A new study incorporating archaeology, astronomy, carbon dating, geography, hydrology, archaeo-botany and a host of scientific methods have established that the Mahabharat era was not mythology but a part of the history of ancient India.
Saroj Bala, a Delhi-based former Indian Revenue Service officer who quit her Government job as a Member of the Central Board of Direct Taxes to undertake research that took her more than a decade to complete has found that the Mahabharat was fought in 3139 BCE (Before Current Era) which is more than 5,000 years ago.
“Though the Mahabharat contains more than 1,00,000 verses and 200 references to planetary positions, most of the studies undertaken hitherto had focussed on just 30 to 40 verses and then fixed many different astronomical and archaeological dates for Mahabharat war spanning the period from 5567 BCE to 575 BCE. This had enabled the pseudo-scholars to declare that Mahabharat was only a mythological story composed by Poet Vyas and that it had nothing to do with the history of India,” says Saroj Bala.
All proofs from multiple disciplines of science were correlated with the text of Mahabharat. The uniqueness of the research was the deployment of Planetarium and Stellarium software. 
Detailed evidence from archaeology, archaeobotany, geography and geology, oceanography and hydrology, remote sensing and genetic studies was gathered and after that was beautifully woven into the story. These support the astronomical data sequence,” said Saroj Bala.
The Planetarium and Stellarium software used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and has proved its efficacy and replicability over the years.
Dr. Gyaneshwar Chaubey, department of molecular biology, Benares Hindu University who was a collaborator of the studies regarding the authenticity of the people and places mentioned in Mahabharat said that there was no need to doubt the tribes and places featured in the work. “The tribes were found to possess the Indian genes, and we could establish that this was the same genes that were found in the oldest identified Indians,” said Prof Chaubey.
Saroj Bala has determined the exact date and times of most of the major happenings in Mahabharat through astronomic studies. She says that Bhishma Pitamah commenced his heavenward trip on  January 14, 3138 BCE, the day Sun began its Northward journey (Uttarayan). These dates were reached by deploying Planetarium Gold software, the same as that is being used by NASA.
“The study by Saroj Bala is the scientific reconstruction of ancient Indian history without any leftist or rightist basis. Sooner or later, the world would adopt her scientific methodology for rewriting the sequence of events of the remote past,” said Dr S Kalyanaraman, director, Saraswati Research Centre, Chennai. It was Dr Kalyanaraman who is credited with the studies that proved the existence of the River Saraswati, a holy river which finds mentioned in the great Indian epics.
KK Muhammed, Project Archaeological Director, Aga Khan Foundation, Hyderabad, who has held vast studies on Mahabharata,  does not concur with florid exaggerations and oriental hyperboles. He points out references to ‘Astras’ like Narayani Astra, Brahma Astra and Pasupati Astra ( weapon) capable of splitting into millions of self-guiding missiles and devastating the target. Similarly, the deployment of 18 Akshauhanis in the war should be taken with a fistful of salt as each Akshauhini consists of, 21,870 elephants, 21,870 chariots, 65, 610 horses, and 1,09, 350-foot soldiers.