What is Time?:

Time is a complex thing to understand. From the theory of relativity to Mahakaal, time is anything but simple. Different theories have very different views on time, but in the end, they will all merge into one for sure. This may not be true today, but a certainty in the future.

The theory of relativity and Mahakaal point towards the same thing, but let’s keep that article for another time. The concept of a black hole, going beyond time, liberation, and the journey from Ajna chakra to Sahasrara chakra are all mind-bending but the “same story told in a different language”.

There may be various ways to understand time, but let us pick a simple way to understand a few concepts of time. To read any further, one needs to have some degree of flexibility of mind. The time that we use today as per our clock is just for our convenience. In the traditional sense, the time has always been represented as a physical measure of something. The measure of time is not random. Also, time is cyclical in nature. In that way, time always repeats itself. Let us start with something simple and work our way up to more complexity.

What is a Day?

It is the time taken by the earth to rotate around its own axis. This time is called 24 hours in modern terminology and 30 mahurats in traditional terminology. A day consists of a day (when the sun is visible) and a night (when the sun is not visible).

What is a Month?

It is the time taken by the moon to revolve around the earth. This time is approximately 27.3 days in modern terminology and a month in traditional terminology. A month consists of a Shukla Paksh (when the phase of the moon is waxing) and a Krishna Paksh (when the phase of the moon is waning). A traditional month has 30 Tithi or 16 unique phases of the moon (from 1 to 14, Purnima and Amawas).

What is a Year?

It is the time taken by the earth to revolve around the Sun. This time is approximately a year in both modern terminology and traditional terminology. A year consists of an Uttar-Ayan (Uttar means north, Ayan means movement. During this Ayan, Sun seems to be moving north) and a Dakshin-Ayan (Dakshin means south, Ayan means movement. During this Ayan, Sun seems to be moving south). A year has 6 Ritu consisting of 12 months or 12 Aditya of Sun.

What is Chatur Yug and Manvantar?

Manvantar is the time taken by our solar system to revolve around the Galactic center, the milky way or traditionally called “Akash Ganga”. In modern discovery (around 25-30 years back), this phenomenon was called as Galactic year. It has been estimated by today’s scientists (based on the circular path trajectory) that this may be around 230-250 million years. As per traditional calculations, this should be 306.72 million years (4,32,000 years in a chatur yug and 71 chatur yug equals one manvantara so 432000 x 71 = 306.72 million years). My personal view is that taking an oval path trajectory for calculation would be more appropriate as in very recent times we have understood that the galactic center is more of a “long bar” or in other words oval. Perhaps as we gather more information about our galaxy through the recently launched “James Webb”, this calculation of Galactic year would be updated to a more realistic trajectory.

Between the Galactic center and the solar system, there seems to be another phenomenon that seems to be missing. As we understand that traditionally a name for a particular span of time has been assigned based on some physical event. In that way, some cosmic phenomenon may be happening every Chatur Yug (span of 4.32 lakh years) that modern science is yet to discover.

It must be kept in mind that the space race started around 1962 and it was not until 1990 that the first major telescope was launched into space. The first sign of Blackhole was detected around 1965 while the mathematics that we currently use to understand black holes was developed by Mathematician Ramanujan in the 1910s. This is all mind-bending and modern understanding of the universe is still in nascent stages.

What does science say beyond galaxy?

Our Milky Way belongs to a large gathering of galaxies known as the Local Group and, along with the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies makes up the majority of the group’s mass. Astronomers have long suspected that Andromeda will one day collide with the Milky Way.

Further search is in progress. With the advent of new and sophisticated technologies, we shall know more about things in the near future.

What is the Life of Brahma?

14 Manvantar makes one Kalp. A Kalp is a Day of Brahma after which he sleeps for a Kalp. It is like our day consists of a day and a night. There are 30 Kalp in a month of Brahma. Just mentioning the names of Brahma days for fun.

“Śveta, Nīlalohita, Vāmadeva, Rathantara, Raurava, Deva, Vṛhat, Kandarpa, Sadya, Iśāna, Tamah, Sārasvata, Udāna, Gāruda, Kaurma, Nārasiṁha, Samāna, Āgneya, Soma, Mānava, Tatpumān, Vaikuṇṭha, Lakṣmī, Sāvitrī, Aghora, Varāha, Vairaja, Gaurī, Māheśvara, Pitṛ”

360 Kalp makes up a year of Brahma. Such Brahma lives for 100 years.

So, with this, I end this “Brief history of time” which consists of 309.17376 trillion years only. Will take the journey of a larger timeline some other day.

P.S: Please feel free to add to the above knowledge or if I have inadvertently made any calculation errors.

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