B/14 MY ARTICLES AND BLOGS SERIES -
ON MYTHOLOGY
HINDU COSMOGENY AND WHEEL OF TIME –AGE OF EARTH
The deity as Time is without beginning and without end. In
Hinduism, time is measured in 'Kalpas':
As in modern physics, Hindu cosmology envisaged the
universe as having a cyclical nature Simply speaking the universe was
perceived as periodically expanding and contracting and the time span between
the beginning and the end of one creation is called Kalpa .
The scale of this space or time is indeed staggering. No one knows when the first second was struck but we
believe that Time is coeval with the
origin of the Universe. Hindu
sages describe time as cyclic, an endless procession of creation, preservation
and dissolution. The current universe
is just the start of a present cycle preceded by an infinite number of
universes and to be followed by another infinite number of universes.
The concept of
gigantic time scales based on
Hindu cosmogony
is of great antiquity. It reflects upon the subtle Aryan mind for the wonderful
cosmogical theory. Time is glorified in
a hymn to Time in Atharva-veda (XIX. 53-tr. By Monier Williams; mentioned below ;
Time, like a seven-wheeled,
seven-naved car, moves on.
His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his
axle
Is immortality. He is the first of
gods.
We see him like an overflowing jar ;
We see him multiplied in various
forms.
He draws forth and encompasses the
worlds ;
He is all future worlds ; he is their
father ;
He is their son ; there is no power
like him.
The past and future issue out of Time,
All sacred knowledge and austerity.
From Time the earth and waters were
produced ;
From Time, the rising, setting,
burning sun ;
From Time, the wind ; through Time the
earth is vast ;
Through Time the eye perceives ; mind,
breath, and name
In him are comprehended. All rejoice
According
to the eminent British scholar Wilson H.H., who translated the Vishnu Purana,
the theogony and cosmogony of the Hindus, as they appear in the Vishńu
Puráńa, belong to and illustrate systems of high antiquity, of which we have
only fragmentary traces in the records of other nations.
What
India calculated thousands of years ago is remarkable. It is really amazing that the early
Hindu sages could conceive of the universe in terms of billions of years
. The Hindu view of Time portrays in a way the story of mankind and human evolution through tens of thousands of
years marked by periodic cataclysms relative to new scientific discoveries
through archaeological findings.
It is anybody’s guess how they were
able to determine the cycle of solar system and the age of the universe at
about 4.32 billion years.
The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan (1980) expressed amazement at the accuracy of space
and time descriptions given by the ancient rishis and saints, who fathomed the
secrets of the universe through their mystically awakened senses. He noted that;
"the Hindu religion is the only one of
the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes
an immense, indeed an infinite, number of births and deaths. It is the only
religion in which the time cycles correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of
modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to
a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the
Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much
longer time scales still."
(source:HinduCosmology;Oct28/2008;HinduismToday April/May/June 2007
p.14)
Swami Kriyananada (J. Donald Walters). World renowned as a singer, composer, and
lecturer, founder of the Ananda Village writes:
"Hindu cosmography, for example born in hoary antiquity, strikes one
in certain ways as surprisingly modern. India has never limited its conception
of time to a few crowded millennia. Thousands
of years ago India's sages computed the earth's age at a little over two
billion years, our present era being what is called the seventh Manuvantra.
This is a staggering claim. Consider how much scientific evidence has been
needed in the West before men could even imagine so enormous a time
scale." (source: Crises in Modern Thought: The Crises of Reason - By Swami
Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters) vol. 1 p -
94).
The
ancient seers of abundant intelligence and intellect of the Vedic age with
their quest for scientific temper speculated on the age of the earth and the
solar system.
They were the first to
estimate the age of the earth at more than 4 billion years in remote past.
A symbolic reference to the figure of 4320 billion years occurs in a verse of
the Rig veda,which when translated reads as under:
“Four are his horns, three are the
feet that bear him; his heads are two, and his hands are seven in number
” . i.e.4,32,00,00,000 or 4.32 x107 . ( RV-04- HYMN- 058.3 ,Tr. by
Griffith)
It
is interpreted to refer to the age of the universe. The later day Puranas which are evidently based on the Vedas developed
the subject further on the basis of researches by the then astronomers and cosmologists.
The
Vishnu Purana in common with other main puranas and Hindu epics explains the
cosmic time theory as under;
“Twelve
thousand divine years, each composed of (three hundred and sixty) such days,
constitute the period of the four Yugas, or ages. They are thus distributed:
the Krita age has four thousand divine years; the Tretá three thousand; the
Dwápara two thousand; and the Kali age one thousand: so those acquainted with
antiquity have declared. The period that precedes a Yuga is called a Sandhyá,
and it is of as many hundred years as there are thousands in the Yuga: and the
period that follows a Yuga, termed the Sandhyánsa, is of similar duration. The
interval between the Sandhyá and the Sandhyánsa is the Yuga, denominated Krita,
Tretá, &c. The Krita, Tretá, Dwápara, and Kali, constitute a great age, or
aggregate of four ages: a thousand such aggregates are a day of Brahmá, and
fourteen Manus reign within that term. Hear the division of time which they
measure.
Seven Rishis,
certain (secondary) divinities, Indra, Manu, and the kings his sons, are
created and perish at one period ; and the interval,
called a Manwantara, is equal to seventy-one times the number of years
contained in the four Yugas, with some additional years: this is the duration
of the Manu, the (attendant) divinities, and the rest, which is equal to
8.52.000 divine years, or to 306.720.000 years of mortals, independent of the
additional period . Fourteen times this period
constitutes a Bráhma day, that is, a day of Brahmá; the term (Bráhma) being the
derivative form. At the end of this day a dissolution of the universe occurs,
when all the three worlds, earth, and the regions of space, are consumed with
fire.( VP/ I/3)”
Let us try to
understand what the Purana intends to convey.
1.There are 4
yugas of 12,000 divine years, of three hundred and sixty such days each. A year of mortals is 360 times of the divine
year.
2. Known
as,the Krita, Treta, Dwápara , and Kali
with the duration of 4800,3600,2400,1200 years
inclusive of transition periods
i.e.,sandhis respectively, they constitute a Yuga or a great age., or aggregate
of four ages:
3. A thousand such aggregates make up one day of
Brahma, and fourteen Manus reign within that term. They hold office for a fixed term, and then
perish.
4 The interval between two Manus is called a
Manvantara, and is equal to seventy-one times the number of years contained in
the four Yugas. This is the duration of each Manu which is stated to be of
8.52.000 divine years, or 306.720.000
years of mortals.
5 At
the end of this day of Brahma a dissolution of the universe occurs, when all
the three worlds, earth, and the regions of space, are wiped out by floods or
consumed with fire
To sum up;
Each day of Brahma is called a Kalpa . Brahma holds office,like a bureaucrat, for a fixed tenure of hundred years and
then makes way for another incumbent. In theory, the Kalpas are infinite; as thousands of millions of Kalpas have passed,
and as many are to come.
I. Kalpa. The present Kalpa is known as Varah Kalpa
4.32 x10 7 solar years
II. Manvantaras
Each day of Brahma has 14 Manus or
1000 Mahayugas .A Manvantra, between two Manus, comprises of
306.720.000 or 308,570,000 solar
years. The first Manvantra was presided over
by Swayambhuva Manu, the self born i.e. the Creator Himself at the dawn of Time
Each Manvantara
is made up of 71 Mahayugas of 43,20,000
years each.
The present incumbent is Vaivasvata Manu, the seventh in the present Cycle,who
is ruling since over 120 million years. Manvantaras,in other words,represent
phases or evolutionary cycles of civilization since the creation
took place .
III.Mahayuga
A
Mahayuga is subdivided into 4
Yugas. Each Yuga has its own characteristics and different duration.
IV.Yugas or Epochs
There
are four Yugas, or epochs in the proportion 4:3:2:1. First
comes Krita Yuga, then it changes into Treta , then it changes into
Dwapara and finally it changes into Kali Yuga. After the
Kali Yuga, Krita Yuga will start all over again. Each Yuga has a dawn and a twilight
period, each a tenth of its length, called transitional period,with the
following duration in human years :
Krita- yuga or Golden Age :
17,28,000
Tretâ-yuga or Silver Age : 12,96,000
Dwapara-yuga or Bronze Age
: 8,64,000
Kali-yuga or Iron Age : 4,32,000
Total i.e Mahayuga : 43,20,000
It is not known
precisely if the Brahmas’ Day is an actual division of time or just a
hypothetical theory but it is evident that the conclusions drawn are based on
insight, logical deductions or speculation.
The unique Indian
Yuga system is not peculiar to Hinduism. It
has some parallelism in other cultures also.
Even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians etc. had their own similar time
periods. In the Sumarian king lists, Berossus, who records their chronology, was a priest of Bel and had
a school of astronomy on the island of Kos in the third century . He gives the figures for the reigns
of the 120 Assyrian kings who preceded the Flood a total of 4,32,000 years.which
corresponds to the age of Indian Kali yuga which is surprisingly no chance coincidence . (by
Prof.R.K Harrison / jets 36/1-March1933/3-8
from Wikipaedia)
From the above data, the age of the universe
or the present solar cycle can be computed as under;
Age of the Earth
How much time elapsed since the creation of
the world ?
Author Dick Teresi says
"Indian cosmologists, are the first
to estimate the age of the earth at more than 4 billion years. They came
closest to modern ideas of atomism, quantum physics, and other current
theories. India developed very early, enduring atomist theories of matter.
Possibly Greek atomistic thought was influenced by India, via the Persian
civilization."
In the present Kalpa, six Manus, of whom
Swyambhuva was the first, have already completed their tenure; the present
being Vaivasvata. According to
the Surya-Siddhanta, we are currently in the Kali-yuga of the
twenty-eighth age (maha-yuga) of the seventh manvantara .The Kali-yuga is
believed to have begun in February 3102 BCE. On the basis of this information,
the time that has elapsed since the beginning of the present day of Brahma or
Kalpa up to February 2010 can be calculated as follows;
6 manvantaras
; 306720000
x 6= 1,840,320,000 +
7 sandhis 12,096,000 +
27 maha-yugas 116,640,000 +
1 krita-yuga
1,728,000 +
1 treta-yuga
1,296,000
+
1 dwapara-yuga 864,000 +
In conclusion, according to Hindu
chronology, the time that has elapsed from the beginning of the present day of
Brahma up to February 2010 is 1,972,949,111 years.
According to the ancient Hindu astronomical
text, the Sûrya-Siddhânta.( Chapter 1, verse 24) '47,400 divine years passed in creating
animate and inanimate things, planets, stars, gods, demons, and the rest.'
Since one divine year equals 360 solar years, 47,400 divine years are equal to
17,064,000 solar years. In other words, the present kalpa on earth began after
a period of divine activity lasting 17,064,000
( 1,972,949,111 - 17,064,000) =
1,955,885,111 years, and only then did the period of what Theosophist H.P.
Blavastky calls 'cosmic evolution' begins.
The
28 maha-yugas refer to the current time
cycle of the Vaivasvata manu in
so far as it concerns the emergence of humans on our planet. By a simple calculation we find that this epoch of Vaivasvata manu started 120,533,102 ( 120 million ) years ago
but its complete duration is of the order of 306,720,000 years. Nevertheless,
it appears to be just a general, rounded figure and refers to the period since the approximate
beginning of the human life .
Similarly, the Puranas define the paramanu, which is on the
order of a few hundred thousandths of a second. The Puranas describe
time units from the infinitesimal truti, lasting 1/1,000,0000 of a second to
a mahamanvantra of 311 trillion years.
Modern Views on
tha Age of the Universe
It
would be interesting to compare the vedic concept of time and cosmic cycles
with what is now believed by the present day scientists to be the probable age
of the earth since it was born. .
It is to be believed
that the approximate age of Earth is about 4.54 billion years old (Chidrawi and
Hollis, 2010). This is based on Paleontological and geological evidence (Alford
and Hill 2010). However life has not been on Earth since the beginning
(Chidrawi and Hollis, 2010). The oldest evidence of life found today is fossils
resembling spherical and filamentous prokaryotes found in fossil stromatolites
that are 3.5 billion years old (Alford and Hill, 2010).
“By studying several things, mostly
meteorites, and using radioactive dating techniques, specifically looking at
daughter isotopes, scientists have determined that the Solar System is 4.6
billion years old. Well, give or take a few million years. That age can be
extended to most of the objects and material in the Solar System.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS)
website has a lot of indepth material about how the age of the Solar System was
determined. The basics of it are that all material radioactively decays into a
stable isotope. Some elements decay within nanoseconds while others have
projected half-lives of over 100 billion years. The USGS based their study on
minerals that naturally occur in rocks and have half-lives of 700 million to
100 billion years. These dating techniques, known as radiometric dating, are
firmly grounded in physics and are used to measure the last time that the rock
being dated was either melted or disturbed sufficiently to re-homogenize its
radioactive elements. This techniques returned an approximate age for
meteorites of 4.6 billion years and Earth bound rocks around 4.3 billion years.
The USGS admits that they were unable to find any rock that had not been
altered by the Earths tectonic plates, so the age of the Earth could be refined
in the future.
.( How Old is the
Solar System?” by JERRY COFFEY on JULY 16, 2008)
Precession of Equinoxes
The concept of the manvantra seems to
indicate the phases of human evolution and have been based on astronomical
observations and linked to the discovery
of the phenomenon known as the
precession of the equinoxes. It is generally not known that the figure of 71 referred to in the
calculations for a manvantra is very significant as it hints at the
precessional movement of the Earth which the ancient astromomers calculated at 71, a round figure.
Let us
understand this complicated issue in a simple way. A tropical year as, for example, the time from
solstice to solstice, or equinox to equinox, is about 20 minutes shorter than
the sidereal year, which is measured by the Sun's
apparent position relative to the stars. It makes a difference of
approximately one year every 25,920
years, thus after one complete cycle of 25,920 years the positions of the
seasons revert back to the position from
where they started . This is known as precession which causes one degree shift approximately every 72
years, thus a 360 degree movement requires 25920 years to complete one such
cycle. The present day astronomers have calculated the
value of precessional cycle at 25920 years whereas the ancient cosmologists had
adopted a round figure of 24000 years and the solar year at 360 days for ease
of calculations. Interestingly, the Surya Siddhanta specifies a value of
54 arc seconds per year for precession, as against the current value of 50.29
arc seconds per year. This translates into a Precessional Year of exactly
24,000 years. !
Even for
working out the degree of 54, required intimate and expert knowledge of
astronomy and higher mathematics.
Dissolution
of the earth after the day of Brahma.
Though the
life of Brahma, meaning the universal spirit, seems to be fantastic and interminable
but from the view of eternity it is as short
as a flash of lightning in the material world.
Even he is not free from the process of birth and old age, thus making
us to believe that Brahma here means the One who is known as the Creator and the entire Universe functions as per the
cosmic laws ordained by Him. The different Manus are only imaginary entities meaning the
various phases of evolution. The terms Brahma and Manu being the derivative
forms may mean the
Kalpa Administrator and Manvantra Administrator respectively.
The Vishnu Purana further states that
at the end of a
thousand periods of four ages the earth is for the most part exhausted .
A dreadful drought occurs that lasts 100 years, and all the waters are dried
up. Then mighty clouds form and the three worlds are completely flooded with
water.
and, in consequence of the failure of food, all beings become languid and
exanimate, and at last entirely perish.
Then lord Vishnu reposes on the waters in
meditative rest for another whole kalpa (4.32 billion years) before renewing
the creation. The characteristic of this destruction is that the three worlds
continue to exist but are made uninhabitable.(V,P I/ 3)
Even the great scientist Einstein supports the
vedic view when he says, "Cosmic expansion may be simply a temporary
condition which will be followed at some future epoch of cosmic time by a
period of contraction. The universe in this picture is a pulsating balloon in
which cycles of expansion and contraction succeed each other through
eternity."Hindu culture had this unique vision of the infiniteness of time
as well as the infinity of space. When modern astronomy deals with billion of
years, Hindu creation concepts deal with trillions of years. Each creation and
dissolution follows in sequence.
Mythology versus
Science
The formation of mighty clouds flooding the
three worlds completely with water is symbolic of the dissolution of the Universe after the
completion of cosmic cycles when the rains continue uninterruptively for a much longer time and
deluge the whole world. Viewed in terms of modern science ,the Puranic
statement is supported by the second law of thermodynamics which states that as
time goes on, there is an increase in entropy, resulting in the ultimate
collapse of the universe.
By O P Gupta
