Tintin reports

With the sunrise, the day starts and with the sunset it ends.

Actually, these eternal truth of the Universe counts the most amazing ‘Time’ factor. Perhaps the biggest wonder of the Universe is the concept of ‘Time’. From morning to night, what we care for is ‘Time’. We care for it. Sometimes we pass our time thinking how time passes. But how the concept of ‘Time’ first came to our mind? How the human being started thinking about the ‘Time’ so seriously? Let us have some information on how the concept of ‘Time’ came and what is the concept of ‘Time’ in Hindu mythology.

Beliefs and Legends

Generally, festivals celebrate the passage of time. Celebration of a new Gregorian year is just that. It is an acknowledgement of the passage of 12 months and the commencement of another. In terms of time frames, our existence on this planet is a speck in the grand scheme of creation.

It was a good 400 years ago that the emperors of Vijayanagar created magnificent monuments all over south India. It was about 1000 years ago that the Thanjavur Periya Koyil, the Hoysala monuments and other towering temples came into existence all over India. The Ellora temple even predates these. It was 1400 years ago when the Bhakti movement of south India saw the documentation of the existence of temples. It was about 2000 years ago when the Tamil Sangam literature documented the existence of places of worship such as Tiruvenkaadu. The excavated remains of Indus valley are 5000 years old.That is a 5000 year timeline — history as we may call it. How does Hindu, i.e., Indian mythology view time? MH Krishnaswamy of Chennai authors this Templenet feature on ‘Time — as viewed in Indian mythology’.

The smallest unit of time is a kaashta, which is 18 times the amount of time it takes to blink an eyelid. 10 kaashtas make a kshanam and 12 kshanams constitute a muhoortam. 60 of these muhoortams constitute a day. 30 days constitute a month and 3 months make up a ritu. 12 months of course constitute a human year.

We now move on from the human plane to the world of the departed souls — the pitrus. Here, a human month equals the length of a day. The brighter half of a lunar month constitutes the pitru’s day time and the darker half their night.

In the realm of the Devas or the Gods, a human year constitutes a single day. The brighter half of the year Uttarayanam makes up the day time hours of the Devas while the darker half Dakshinayanam makes up the night time hours.

A yuga or an epoch is the next higher level of measurement. 1200 Deva years constitute the Kaliyuga or the present epoch that we are believed to be living in; 2400 deva years make up the Dwapara yuga that preceded Kali yuga; 3600 years made up the Treta yuga and 4800 the Krita yuga respectively.

Thus, the length of the Kaliyuga is 1200 X 360 i.e. 432,000 human years. A cycle of 4 yugas is referred to as the catur yugas. A cycle of catur yugas lasts for 12,000 deva years or 12,000 X 360 i.e. 4,320,000 human years.

How do these time measurements correlate with the process of creation?

Brahma in Hindu mythology is referred to as the creator. A thousand catur yugas are said to make up the daylight hours of a single day of Brahma’s life. Another thousand make up the night time of a single day of Brahma. Thus, a single day in Brahma’s life spans 2000 X 4,320,000 i.e. 8,640,000,000 human years. 360 such days, each lasting 8.6 billion years constitute a year in Brahma’s life, which lasts for a 100 Brahma years. At the end of one Brahma’s life, another starts. This cycle goes on and on.A Brahma’s life is also known as a Para. Each half param is referred to as a parardham. It is believed that we are currently living in the 2nd half of the life of the present Brahma.

It is to be noted that in the performance of Vedic rituals, the frame of time in which the ritual is being performed is specified both in macro and in micro terms, the term ‘dviteeya paraardhe’ (the second half of Brahma’s term) is stated. The reference point here is the moment of commencement of creation of the Universe by Brahma.

When we say ‘dviteeya paraardhe’, which Brahma are we referring to? How many Brahmas have preceded the current one? This specification is non existent in Vedic mantras. Since the whole process is cyclical, with one Brahma commencing when another completes, and with this process repeating forever, there may not be any significance in stating the position of Brahma.

In a cyclical concept of time every starting point will have to be an ending point. If time is postulated as being linear and unidirectional there will have to be an absolute starting point for time. This cyclical nature of time as believed in Indian mythology refers to time as ‘anaadi’ or that without a beginning.

Yet another measure of time is Kalpa. The puranas are named after kalpas; thus we have the matsya kalpa, koorma kalpa, lakshmi kalpa, sweta varaaha kalpa, shiva kalpa, Brahma kalpa, vishnu kalpa and so on. Each Brahma’s term lasts for a period of 7 kalpas. The current period in time is said to belong to the sweta varaaha kalpam, which is in the second half of the life of Brahma.

A kalpam or an epoch is made up of 14 manvantaras and each manvantara spans 71 caturyugas. The fourteen manvantaras are respectively swayambhuva, sawosisha, audhama, thaamasa, raivatha, sakshusha, vaivasvata, savarni, daaksha savarni, bhramha savarni, dharma savarni, rudra savarni, rouchya and bowdhya. The present Kaliyuga is the 28th in the present Vaivaswata manvantara.

Sankalpam: Thus, Vedic mantras pin point the time of performance of a ritual – by narrowing down from dwiteeya paraardhe (in the 2nd half of the term of Brahma), Sweta varaaha kalpe (in the kalpa sweta varaaha), Vaivasvata manvantare (in the 7th manvantaram), Kaliyuga (in the Kali epoch) – through the finer details such as the name of the current year, month etc.