In the Hindu story of the vast cycle of the universe’s life, death and rebirth, the Vedic timeline describes the ebb and flow of the ages as the “days and the nights of Brahma”…
From: Cremo, Michael A. (1999) “Puranic Time and the Archeological Record.” Chapter 3 in Time and Archaeology: Vol. 37, One World Archaeology Series, edited by Tim Murray, Routledge, London)
“The time concept of modern archeology, and modern anthropology in general, resembles the general cosmological-historical time concept of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture. Differing from the cyclical cosmological-historical time concepts of the early Greeks in Europe, and the Indians and others in Asia, the Judeo-Christian cosmological-historical time concept is linear and progressive.
“Hindu historical literatures, particularly the Puranas and Itihasas, place human existence in the context of repeating time cycles called yugas and kalpas, lasting hundreds of millions of years. During this entire time, according to the Puranic accounts, humans coexisted with creatures in some ways resembling the earlier toolmaking hominids of modern evolutionary accounts.”
“Each yuga cycle is composed of 4 yugas. The first, the Satya-yuga, lasts 4800 years of the demigods. The second, the Treta-yuga, lasts 3600 years of the demigods. The third, the Dvapara-yuga, lasts 2400 years of the demigods. And the fourth, Kali-yuga, lasts 1200 years of the demigods . Since the demigod year is equivalent to 360 earth years, the lengths of the yugas in earth years are, acording to standard Vaishnava commentaries, 432,000 years for the Kali-yuga, 864,000 years for the Dvapara-yuga, 1,296,000 years for the Treta-yuga, and 1,728,000 years for the Satya-yuga.”
“This gives a total of 4,320,000 years for the entire yuga cycle. One thousand of such cycles, lasting 4,320,000 years, comprises one day of Brahma, the demigod who governs this universe. A day of Brahma is also called a kalpa. Each of Brahma’s nights lasts a similar period of time. Life is only manifest on earth during the day of Brahma. With the onset of Brahma’s night, the entire universe is devastated and plunged into darkness. When another day of Brahma begins, life again becomes manifest.
“Each day of Brahma is divided into 14 manvantara periods, each one lasting 71 yuga cycles. Preceding the first and following each manvantara period is a juncture (sandhya) the length of a Satya-yuga (1,728,000 years). Typically, each manvantara period ends with a partial devastation. According to Puranic accounts, we are now in the twenty-eighth yuga cycle of the seventh manvantara period of the present day of Brahma.”
…and from a nice little blog I found:
“So as per the vedas, the current age of the universe is 155,521,972,944,456 Years which is about 155,522 billion years !!! Modern day science has been able to predict age of our universe to be only about 15-20 billion years! Moreover Since we are in the first day of 51st year of Brahma, almost equal amout of time has to pass before this universe ends!!”
For more on the Vedas and the Vedic concept of time click here and here.
Share
Newsletter
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Goodreads