Indian Concept of Time!!!

Ever keenly listened to the mantras a priest chants before any ritual. He mentions something like this "Svetha Varaha Kalpe...Vaivaswara Manvantare....Bharata kande..Bharata Varsha..." and then a mention about the ruling star and day of the week.....before blessing us mentioning our gotra and our name to transfer the "Phala" of the ritual to the concerned person.

The time and location of the place where we are before blessing us with our name and gotra.

Well you must have also read about the four yugas- Satya or Krutayuga, Tretayuga, Dwaparayuga and Kaliyuga. Well these yugas are characterised by their time period and sustenance of Dharma or Righteousness in the people. Let me mention that in Satya yuga Dharma stands on four feet(means every person is very righteous and truthful), in Tretayuga righteous ness stands on three feet(Some sort of psychoogical malignancies and cruelness are visible in the society), In Dwaparayuga Dharma stands on two feet(characterised by vileness in the society though within some limits). The bad thing about Kaliyuga is that Dharma is said to be standing precariously on only one feet. I need not explain as we can see so much unrighteousness and baseness around us everywhere. I will not dwell much on this philosophical point of view for now but lets see the duration of the periods of the four yugas.

Kaliyuga = 4,32,000 man years

Dwaparayuga = twice the period of kaliyuga = 864000 man years

Tretayuga = Thrice the period Kaliyuga = 12,96,000 man years

Krutayuga = Four times the period of Kaliyuga = 17,28,000 man years

Comment:- Good that the bad period is of the shortest Duration:)

Now a set of these four yugas is called a mahayuga which is equal to the period of (a simple calculation 1+2+3+4=10) 10 X 4,32,000 = 43,20,000 man years. How simplistic!!!

The story doesnt end there....

 

71 such mahayugas make one Manvantara. Another time unit......

14 Manvantaras comprise one day of Brahma, the creator and an equal period is said to span the night of Brahma. So total 28 Manvantaras make a day or a Kalpa.

Phew....But its not yet over.......

Just like us the creator Brahma's year consists of 360 kalpas or Days(What a close coincidence with 365 days.) . And one hundred such years make the lifetime of one Brahma. Time for the next Brahma to take over the mantle.

Hmmm...now lets see at what point of time we are and lets relate it to the one we have started out with. 

In the current lifetime of Brahma this day is called Svetavaraha Kalpa. In that 6 Manvantaras are begone. The seventh one is called Vaivasvara Manvantara. In this again 27 mahayugas are already completed and we are running in the 28th Mahayuga of which some 3,600 years have gone by. Still a loooong way to go for the Kaliyuga to end(its period is 4,32,000 years).  So dont be panicked that kaliyuga is going to end in 2029 some bakwaas.....

God Bless!!!

Reference:- Srimadbhagavata Puranam "Brahma's time scale"