Context: Modern historians debate and argue over historical events. Meanwhile the sage Vyasa dictating the Mahabharata to Lord Ganesha, showing that ancient historians simply recorded massive, made-up casualty counts - something shared across the globe.
Part of it is that many pre-modern armies also had extremely limited ability to estimate the numbers of their enemies, as they often lacked professional scouting units who specialize in such matters - even some early modern ‘rationalized’ attempts at scouting with collations of multiple scouts’ record-keeping and long-distance observation tools like binoculars, like the Pinkertons in the US Civil War, could come up with double or triple the actual numbers of the enemy.
On the other hand, Procopius, a Late Roman/Byzantine writer, accuses Emperor Justinian of killing a trillion people (‘a myriad myriad of myriads’ - ‘10,000 * 10,000 * 10,000’), and 50 million in Libya alone. So uh, there’s definitely a taste for big numbers with some pre-modern writers.
accuses Emperor Justinian of killing a trillion people (‘a myriad myriad of myriads’
Guy kinda sounds like a dick
I mean, Procopius also wrote that Justinian walked around with his head detached from his body in that same text, so it may not be the most accurate of sources.
(even speaking as someone who fucking hates Justinian)
Justinian walked around with his head detached from his body
Massive dick
How would YOU know, you weren’t there to see for yourself. Dude was probably a Dullahan.
Also the Buddha had lived for trillion times the theoretical age of our universe (big bang to heat death) before reaching enlightenment
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I’ve read a shortened version - I found it lacking in comparison to a modern fantasy novel. I didn’t really care about the characters, their motivations were strange, the build up to the war felt forced, it’s unclear why seemingly every leader in the world cares enough about the brothers’ conflict to send their forces and have them all die, and it wasn’t clear how exactly the heroes were killing so many enemies so quickly (thousands in a matter of minutes I believe?).
But then, making any sense might be irrelevent for the function of myth.
you may have read too short a version - the best i can do is a watch some 240 hour video adaptation, which is non canonical as hell, and a russian dub is available online.
as some one who knows it somewhat -
it’s unclear why seemingly every leader in the world cares enough about the brothers’ conflict to send their forces and have them all die
it was a bit more than brothers conflict, think more in line of atla - who should be fire king - ozai or zuko (ccomparison is fair because both are fantasies).
it’s unclear why seemingly every leader in the world cares enough about the brothers’ conflict to send their forces and have them all die
that is mostly heavy exxageration.
depending on “stuff” total death toll of battle could be in range of 100,000. but basically putting any number is just as wrong.
