Position of Pluto: Was it at Krittika (per Nilesh Oak 5561bc) or was it 30 degrees away as pointed out by Dr Pandit(3067bc) ?
The background:
In the 2nd part of the debate, Dr Pandit pointed out that Pluto cannot be Tivro graha.
He then said that Pluto could never blot out the light of the Kartika group of stars and hence this Tivro graha must be a comet and not a planet.
In the final part of the debate, Dr Pandit pointed out that Pluto is away from Krittika and is 30 degrees away but was ignored by Nilesh Oak. I looked for the relevant positions in 3067bc and 5561bc and found that Pluto was indeed 30 degrees away from Krittika in 5561bc. To make matters worse, Pluto was indeed at Krittika in 3067bc. Here is a video which I have checked with relevant software: Redshift/ NASA JPL and Cybersky all give the same answer as in the video below, hence I didn't see the point of posting the screen grabs here. But those who wish to check may go to either or all of the relevant softwares to fact check.
I think that I have to reluctantly agree with Dr Pandit that Pluto can never blot out the light of the Krittika group of stars, so this must Tivro graha must be a comet.
Conclusion: This means that Dr Manish Pandit's statement was again true and Nilesh Oak's statement was false.
Position of Saturn:
In the 2nd part of the debate, Dr Pandit pointed out that there are two comets at Vishakha.
The reasoning for thus was given as the verse preceding the verse giving grahas: Jupiter and Saturn at Vishakha for a year. This preceding verse says that the two grahas had hair and blotted out the light of the Great dipper.
Nilesh Oak response was: "Where are these two comets then in 3067bc?"
Dr Pandit response was that they could be long period comets. The answer is actually not very perfectly articulated by Dr Pandit which is why it comes across as less than accurate.
However, Nilesh Oak's response that Jupiter and Saturn were near Vishakha is very inaccurate too (and that was pointed out by Dr Pandit)
What Dr Pandit should have said is that actually those two grahas can only be comets and many comets are not seen for thousands of years.
Conclusion: We have to award 1 mark to both researchers but cut 1mark from both for the mistakes both made in the heat of the moment on the point. Nilesh Oak's marks are cut for pooh poohing the idea that these were comets (they are definitely comets as they have hair, whatever their exact identification, magnitude or paths and they are not Jupiter or Saturn. Secondly comet paths and brightness are difficult to predict in any case), Dr Pandit's marks are cut for not saying what he said in a more believable manner.
The main problem for Nilesh Nilkath Oak is that he has lost the positions of two of his major planets, Jupiter and Saturn, as Dr Pandit pointed out, Jupiter is 55 degrees away and Saturn is 25 degrees away from Vishakha. The point Nilesh Oak made about justifying his position using the word "equidistant from Vishakha" is completely wrong because the verse says "Sameepa" which means "near" and not "equidistant". Losing two of the theory's slow moving planets is the same as saying that the theory is no longer valid. Is 5561bc is not valid as a result? This is a question for all viewers.
The debate would have been won by Nilesh Nilkanth Oak had the fact check actually shown that whatever Nilesh Oak was saying was accurate. As it turned out, many crucial points in what Nilesh Oak was saying were made up or outright false. This meant that he has unfortunately lost.
However, I wish Nilesh Oak all the best with his Ramayan theory (I have not fact checked it and it may be as wrong as his Mahabharat theory) and I also congratulate Dr Pandit for having the courage to go and debate with somebody as formidable a debater as Nilesh Oak and pull off an unlikely win. I doubt anybody else would have had the courage to do so. Hare Krishna.
In the first part of this analysis, (Link to First part of the Analysis)
I did a fact check on Balarama's pilgrimage: The results were that Dr Pandit did prove his two timelines war and pilgrimage correctly. I had suspected that this might have been the case but it was also possible that what Nilesh Oak was saying was true. On checking I found that Balarama's pilgrimage is proved in 3067bc and it was not proved in 5561bc. (and admitted by Nilesh Oak). This would also mean that straight away that a significant part of the debate (on Balarama's pilgrimage and Nilesh Oak's mistakenly calling it fraudulent) was won by Dr Pandit.
The proof can also be found in chapter 3 of Dr Pandit's book which he appears to have kindly allowed to download here:
During the first part of the debate, Nilesh Oak says that he is able to prove Adhika Masa by the Sunnasepa methodology. Again I needed to read up on this and the answer is somewhat convoluted.
First of all, it appears that the definition of this method may vary. I found the answer on Twitter where the following video suggests that Nilesh Oak may only be partly correct. He is not able to prove an intercalated month in the year and month he desires (Oct 5561bc) but is able to do so in Oct 5560bc which is not of much use. The next point is that the Adhik mas is not provable by the normal method of 13 New Moons either.
The lack of the Adhika masa which is an ad hoc conjecture then puts Nilesh Oak's entire pre war timeline in considerable doubt. Point 3: Moonphase Analogies and 14th war night Moonrise During the second part of the debate, Dr Pandit said that Nilesh Oak's Moonphases were completely wrong because of an Eastern sky Moonrise. This was quite a revelation. I thought the Nilesh Oak was quite right in what he was saying what he was saying initially because I had been reading his book but the first inkling that he might have gone wrong came when I realised that he had taken this 14th war night Moonrise as a conflicting observation. My heart sank and I realised that he had not taken this observation of the sky into consideration but instead had taken some smilies and metaphors of warriors earrings, canopies of chariots and faces of dead warriors with the full Moon as his references. This is not apparent on first glance when one reads his book.
Well caught by Dr Pandit but in any case, Nilesh Oak had not taken it into consideration and made up his own references. So Nilesh Oak's war timeline is totally wrong as he got the Moonphases wrong but its a honest mistake I suppose. Anybody can make mistakes of this sort and he does say that he excludes the real Moonrise observational data from his work. However his claim of a conjectured dust storm has been destroyed herein this video by Dr Pandit.
Conclusion: Nilesh Oak's Moonphases made up his own moon phase references. His war and pilgrimage timelines are broken. He must have excluded a large number of observations as he himself says that the Moonrise data is conflicting to his work. This means that much of his theory is unfortunately quite wrong.
Point 4: Arundhati Vasistha Observation
During the closing section of part 1 of the debate, Dr Pandit answers in an offhand manner about the Arundhati Vasistha observation and Nilesh Nilkanth Oak lets it go.
Nilesh Oak has taken the Arundhati Vasistha observation in that part of time where Arundhati leads Vasistha. This appears to be a reasonable idea per se (and I would have tended to believe Nilesh Oak's words that Dr Pandit had introduced a Omen filter) until I found out that Vyasa Maharaja had actually said that this observation was indeed a Nimitta or omen. Here is a Screengrab from the video, I could check that it was from the critical edition.
So I have had to change my opinion quite a lot on this observation, it requires deep thought showing that what Dr Pandit said was actually the truth.
I got a transliteration from a Guru of the Hare Krishna mission nearby for this verse: It shows that the Vyasa Maharaja refers to all the observations which follow as omens:
iha yuddhe mahārāja bhaviṣyati mahān kṣayaḥ
yathemāni nimittāni bhayāyādyopalakṣaye || verse 16 from chapter 2 Thus the Arundhati Vasistha observation must also be an omen (Nimita) and nothing else. Now comes the deep part. I had to think for quite a while to understand the time interval in which this verse would be an omen. It would thus be an omen only in an interval when Arundhati was following Vasistha. It would only be here that Arundhati leading Vasistha would become an omen. This would imply that the time interval taken by Nilesh Oak for the dating of the Mahabharata would be strictly a no no (11000bc to 4450bc where Arundhati was already leading Vasistha) and instead we must take the time interval 4450 bc to 1000bc for the dating of the Mahabharata. Thus 5561bc cannot be the date of the war by any means. What gives this theory real credence is a video I saw where Nilesh Oak says that Dr Pandit has introduced a Nimitta or omen filter. This means clearly that Nilesh Oak simply did not consider that such the Arundhati Vasistha observation could ever have been an omen/ or a Nimitta. This proves Dr Pandit's point.
How could Arundhati walk ahead of Vasistha?
Dr Jayasree Saranathan gives an entire theory for the same in her book making it possible for Arundhati to walk ahead of Vasistha momentarily due to a change in atmospheric refraction. There are many other reasons why this could be a possibility including a momentary reduction in visibility of Arundhati.
Thus the omen possibility is only when Arundhati is following Vasistha as the norm. (3139nc /3162bc /3067bc)
A short video I found on youtube is more easy to understand: its worth spending some time to watch this below.
Recently I saw an exciting debate between two researchers: Dr Manish Pandit and Nilesh Nilkanth Oak which was hosted by Sangam Talks. Here is my effort to make sense of this exchange between the two researchers.
My Analysis of the Debate is here:
The points made by both researchers are as follows:
Dr Manish Pandit for 3067BCE claimed that he had proved Balarama's Pilgrimage while Nilesh Oak said that Dr Pandit's timeline is fraudulent. Which of the two researchers said the truth?
In actual fact, although Nilesh Oak attempted to make people think that Dr Pandit had not proved the timeline of Balaram's pilgrimage, I got hold of three separate links which proved that Dr Pandit had in fact shown that the pilgrimage had been perfectly proved for 3067BCE.
Here is the first link proving that whatever Dr Pandit said was true:
Here is the second link to prove Dr Pandit's version of events:
Did Nilesh Nilkanth Oak prove Balarama's Pilgrimage?
I discovered this video a little later:
But was this video which was made by Dr Pandit true? (which proved that Nilesh Oak in fact sent Balarama the wrong way around) I found out that it was true on Twitter, no less:
In Nilesh Oak's own words, he DOES NOT PROVEthe pilgrimage while simultaneously claiming that nobody else can prove it or anybody can prove it. We can take our pick.
Is Balarama's Pilgrimage important?
Balarama's pilgrimage must indeed be very important, otherwise Nilesh Oak would not be trying to prove 3067BCE (as proposed initially by Dr Narahari Achar and Dr Raghavan) as fraudulent based on this single piece of evidence. It was rather unlucky for him that Dr Pandit has proved this timeline, that too on camera and then proved it in a separate video and on other places with screenshots.
Fact Check:
So the first Fact Check is that Nilesh Nilkanth Oak said that the 3067BCE theory was fraudulent on the basis of Balrama arriving 3 days later than the 18th day of the war in Dr Achar's theory but it was NOT FRAUDULENT as Dr Pandit modified the theory (last year according to his blog in October) and fixed the 18th day of the war as 12th Dec 3067BCE which also happen to be the 42nd day of the pilgrimage thereby fixing the problematic timeline. (I realised this only after the 1st and 3rd parts of the debate)
Conclusion:
Where does that leave Nilesh Oak? Not sure. However this means that Nilesh Oak's war and pilgrimage timelines are broken from the Nakshatra point of view while Dr Pandit's are perfectly preserved according to the text. Why did Nilesh Oak call the timeline juvenile and fraudulent when they were correct? What was the purpose? We may never know why he did all this when he was unable to prove his own timelines.
This would also mean that Nilesh Nilkanth Oak's Bhisma Nirvana theory has also failed as he got the war and pilgrimage timelines wrong.
