Units of time in Hinduism

Astonishing

Dogmatic Hinduism posits a complex system of units of time, unknown to the Western world, ranging from the unimaginably short to the unimaginably long.

Notably, it includes alternating periods when the universe does, and does not, exist.

The briefest unit is the truti, measuring 308.6 nanoseconds. I can't imagine what moved people to think of such dimensions; or what practical usefulness this unit could have; or how the ancients would have managed to measure it.

At the other extreme are the maha yuga and the kalpa.

A maha yuga, which I shall call a “cycle,” is a unit of 4,320,000 years. It is subdivided into four yugas of different lengths. The first yuga lasts 1,728,000 years. The second yuga lasts 3/4 of that, or 1,296,000 years. The third lasts 2/3 of that, or 864,000 years. The fourth lasts 1/2 of that, or 432,000 years.

During the first two yugas of a cycle, the human condition is constantly improving, with goodness and prosperity on the upswing. During the last two yugas, the human condition is constantly deteriorating, with goodness and prosperity declining, until at the end humans are living in the worst conditions imaginable.

Our current yuga, the fourth in the current cycle, began in 3102 BCE and will conclude in 428,899 CE.

1,000 maha yuga cycles make up a kalpa, or a “day of Brahma,” 4.32 billion years.

I note that that's roughly the same as astronomers believe is the age of the Earth.

Now, Brahma is All. The universe itself. Everything.

During a "day of Brahma,” the world goes on normally.

However, every “day of Brahma” is followed by a “night of Brahma,” also 4.32 billion years, during which the universe does not exist. Nothing exists. And then the next “day of Brahma” begins, and the universe re-appears.

The experts have invested vast amounts of time and energy in these speculations.

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