Transcripted by Arjun Singh Kadian (courtesy Srijan Foundation)

You formulate your question. Even write it down, if you prefer. But you know, the question starts with when, why, where, how etc. Typically one sentence. Maybe a couple of sentences. If this the case, what do you think? Or, what would be the situation?

Now, of course, people ask why bother dating Mahabharata and Ramayana? I am going to give you three key points there. I have read the subject of history, not just from the perspective of Mahabharata and Ramayana. But just as a reader of the Subject, I have read for 20 plus years. And this is the judgment I formulated in last 10 years or so. Which is; enormous evidence exists when it comes to Indian history. Now, I am sure a number of you have heard this. A number of you might think that this is true, that when it comes to Indian history we don’t have enough evidence. Let me tell you there is a ton of evidence. A lot of evidence that people even don’t know it exists. I don’t know it exists and we don’t know what to do with it and how to interpret it and so on.

On the other hand, if you look at western civilizations and it starts with Rome, Greece and so on because Western Europe, looks at western civilization as may be the seeds are into the Greek civilization, Roman civilization. Close to zero evidence! And fantastic history writing.

I am also convinced that British did a very successful thing in deracinating generations of Indians at least three generations of Indians and I, fortunately, had a chance to go around the world many times, many different places. I make very local connections with them and I haven’t seen a place; now, of course, my bias is towards India, may be because I am an Indian but I haven’t seen a place where people have so much inferiority complex. And I am convinced that it has to do with deracination.

Other people talk about their epics, talk about their history with great pride. They will know the details! But here almost is a fashion not to talk about it. Otherwise, you might be considered backward or something like that.

Quickly after the talk, you might ask this question and I will quickly give the high-level answer. How does our scientific knowledge grow? So, Corroboration is or the validation is how we solve this problem and falsification removes the Status Quo. Now that’s complicated. I will tell you in simple ways how science progresses.

Science doesn’t progress as much by insisting or by proving that this is how it is. This is the answer, that’s not how its progresses. But it definitely progresses by proving or disproving existing understanding or existing explanation. So it makes progress by saying,”Definitely this is not true”. So that’s the falsification part! Definitely by falsifying something else.

What is my program for this India visit? Well, I was invited to two conferences and that’s how the whole thing started and that is how we all are here. So, thank you for coming.

What other things are you working on? And the simple answer I will give you, too many to list.

Alright. I want to share with you an example something very simple from everyday life. What constitutes a falsifying evidence? What constitutes a revolutionary scientific evidence? What is not scientific; I want to make you familiar with.

So there are three personalities. Do you recognize them? First one is Lokmanya Tilak, the middle one is Swatantraveer Savarkar, the last one is Mahatma Gandhi. I am going to quiz you now. True or false? The question is if someone tells you Lokmanya Tilak, Swatantraveer Savarkar, and Mahatma Gandhi met at Pune in 1923 to discuss the state of British rule in India. True or false? Ok. Just raise your hand, how many of you think this is true? Ok!  Very good. 6.35 percentage.

How about the others? We are not aware of it.

And just now I talked about the deracination, ok. It’s a minor thing, right.

How many of you, anyone knows the answer? I mean, I will give you the answer. Anyone knows the explanation? Okay!

Lokmanya Tilak passed away in 1920. So now that I have provided you the evidence, what do you think? True or False? “FALSE”. Is everyone sure? Yes. Okay. So why is that? It doesn’t matter whether it’s 1923, 1924, 25, 26, 35, 36. Doesn’t matter. The answer is” false”.

That’s the kind of decisive evidence we talk about and we are going to talk today, two specific examples of such kind of decisive evidence. One for Mahabharata and One for Ramayana. It will not tell you exactly when they might have come together. Well, they might not have. But it will tell you, I want to convince you based on those two pieces of evidence that Mahabharata war didn’t happen in anytime, even a day late than 4500 B.C., in last 6500 years ago.

I also want to convince you that when it comes to the Ramayana. I want to show you the evidence that Ramayana didn’t happen even a day late than 10,000 B.C. Essentially it didn’t happen in the last 12000 years.

This is the logic of scientific discovery. There are three corners to it. So just an example you went through Lokmanya Tilak, Swatantraveer Savarkar and Mahatma Gandhi prediction. So that was the statement or that was the claim. That three met in 1923, that was the prediction. True or false? And the explanation. Of course, we know true or false. But how did we get to it? It’s through testing and we use the single directional arrow of time. We said 1923 came after 1920. It sounds very funny but pay attention to this because that is the logic. This is the logic of scientific discoveries.

That is the logic we are going to use when we get to Mahabharata and Ramayana evidence. Everyone clear on this triangle? We will be revisiting this triangle.

The triangle that I just described. Professor C.K Raju, a number of you who might have heard. If not I will encourage you to read or to go to YouTube and listen to his videos. He has a book which says scientific knowledge or basis of science is that western in origin. It’s a book worth reading.

What I want to start with is the triangle that I just described. All the great people are talking the same thing. Bhagwan Patanjali, Yogasutra; You might have heard, first chapter “Samadhipad” and verse 7. Pratyaksha Anumana Aagma Pramaanadi. Pratyaksha i.e. Empirical proof, testing; ’Anumana ‘i.e. prediction or inference and ‘Aagma’ is the background knowledge and ‘Pramaanadi’ is the explanation or description. We just went through the triangle and if you thought I just took the example and somehow made it up.

Let’s go through with Sir Karl Popper who is very famous for the philosophy of Science and I will again encourage you to read the book, ‘The logic of scientific discovery, conjectures and repetitions’ and so on. He says you start with a problem. I will give you a couple of examples of it. How many of you have this experience that you lifted a bucket of water and when you lifted you are surprised because you thought it was filled with water but it wasn’t. How many of you have this experience? If you have, raise your hand. OK. Those of you who don’t have this experience, I will give you a second example. Let’s say, you are walking down the stairs and suddenly you stumble and may be sprain your leg and you are surprised and you look back. What happened here? And, what was happening again you are expecting a step there and it wasn’t there.

In both cases what I am saying is consciously or not we always have these theories or expectations in the back of our mind and when those expectations are startled, we get the problem. What happened here? Who removed the step or oh! I thought the bucket was heavy.

So, we start with the problem that’s what Karl popper says and then we propose the theory i.e.  an explanation to solve that problem and then you work at error elimination. How do we do that? We look at the competition of the theory and then we look at the evidence and see if it matches. Ok? And then we end up with bigger problems.

When I am done you will start asking questions such as, Well, this is true, 4500 B.C. and so on, What about this? It leads to the bigger problem of higher complexity and in fact a test of a revolutionary theory is that it doesn’t solve the problem. It creates more of it, a higher complexity. That’s what happens in science, everywhere. Richard Feynman, I just mention his name. He says all science problems just start with a guess, you have a problem you try to come out with an explanation. You compute the consequences, the predictions and you compare the consequences with the actual observations, experiments, nature, simulations and you reach the conclusion. Ok? This is one type of issue, one problem. Now, what you do if there are many researchers claiming to have an answer to the same problem?

You need to ask three questions and this is not about Mahabharata and Ramayana. It may appear everywhere. You need to ask three questions anytime you see a claim. Somebody saying something.

The first question is, you can ask that person what is your Siddhant? What is your theory? I will tell you my theory. There are more than 800 astronomy references together between Ramayana & Mahabharata and my theory simply says all the astronomy references from these two epics are actual, factual, visual observations of the sky of that time.

Then you need to ask two questions again, very straight forward. You must ask, is this researcher taking into account all the evidence or just randomly or selectively looking for a few which happen to fit his/her theory or date.

And the last question you need to ask is that is this evidence testable, objectively testable? If I gave you the recipe, you know for a certain food dish; if you should follow that you would be enabled to get more or less the same outcome. Can we do the same thing? If I claim something, can you or every one of you with least understanding of the astronomy able to repeat what I did and reach the same conclusion? Then it’s objectively testable.

So what I am going to do now is take those two axes, evidence, and testability. And what I did is that I looked at the evidence with the two extremes as either Arbitrary or Selective evidence and at the top is all relevant evidence and the horizontal axis. I took it as objectively testable. On one side the answer is yes. It means it is scientific and we were talking outside what is scientific or what is not. If it’s objectively testable to that extent it is scientific.

Now the other side is Metaphysical and that’s where a lot of confusion happens. Metaphysical doesn’t mean it’s false if it’s not true. It doesn’t mean that. It simply means we don’t have enough evidence. We can’t talk about it one or the other. Think of the horizontal line below that is bad, above that is good. If you look at the vertical axis to the east of it, I mean to the right of it. It means it’s objectively testable and the other side is not objectively testable. Look at the bottom corner, Skepticism. Skepticism is good. It is an essential ingredient for science but what is not good is you just ask the question to someone else. You should feel passionate about the question yourself; that you start searching and that was my journey with the two observations that I am going to share with you.

We look at Mahabharata claims. Do you know how many claims are there about Mahabharata? The time of the Mahabharata! When did the Mahabharata happen, any guess?  Seventy-five!

Ok, there are more than 130 different claims by those many different researchers for the timing of Mahabharata war. And if I am to split them into this framework, they fall like this.

For Ramayana, they fall like this. Again the quick one note on the bottom right-hand quadrant, superficial and manipulative. The manipulative, because it appears scientific because whatever little evidence they are testing. They are testing it, that’s true.  I suppose Mahabharata says. Now please listen to me I am not saying Mahabharata says that. Suppose Mahabharata says if the war started on Monday and some researcher claims the certain date and his first day also happens to be Monday. What does that tell you? Does that mean his date is correct? No. Monday is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. Okay, so that’s the nature of that bottom Quadrant.

Next, again I am going to talk about the astronomical evidence. I will quickly mention that if you want to find out the timing of Mahabharata and Ramayana it is not important that you just only stick to astronomy. NO!

You can take to geology route, you can take it ecology route any of this. Any of this and many more, these are just examples.

We are going to get into the first example. The first observation from the Mahabharata.

Just to give you a background. All of Mahabharata has close to 200 astronomy observations and I had in my book, I have listed each one of them. So there are 215+ and I put down that plus because I bet there are many more that I might have missed.

They can be split into these two categories. On the right, I call them ‘near earth phenomenon’. What does it mean? Just like we say Monday, you know if it’s Monday and something happened on Monday.  The Monday will be repeated after 7 days. If you look the certain phase of the moon, it will repeat after a month. A Certain position of the sun like 21st of December now in 10 days, it will repeat after a year. So those are repeated phenomenon. In fact, in astronomy, everything is repetitive and not quite and we will see that side.

On the other side. That’s also somewhat repetitive phenomenon but it has a longer time span. We are talking thousands of years. The phenomenon is known as “Precession of equinoxes” and I am going to briefly describe it. The whole cycle of the” Precession of equinoxes” takes 26 thousand years. Twenty-six thousand years! And by luck, it helps us in determining the timing of our ancient events.

So from that other side, that long cycle of 26000 years; I am going to take one observation. That’s one out of the 215 total observations. What is it? A number of you might know Krishna tried to create peace, see if he can avoid the war. Did he succeed? No.

So, finally, the war is due. It’s a day before the war. And Vasudeva, he says, Let me make a final attempt to see if he can succeed. So, he approaches Drithrashtra and tries to tell him all the negatives about the war and so on. While he is having communication he makes a list of many other things, you know, scary things. And a part of that list, he mentions many astronomy observation. He mentions many other things and one of the astronomy observation we are going to discuss today is this.

It comes in “Bhishma Parva Adhyaya 2, verse 31” You can read it and tell me the meaning of it.

A quick translation, that respected Arundhati has gone ahead of Vasishtha; is walking ahead of Vasishtha. And, they are talking astronomy stars and so on. How many of you are familiar with “Saptarishi” in the sky and how many of you can point them out? If you go out at night and assuming they are in the sky? Ok, very good number of you. So, it’s a panhandle or it’s a kite and a tail. So, think of the rectangle. That’s the pan and then there is a handle or tail.

There are three stars in that tail and the middle star is Vasishtha, in Indian astronomy and Mizar in western astronomy. Next to that Vasishtha, is a small star. It’s called Arundhati, in Indian astronomy and in western astronomy, it’s called Alcor. And, if you go tonight! You will have to wake up very early and the sky has to be of course very clear, so it’s not in Delhi, I guess. Around four O’clock, you will see them this time of the year. It’s right up there and if you have even an ordinary binocular you would be able to see very nicely, even you can see with the naked eye if you have a very good eyesight. Vasishtha will appear walking ahead of Arundhati. That’s the scenario today, that was the scenario 1000 years ago, 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago, 4000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 6000 years ago. Vasishtha was walking ahead of Arundhati. Vyas is saying Arundhati is walking ahead of Vasishtha.

Now, what’s the big deal of this observation! Well, I just told you even if you go back 6000 years ago still Vasishtha is walking ahead of Arundhati. So, what does that I tell you if this statement of Vyas is true. Mahabharata did not happen for last six thousand years. Now, you would imagine, all these one thirty plus researchers would do something about it, right, it exists. Only four people mentioned it, out of 130. Who are those four? Bharatacharya C V Vaidya, Lokmanya Tilak gave him the title for his great work on Mahabharata. He says this is something impossible in astronomy. Someone might have introduced it afterwards and that happens in our literature!

Second person, Bharat Ratna Mahamahopadhyaya Pandrang Vaman Kane and he said that this is something impossible in the very order of nature, “astronomically speaking.” So, he also said someone might have inserted.

In our times Prof. R. N. Iyengar, those of you who may know the name, he recently retired from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.  He has done a lot of good work in this area but I will tell you, you relate that word, is that he tried to do some “jugaad “  while trying to explain this observation. You know what he did, he took this last line and tried to combine this line with another line of another Adhyaya of Mahabharat. It is actually referring to planet Mars. Nothing to do with this stars. He tried to see some ‘jugaad’ can happen. But didn’t go anywhere.

The fourth one is Dr. P. V. Vartak, he is a medical doctor, now 83 years old, based in Pune. He always was convinced that this is a factual observation and tried to test it in three different ways over many years and failed.

Now, someone might say come on, Mahabharata is so big that someone may just miss that observation but that story doesn’t sell. The reason is, there are four specific observations in this chapter. Everyone mentions that remaining three but not this one. Now you know why? Because, if you go back unless six thousand years, you cannot explain it.

So, I am going to quickly explain the precession of the equinoxes, what that phenomenon is. And, then we get back to this observation.

This year 2016, now. If you go out at night, looking at the north direction, you will identify the pole star. How many of you can identify pole star in principle? OK, a lot of you. So, you will notice that pole star, and what you will notice, if you sit there in a nice comfortable chair for a long time.  You find all stars rotate around pole star and how do they rotate? In an anti-clockwise direction. This track, a track of one star and I will say this star is walking ahead of next to that star. Because every star is going in an anti-clockwise direction.

Now, what happens is this. We call it a pole star and we think it is steady. Dhruva Tara, you know Dhruva means fixed. It is fixed but it is fixed for maybe one thousand or two thousand years, it is not fixed forever. There is another astronomy phenomenon, where earth’s axis points to in the sky. If there is a star we called it as Dhruva Tara (Polaris), in this case. It has its own motion. It’s a very slow motion like a ‘top’ you know that you play with and that’s what we called the precession of the axis. It’s very slow and it completes one circle in 26000 years.

We will start here earth axis at an angle pointing towards the sky, NCP a star next to it in our times it Polaris. But I said it goes and makes the circle. It’s precession around and it takes 26000 years.

So, let me ask you a question.  When would our earth axis point to that other star, Brahma rishi/ Abhijit? Thirteen thousand years either we go backward or forward thirteen thousand years.

So we would go back to eleven thousand B.C, plus two thousand, that’s thirteen thousand approximately. To this everything will be same except now, except now, earth’s axis will be pointing towards Brahma rishi/Abhijit. What does that mean? Thirteen thousand years ago Brahma rishi/Abhijit was our pole star, not Polaris.

This is the circle. That’s how you will see, see if you go backward you will see different years and different stars, they will be considered pole stars.

Now what I am doing is, I am taking the same circle placing the position of those same stars. And, now I want to place their relative positions of Arundhati and Vasishtha.

That’s how they are. Just for a demonstration, they are exaggerated and shown as wider. Now everyone understands if Polaris is my pole star they go around Polaris into an anti-clockwise direction.  I am going to draw a line that goes through Arundhati and Vasishtha and crosses that circle of precession twice.

Pay attention, that line has split that circle into 3 categories.

Point A, Point B and our current Point C and I am also going to mark down the Point X.  So, 5561 BC and that is my proposed date for the year of Mahabharata war.

Now I have not proposed it myself. Dr. P.V. Vartak, one of the four names I mentioned, he proposed it in 1980 sometime. So, when I started working with it, my goal was to see if it is true; my goal was to actually disapprove that date. So, I went through every single observation. Let’s see what happens, what that line did.

That line has split the circle into 3 different phenomena. The first one we can say, that particular curve, we can say the Vasishtha would appear walking ahead of Arundhati and I will show you in few minutes, why? When that line cuts that circle at two points A and B, 4508 BC. Those two points, let me ask you a question.

Where do you see the pole along that curve and line, who would appear ahead and who would appear behind? Think of it as a clock and that line is the arm of the clock. Arundhati and Vasishtha are on that arm. Anyone ahead or anyone behind? They will be coinciding. Arundhati and Vashishtha will be together. No one is ahead no one behind in those two years.

And, the last one. Anytime the point of the north celestial pole is along that green area. You will see that Arundhati would appear walking ahead of Vasishtha.

In today’s scenario. So just for the reference for help, I am drawing those trajectories for each of those stars. Just looking at this picture, will everyone agree that here you would see Vasishtha walking ahead of Arundhati? Yes, and let’s look at the simulation.

If you look at the astronomy simulation that vertical green line think of that is 12 o clock in your clock, it’s the meridian in the astronomy. Vasishtha has already gone ahead crossed the meridian, Arundhati is behind. Everyone with me, just the year if you check is 2016 our times.

So, now I am going to look into this points A and B. When the North Pole, the point of North Pole was at A and B, that was in 4508 B.C and also 11091 B.C.

Let’s do it. From B now, I am drawing those arms again, they are aligned with each other. And, what do we see? We will see Arundhati and Vasishtha walk together. Let’s do the simulation. At the meridian both crossing together, no one ahead no one behind.

They are not in the place of Dhruva Tara. The place of Dhruva Tara is the point A or B and Vasishtha and Arundhati are walking around A or B and all other stars of that area too.

Let’s do that for 4508 BC. Again I am doing from point A.  Let’s look at simulation for that year, again the same thing no one ahead, no one behind.

Let’s look at the last scenario. So, now I am deliberately keeping that red line as reference line because you know that no one is ahead and no one is behind. And now I am going to draw a line from this point of North Pole in 5561 BC to Arundhati and Vasishtha. And, what can you say? Not much difference! But what do you say if they are moving in anti-clockwise, you will see Arundhati walk ahead of Vasishtha.

And let’s look at simulation. Pay attention, not much difference and they are going anticlockwise but Arundhati had already crossed the meridian. Vasishtha yet has to cross meridian and that was the scenario that was happening from 11091 BC until 4508 BC, until 6500 years ago.

So now back to the triangle of science if you want to bring this all together, what will we do? We do the testing, empirical proof. That anyone of you should able to go back and test it. You do not have to trust me on this. So, we start with the explanation, what is the explanation? Simple Arundhati is ahead of Vasishtha. The testing the question is, is it even possible? Those people who thought it is not possible, they said somebody had inserted it. But when somebody finally proved, actually showed that it is possible, the question is, when was it possible, when was the case? And the answer is some time from 11091 BC until 4508 BC, around 6500 years. Anytime anyone on the earth in northern hemisphere looking at Arundhati and Vashistha during this time would have seen Arundhati walked ahead of Vasishtha.

So, now bring this together, put your scientific hat. We got empirical proof, we got the “Shabda Pramaan” somebody is saying, claiming something. Arundhati walking ahead of Vasishtha, we got empirical proof? Yes that indeed it went ahead of the Vasishtha. If you combine the two, we should be able to assert that Mahabharata war did not happen any time after 4500 BC.

This one single observation. Bring back the example I gave of Lokmanya Tilak in 1920. It doesn’t matter whether it said 23 or 31 or 37 doesn’t matter, any year of Mahabharata war that falls after 4508 B.C, this one observation says, wrong.

Now I want you to bring that skeptic in you, what will you say, come on, it says ok that’s fine ‘Shabda Pramaan’ matches with the ‘Pratyaksha Pramaan’, empirical proof that’s all nice but come on that is just one observation. So I said! Skeptic blurts out,” But this is only one observation. Could this be a random coincidence?” It’s possible you know when we talk about science we are talking about more likely and less likely there is no certainty in science,  it’s very humble, it’s also very fearless. It feels comfortable making claims and it encourages others and says come and prove me wrong, that’s science.

So, somebody says that’s a coincidence may be one reference not at all, remember there are 215 and you can go just one after another. I am going to give you a quick summary of another one.

“Deductive reasoning based on Bhishma Nirvana.” I am not going through it, In fact, I am writing a book on it, with title Bhishma Nirvana.  And one great mentor of mine says, I started explaining to him, now he understood but he said if you can’t explain in 20 minutes, write a book. So, I am going to write a book.

A quick summary of it, just like I did on what I showed you in AB observation. It’s totally different from it, nothing to confuse with AB observation. We can also prove with the same force that Mahabharata war, just based on 23 references of Bhishma Nirvana, did not happen a day late than 4700 BC or before 7000 BC.

So again this set of observation also instantly falsifies any date that falls after 4500 BC. They are more or less the same, they happened to same.

Again the skeptic, our skeptic, doesn’t give up. It says alright but there are only the two sets of observations! Could these be random coincidences? But no we have many others, you can just go through seasons and go on and on. I encourage to read my book or even my blog. There are 400 blogs that I have written, essentially responding to the questions like this.

I want to give you a second example from Ramayana and then I will stop and get into questions and answers. Very similar! I tried to make the picture that looks similar. Ramayana has more than 500 astronomy observations, again we can split them into two categories. This category is ‘near earth phenomena’ repeats frequently; the position of moons, eclipses, planetary positions and so on.

And the other side is driven by the phenomenon known as “precession of equinoxes”. Actually, the answer is very fast because we have gone through it. ‘Yudh Kanda’ of Ramayana. They use the word ‘Kanda’ instead of ‘Parva’. Hanuman and party have found Sita. It’s in Lanka. They came to Kishkindha and in a hurry, you know, everybody left for Lanka. You might have read it in Ramayana or seen the TV serials. Everybody is walking towards Lanka and during this time, Laxman is describing the various things in the sky. Obviously, they are taking the help of various stars, in making sure that they are traveling in the right direction at night and so on. And he describes pole star of Ramayana times.

Translation, great sages are making Parikrama around the fixed/settled Brahmarashi/Abhijit, the pole star. So he is describing the pole star of Ramayana times but you are experts now, you know now when the Brahmarashi was the pole star, when was it? 13000 years ago, around until 12000 BC. We can do exact maps, you know, to be more precise and find out the closest that the NCP was to the star Brahma rishi was in 12048 BC. We can go plus minus 1000 years or 2000 years to be on the safe side.

So that gives me the boundary 10000 BC and never after that. And again I put my scientific hat. I have the description, I have empirical proof and I bring it together. Testing, empirical, various pole stars I showed you in the circle. Everybody knows it is the prediction for Brahmarashi we can find out 12000 BC you said.

And what is the explanation Laxman mention the Brahmarashi as the pole star?

So if you accept this reference, if you put this together, we can say that Ramayana did not happen even a day late than 10000 BC. Again where is my skeptic? OK, just one reference. Ya, a little bit of Brahmarashi. I don’t necessarily understand this thing, any other? Ramayana has seven different Kands. I am quickly describing you this from the Yudh Kand.

I am going to describe 3 references from three different other Kand of Ramayana. In Aranya Kand, it’s the time of Laxman, Ram, and Sita in Panchvati and it’s the time of Hemant season. Hemant season would be over in ten to twelve days, with the winter solstice and Laxman is describing the sky again. It seems Laxman’s job is to describe the sky. Laxman says,”During this Hemant Ritu, Sun is setting on the horizon the western horizon near ‘nakshatra pushya’.”

If in our times, you go right now tonight and you can see. What you will find is Sun sets around “Purva Shada Utra shada Shravan.” Laxman is saying its set’s around Pushya. Again use the precession of equinoxes and you can find out exact what that happen. The timing comes 11500 BC to 17500 BC.

In our times, in the month of Ashwin, what we call Dussehra. That’s the Dussehra time comes in Sharad Ritu after the rainy season. In Ramayana times it is described as a time of Vasant Ritu, like our Holi.

“This is the Vasant Ritu and month of Ashwin is passing away how are we going to find out Sita?” Angad is saying to his party. That is from another Kand, Sunderkand.

And, there is one another description of Chaitra.  When ram was born, the Indian month was Chaitra, April is an English month.

Chaitra, Shukla, Navami!

In our times it appears in Vasant Ritu, the second part of Vasant Ritu. This is a very auspicious month, Chaitra, it is said in Ramayana, when the forests are blooming with flowers that can happen in Chaitra, early chaitya. Well!  If Ramayana has to happen in our times, we are definitely sure it will not happen in our time.

If you can go back 2000 years that’s the early part of Vasant, you know it definitely did not happen in that time. So, if you go back and use precession of equinoxes and you have to find another time, when the forests would be blooming with flowers and you have to go to all beginning of Hemant Ritu or Sharad Ritu , when again forest, our Dussehra season, are blooming with flowers.

Four references I gave, all of them refer to 10000BC and in the past 4000 years 5000 years 6000 years and not any time after that.