Kalachakra: Indian Concept of Time Units [Kalpa, Manvantara]

Brahma lives for 100 years! So, what’s the big deal. Well, nothing much but the measuring unit is a whole lot different from what is used w.r.t. humans. Though it is referred to as years, let us see in this video how big is 100 years of Brahma.

As we all know there are four Yugas:

Satya – From Matsya to Narasimha
Treta – From Vaman to Rama
Dwapara – Krishna
Kali – The present yuga

Satya yuga, also known as Krita Yuga, is the Age of Enlightenment. Each yuga that follows is progressively “darker” as the mass mind becomes more externalized. At the present time our solar system is experiencing the first part of the Kali Yuga. Kaliyuga started around February 17, 3102 BCE. The exact date varies based on the method of calculation.

There are 432,000 human years in Kaliyuga. As we go up the yugas, each yuga gets multiplied by the next number to that of the previous one. So, Dwaparayuga gets a massive years of 432,000 X 2 which is 864,000 human years. Accordingly

Dwaparayuga is 864,000 human years
Treta Yug is 12,96,000 years
Satya Yuga is 17,28,000 years

When we sum up the years of all the four yugas, we get 43,20,000 years.

This summing up of four yugas is a unit called as one Mahayuga, which is 43,20,000 years

There are 71 such maha yugas in one Manvantara, that is ruled by one Manu, which will sum up to 30,67,20,000 human years. The years are getting complicated, right? We are not yet done.

14 such Manvantaras make a Kalpa which is also approximately equal to 1000 maha yugas.

We have almost arrived at a measurement of Brahma. Yes, 1 Kalpa is a day of Brahma and another 1 Kalpa is a night of Brahma. So, a 24 hr. day of Brahma is equivalent to 2 Kalpas.

2 x 30 which is 60 such kalpas make one Brahma Month.

12 such months similar to our year, makes one Brahma Year.

100 years is a life of One Brahma. So, you can imageing how huge a number a life of Brahma is? Wait it does not stop here. To show that universe is cyclic, we have further expanded our measuring scale. 100 years of Brahma is one inhalation of Vishnu, another 100 years is exhalation. So, this shows clearly that right from vedic times we have known that time is eternal and cyclic.