathan, jayasree.saranathan@gmail.com

Citation: Saranathan, J. (2021). Did the Cosmic impact described in the Hindu Epic Mahabharata cause the
Piora Oscillation? Academia Letters, Article 1385. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1385.