What exactly are the Yugas in Hindu Cosmology

According to Hindu tradition one MahaYuga consists of four Yugas. These four Yugas are

• Satya Yuga equals 1,728,000 human years
• Treta Yuga equals 1,296,000 human years
• Dvapara Yuga equals 864,000 human years
• Kali Yuga equals 432,000 human years

As you can clearly see, these durations are huge. We are told that Ramayana occurred in the Treta Yuga, while Mahabharata happened in Dvapara Yuga after which Kali Yuga Started. Based on Astronomy it is estimated that Kali Yuga stated around 3000BC. This means the events of Ramayana happened before 867,000 BC. Modern Science tells us that there were no Homo sapiens in 867,000BC. So what is going on here? Well, let’s investigate.

According to Hindu texts this world goes through a cycle of four Yugas, starting from Satya Yuga to Treta Yuga to Dvapar Yuga to Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga is followed by wide scale destruction and the cycle starts again. Now if you look at the time intervals of all these Yugas you notice that one such cycle will last for 4.32 million years. Gita mentions that 1000 such Yugas is equal to a kalpa and is 1 day of Brahma. So this means that when Brahma wakes up and creates the Universe. The universe remains in existence for 4.32 Billion years, after which Brahma goes to sleep and so the world goes into Unmanifest form for the next kalpa and then the world comes into existence again. This cycle of universe manifesting and unmanifesting has been going on since eternity and will continue till eternity

Now if you look at these numbers, they come out to be very close to the numbers we have right now for the age of earth, which is 4.5 billion years and the age of the Universe, which is 13.8 Billion years. However it is my opinion this similarity in the two numbers is either just a coincidence, or some changes have been made to this theory. This I say because other things do not seem to fit pretty well in it.

In the Mahabharat when Bheema encounters Hanuman in the Gandmadana forest. Hanuman gives a description of different Yugas to Bheema. There he says that

1. In the Satya Yuga, the Dharma has no decay. There were no Gods, Demons, Gandharva, Yakshas, Rakshasha and Serpents. There was no buying or selling. The sounds of the Vedas did not exist, nor did rites or manual labor. The only dharma is Sanyasa. No disease existed, neither the decay of the senses. All the Varnas followed just one dharma.
2. In the Treta Yuga, people were addicted to truth and followed the dharma of rituals. Sacrifices were introduced and many rituals were practiced. These were introduced for the sake of fruits they will bring. People performed deeds according to their dharma and dharma decayed by a quarter
3. In the Dvapar Yuga the dharma decayed by half, many more rituals were added and so Veda was divided into many parts. People started to deviate from the path of truth. Disease and decay started entering the society. There are many natural disasters. Being affected by such things some people started practicing austerities. Others perform deeds with a motivation to attain heaven.
4. In the Kali Yuga only quarter of the Dharma remains. The rituals of the Vedas, and the sacrifices start falling into disuse. There is excessive rain, diseases, sin and vices. There are many natural calamities. There are ailments and sicknesses. Even the tasks performed in the name of dharma lead to perverse outcomes.

So now if you look at this description of the Yugas, one cannot help but see the correlation between the changes described by Hanuman and the changes we have seen in the human civilization over last 10,000 years or so.

1. In the beginning we have no civilization, everybody lives in the forests and perform hunting and gathering. People live a life of a Sanyasi with very little property of their own. With the lack of the idea of property, natural disaster don’t matter. There is some hierarchy in a pack, but the lifestyle and occupation for everyone is the same. The group of people is not big enough to have rituals or religious practices. Since people do not live in large communities there are no disease.
2. Humanity discovers agriculture and people start to settle down. In the beginning there are very small communities. With settled life idea of property starts to come into picture. Human groups start to grow in size and some time to reflect on things, religious rituals start coming into existence. Since people still live in small communities diseases are relatively less prevalent and hierarchy is still not as strong
3. With agriculture developing further, human population starts to grow. This causes the human settlements to grow in size and we have the formation of primitive civilizations. Now different people have different functions, which require their own distinct Knowledge, so Vedas are broken down. Idea of property becomes well established and this leads to moral corruption as the separation between yours and mine comes into existence. With property and settled life, man becomes susceptible to natural disasters. Life in general becomes harder and some people renounce it all to gain peace.
4. Finally you have advanced civilization coming into existence with global trade networks. Man’s hunger for more and more leads him to exploit nature. People are too busy gathering wealth that no one has time for rituals and sacrifices. With increased integration, competition grows and moral ethics are abandoned. Life becomes stressful, which then leads to modern diseases. Man develops weapons of mass destruction and his greed puts a lot of stress on the environments. Large-scale war or depletion of the environment leads to the wiping out of humanity.

So you can see how the idea of Yugas fit very well in the timeline of growth of human civilization. From hunting and gathering to the modern day an age when man has weapons of mas destruction. So if we ignore the astronomical time spans and look at it from the perspectives of the development of human condition then this parable begins to make sense. So now you might ask, why did our ancestors use such astronomical numbers for the Yugas? But did they?

Ok so let us look at those numbers again. What our texts in reality mention is that

• Satya Yuga equals 4800 divine years
• Treta Yuga equals 3600 divine years
• Dvapara Yuga equals 2400 divine years
• Kali Yuga equals 1200 divine years

Then we are told that each divine year is 360 solar years and that is how we arrive at

• Satya Yuga equals 1,728,000 human years
• Treta Yuga equals 1,296,000 human years
• Dvapara Yuga equals 864,000 human years
• Kali Yuga equals 432,000 human years

Here one cannot help but notice that one solar year has 365 days, is very close to the number 360 that is the number of years in divine years. If we ignore this factor that divine year is 360 solar years and instead replace divine years with a year and solar year with a day then this whole time period becomes a period of 12000 years. After considering this whole interval to be 12000 years this whole parable starts making a lot more sense.

From 3000BC when Kali Yuga started, Satya Yuga will be starting somewhere in 14000BC. This will be the time when Indian population was mostly hunter-gatherer. 5000 years later, that is, by 9000BC we should start to see small rural settlements to develop, well we now have proof of the development of small rural settlements at Mehrgardh, Bhirana and Jhusi from 8000–7000 BC. Then by 5000 BC we should see situations ripe for the growth of civilization and we do see a growth in the settlements in Indian, so that will be the Dvapar yuga. Finally by 3000BC we see a full-fledged civilization in India. So if you these times along the dates then you see that they start to fit well with the description that Hanuman was giving to Bheema.

Now here we just have one problem that if Kaliyuga started around 3000BC, then the world must have destroyed by around 1800BC. Well, I would say that we should not take this description of the Yuga as literally in the western sense of history. Think of this description as just a way of our ancestors to describe human condition, how it progressed over time. Somewhere down the line this idea of 360 years as 1 divine year got introduced during Pauranic times, which has created all this confusion.

Now as with all Indian literature, you can interpret them at many levels and there is a deeper philosophical level of this story also, which can be universalized to all things in life. Anything that develops in this world starts off with humble beginning and righteous mindset. However as the thing grows in size, complexities in it increase, which results in the development of imperfections. These imperfections are inherently associated with the growth. Up until sometime the growth is able to sustain such corruption. But nothing can grow forever and so after a certain time corruption takes over the growth, which eventually leads to the downfall of that entity. Once the entity falls, it realizes its mistakes and a new entity begins with a clean slate and the cycle repeats. This is true for companies, societies and all institutions. Indian society has gone through so many such cycles, that our ancestors understood it very well. So there is an underlying philosophical idea in this concept of Yugas that we must understand.

Originally published at https://stoicsadhu.com on February 10, 2020.