Time has no origin or conclusion in ancient Indian cosmology.
Instead, it alternates between creation and activity, followed by cessation and quietude, in a never-ending cycle pattern.
As a result, the cosmos has no ultimate beginning or end—creation will always be followed by destruction, and then destroyed by a new creation.
There are many distinct and sometimes conflicting methods for measuring cosmic time within the limits of this premise.
The kalpa, or day of Brahma, is the most widely recognized unit of time, lasting 4.32 billion years.
Although the cosmos undergoes recurrent renewals during this time, this is the final limit for the existence of the created world.
The global dissolution (pralaya) occurs at the end of Brahma's day, when the world is entirely annihilated and reabsorbed into the deity Vishnu.
Brahma's day is followed by an equal-length night, during which Vishnu is the sole living creature; the deity sleeps on the back of his snake couch, Shesha, which floats on the cosmic ocean's surface.
A lotus grows from Vishnu's navel after Brahma's night is through.
The deity Brahma emerges from the lotus, taking up the task of creation, and the circle of activity starts again.
One of Brahma's titles is Svayambhu ("selfborn"), which refers to his spontaneous emergence at the beginning of each cosmic era.
Unlike the Judeo-Christian notion of creation, Brahma does not create the world from nothing, but rather organizes and molds existing components into a unified and orderly universe.
According to different theories, Brahma's day is divided into smaller parts.
The four yugas, or cosmic eras, are by far the most popular scheme.
The day of Brahma, according to this theory, is made up of one thousand mahayugas (“great cosmic ages”), each lasting 4.32 million years.
The Krta yuga, Treta yuga, Dvapara yuga, and Kali yuga are the four component yugas of each mahayuga.
Each one is shorter than the one before it, ushering in a more corrupt and perverted age.
The four yugas are separated by a period of abrupt and spectacular rebirth at the start of the krta yuga, which is followed by a gradual and continuous fall.
Although the kali yuga is the shortest of the four eras, it is also the period of greatest wickedness and depravity, during which any evil may be perpetrated.
It is also, predictably, the time period in which we are now living.
Things have become so terrible at the conclusion of the kali yuga that the only option is to destroy and recreate the planet, at which point the new krta period starts.
Even though the kali yuga is the shortest, it lasts 432,000 years, and the yugas before it are two, three, and four times as long.
The metals connected with each of the four yugas represent their progressive degeneracy: gold (krta), silver (dvapara), bronze (treta), and iron (iron) (kali).
Another indicator is the human condition, which is believed to be becoming shorter, more wicked, and shorter-lived with each passing era.
The four yugas paradigm provides little space in traditional Hinduism for the concept of development, since things will never be better than they are now, according to this theory.
Rather than a utopian future, it idealizes a lost and unreachable past.
The human and divine calendars are linked by an alternative method of calculating cosmic time, with one human year equaling a single day for the gods.
The divine day is the six months when the sun travels north (uttarayana), and the divine night is the six months when it travels south (dakshinayana).
A heavenly year will last 360 human years since an Indian solar year is 360 solar days.
Brahma has a life span of 100 heavenly years, or 36,000 human years, after which the universe is destroyed and recreated.
The Manvantaras, or Manu's ages, are a third system.
The day of Brahma is divided into fourteen equal eras, each lasting little less than 309,000 years, according to this theory.
Each era is distinguished by the divine sovereign (manu) who reigns at the time.
None of these three systems are compatible, and there is no genuine attempt to reconcile them.
This discrepancy suggests that their primary purpose was mythological, establishing a cohesive cosmic timeline and pattern rather than describing real occurrences.
See cosmic time,
calendar, and lunar month for many articulations of time in traditional Hindu
culture.
