Epic-Puranic chronology

The Epic-Puranic chronology is a timeline of Hindu mythology based on the Itihasa (the Sanskrit Epics, that is, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana) and the Puranas. These texts have an authoritative status in Indian tradition, and narrate cosmogeny, royal genealogies, myths and legendary events. The central dates here are the Bharata War and the start of the Kali Yuga.

These texts often discuss very long lengths of time, such as the widespread statement that Vaivasvata Manu lived 28 yuga cycles before the writer's time, which, if the usual yuga cycle of 4,320,000 years is meant, is 120 million years.

There are many possible variations of the timeline, because there are many of these texts and many different manuscripts of some individual texts, which sometimes contradict each other about what happened when and the lengths of time between them, although some events are fairly universal.

Western historians usually regard the Epic-Puranic chronology as partly mythical, though containing elements of fact. In particular, the prevailing Indo-Aryan migration theory, based on archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence, is that the Aryans entered India from Central Asia some time after 2000 BC, along with horses and the precursor of the Sanskrit language, meaning that most of the events in the epics and Puranas could not have taken place earlier than this. This contradicts the epics and Puranas, according to which many of the events that they describe took place much earlier than this and there have always been Aryans in India.

Among Indian authors, on the other hand, the historical accuracy of these traditions is a subject of lively (and sometimes politically charged) debate. The Epic-Puranic chronology is referred to by proponents of the Indigenous Aryans theory to propose an earlier dating of the Vedic period, and the spread of the Indo-European languages out of India, arguing that "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley traditions (7000 BCE to 8000 BCE)."

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