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Since the publication of "Who is who in the Mahabharata", many people have asked me as to whether I thought the Mahabharata was true i.e. whether the various events described in it actually happened. My answer to it has always been both yes and no. Yes, I believe it is essentially factual. It is not just a story or a mythology but, it is a sociological history of our ancestors; for that is who the various characters described in the great epic were. It portrays succinctly the moral and ethical values of people who lived at that time. It describes clearly how people behaved under stress - some righteously and valiantly; some ignominiously and in a dastardly manner; while some being unable to take a decision merely abstained from action. But no, I do not think it happened exactly and literally as mentioned in the texts which have come down to us in various languages. Much as the romanticists and diehard traditionalists would want us to believe, there is no way in which for instance Arjuna could have undertaken an inter-planetary travel and gone off to swarga by just sitting in a plane. Scientific development is an interactive process which has to make simultaneous advance in all the related fields. It is totally unrealistic to think of an ancient civilization which had aeroplanes (pushapaka vimana) and nuclear explosive devices (brahmastra) but which fought with nothing more than bows and arrows and went on horseback or in chariots, at most.