Thirst for knowing our past

Since class 8th when I first learnt about our ancient history in our ICSE text books, I have always wanted to learn about the complete history of India. We (with reference to the Hindu religious scriptures) have a very long and elaborately recorded “history” here in India, which, though broken (seems to have lost) at many vital places, provides a great story (in journalistic sense of the word) to tell. However, we are yet to prove that this history existed.

In my free time my mind dwells into thoughts that try to connect our mythology with our history. The questions that linger on my mind are:

– Was the war of Kurukshetra (from the epic Maharabharata) for real?
– Are the yugas as described by hindu scriptures for real?
– How can a religious or mythological epic have such vivid and mathematical descriptions of the war, the numbers (of participants, the dead and warrior kill stats etc)? Doesn’t it seem unnatural?
– Did people from ancient times really travelled to other planets (as mentioned in Mahabharata)
– So did they know whether other planets had life?
– What really was the power of the super weapon mentioned in these scriptures? Were they, in principle, similar to the ones nations use today?
– What was the position of other regions around the world at the “time” of Mahabharata? Were there advanced civilizations living there just as in Bharata?
– Was the mind of the person that wrote Bhagvada Gita really Human? It does not seem possible for a mortal to even imagine such discpline and knowledge, let alone putting it down so eloquently in verses

I feel sad that I am so tied up in my business ventures that I do not have the time to quench this innate thirst.