For a long time, human civilization has been passing through the darkness of the Kali Yuga when our intellect and memory declined substantially and men were no longer able to remember the vast stores of ancient knowledge and wisdom that had been transmitted down to us through oral traditions.

Moreover, due to frequent climatic catastrophes such as floods and earthquakes, and intermittent wars and invasions, huge amounts of written manuscriptswere destroyed forever and men of wisdom were killed, resulting in a tremendous loss of knowledge throughout the Kali Yuga.

By the time theancient texts were put down in writing, starting from around the beginning of the Christian era, a lot of information had already been lost or forgotten, and a number of mistakes crept into the texts that were finally recorded. In many texts, the original formulation of the Yuga Cycle got distorted, as a result.

In a number of Puranas, the Yuga Cycle is said to be of 12,000 “divine years” duration, in which a divine year isregarded as a “year of the gods” and considered to be equivalent to 360 human years. Thus, the duration of the Yuga Cycle, computedin human years, becomes equal to (12000*360) i.e.  43,20,000 years.The Kali Yuga, which is said to be of 1200 “divine years” duration works out to (1200*360) i.e.  4,32,000ordinary years.

These are exceedingly large numbers, and make little sense in the context of the known history of human civilization. As per this formulation, we are stuck in the Kali Yuga for more than 4 lakh years, of which only around 5000 years have elapsed since the proposed beginning of the Kali Yuga in 3102 BCE.

The question is, are these numbers in the Puranascorrect? Is it possible that a “divine year” actually means a “solar year”, and the multiplication by 360 is not necessary? In other words, could the original duration of the Yuga Cycle be only 12000 solar years which became inflated to a humungous numberlater? Starting from the 19^th century, many scholars and mystics have raised this question.

One of the earliest writers who had commented on theexcessively large numbers in the Puranas was the renowned Sanskrit scholar and nationalist leader of India, Balgangadhar Tilak. In his book, The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), Tilak contended that the writers of the Puranas wanted to extend the duration of the Kali Yuga of 1200 human years, and thereby ended up extending the entire Yuga Cycle. He wrote:

“Now at the time of the Mahabharata or the Code of Manu, the Kali Yuga had already set in; and if the (Kali) Yuga contained no more than 1000, or, including the Sandhyâs (i.e. twilights) 1200 ordinary years, it would have terminated about the beginning of the Christian era. The writers of the Puranas, many of which appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali Yuga had passed away…

An attempt was, therefore, made to extend the duration of the Kali Yuga by converting 1000 (or 1200) ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human years…this solution of the difficulty was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years.”[i]

[i] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, The Manager, Kesari, Poona, 1903.

It is important to note that certain Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata and the Laws of Manu still retain the original value of the Yuga Cycle as 12,000 years. This is an obvious indication that the multiplication by 360 must have been a later modification, and that, not all the texts had been changed.

The Mahabharata, for instance, explicitly mentions that the Yuga Cycle duration of 12000 years is based on the days and nights of human beings. Here is the relevant passage:

“Computing by the days and nights of human beings about which I have told thee, I shall speak of the day and night of Brahman and his years also. I shall, in their order, tell thee the number of years that are for different purposes computed differently in respect of the Krita, the Treta, the Dwapara, and the Kali Yugas. Four thousand years is the duration of the first or Krita age. The morning of that epoch consists of four hundred years and its evening is of four hundred years. As regards the other Yugas, the duration of each gradually decreases by a quarter in respect of both the substantive period within the conjoining portion and the conjoining portion itself. The duration of the Dwapara is two thousand years, and its morning extends for two hundred years and its evening also for two hundred. The duration of the Kali Yuga is one thousand years, and its morning extends for one hundred years, and its evening for one hundred years. The learned say that these twelve thousand years constitute what is called a Yuga. A thousand such Yugas compose a single day of Brahman.”[i]

Thus, the Mahabharata explicitly states that the duration of the Yuga Cycle is 12,000 human years.  The Laws of Manu (or Manusmriti) also specifies a 12,000-year duration of the Yuga Cycle, and gives a similar break-up of the individual Yuga durations and intervening periods.

“They declare that the Krita age four thousand years; the twilight preceding it consists of as many hundreds, and the twilight following it of the same number. In the other three ages with their twilights preceding and following, the thousands and hundreds are diminished by one. These twelve thousand which thus have been just mentioned as the total of four ages, are called one age of the gods.”[ii]

The fact that two important Sanskrit texts, the Mahabharata and the Laws of Manu, both specify that the Yuga Cycle extends for 12,000 years makes it quite obvious that this must have been the original formulation of the Yuga Cycle, and in the Puranas these numbers were inflated.

We can find corroborating evidence for the 12000-year Yuga Cycle from the genealogy of the kings in the Puranas. There were 25 generations between King Rama of Ayodhya, who lived at the end of the Treta Yuga, and Lord Krishna, who lived at the end of the Dwapara Yuga, since Brihadbala, a descendant of Rama, was killed in the Bharata War. As per the Laws of Manu, the average lifespan of men is 400 years in Krita Yuga, 300 years in the Treta, 200 years in the Dwapara and 100 years in the Kali.[iii] Since the average lifespan of men in the Dwapara Yuga is 200 years, we can assume that the average duration of rule for a king was roughly half of that i.e. 100 years. Thus, the duration of the Dwapara Yuga can be said to be roughly equal to 25*100 i.e. 2500 years, which is very close to the 2400 years mentioned in the Mahabharata, and completely unrelated to the grossly inflated duration of 2400*360 i.e. 864,000 years given in many Puranas.

Another important factor in favor of the 12,000-year Yuga Cycle is the fact it is found in the traditions of many ancient cultures. The Persians believed in a “World Year” of 12,000 years’ duration, with twelve millennia corresponding to the twelve months of the calendar year.[iv]

The Etruscans – who lived in Etruria in Italy, and whose civilization predates that of the Romans by a few centuries – also subscribed to a 12,000-years cycle. Suidas, the Greek, wrote that an anonymous Tuscan related to him how the Creator decreed a cycle of 12,000 years, half of which were assigned to the work of creation, and the rest to the duration of the world.[v]

There are varying representations of the Great Year by the Greco-Roman philosophers, but those of Heraclitus (10,800 years) and Cicero (12,954 years) are the most well-known. According to Censorinus, the “Great Year of Heraclitus” extended for 10,800 years and expired when all the stars return to their original positions in the heavens.[vi]

Cornelius Tacitus wrote that the Roman philosopher Cicerohad observed in his treatise that, “the great and genuine year is that period in which the heavenly bodies return to the same position, wherein they were placed when they first began their respective orbit; and this revolution contains 12,954 of our solar years.”[vii]

Evidently, there was a widespread belief in the ancient world in a Yuga Cycle of nearly 12,000 years duration, after which the planets return to their original orbital positions. Surely, the Yuga Cycle cannot be of different durations for different cultures. There was only one Yuga Cycle for the entire world, and its duration was around 12,000 years.

It is also apparent from various ancient traditions that the Satya Yuga or Golden Age was the time prior to the end of the last Ice Age in 9703 BCE, and not millions of years ago as suggested by the Puranas.

The Greek philosopher Platowrote of the Golden-Age kingdom of Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias (c.360 BCE). The story was brought to Greece by Solon, who got it from anEgyptian priest of Sais. As per the account related by Plato, Atlantis sank under the ocean in a “single day and night of misfortune”, 9000 years before the time of Solon. This puts the sinking of Atlantis at around 9600 BCE – around the same time that the last Ice Age came to an abrupt end.

As I have already mentioned, the Persians believed in a “World Year” of 12,000 years. As per the Pahlavi text, Bundahisn, the prophet Zoroaster had received the revelation from the Supreme Creator, Ahura Mazda, in the world year 9000.[viii] Since Zoroaster is believed to have lived sometime between the 6^th – 7^th centuries BCE, it means that, as per the Persian tradition,the current 12000-year World Year or Yuga Cycle started sometime between 9600 – 9700 BCE.

These are excellent indications that the years prior to 9700 BCE can be considered as the time when the Satya Yugaprevailed on the earth, and with the end of the last Ice Age and the beginning of the interglacial period at around 9700 BCE, we entered the Treta Yuga. What this means is that, the events described in the Indian epics such as the Ramayana or the Mahabharata did not occur millions of years ago as many people tend to believe, but only in the last 12,000 years.

We are now approaching the time when the 12000-year Yuga Cycle, as well as the current Kali Yuga, are about to end. The end of a Yuga is inevitably followed by a period of transition called “pralaya”, when large-scale wars tend to break out, and the existing civilizations are obliterated by powerful forces of nature. Our civilization is headed towards a period of dramatic transformation, and it is essential for us to gain a clear understanding of the Yuga Cycle in order to become aware of the changes that are on the wayso that we can prepare ourselves to deal with them.

[i] Mahabharata 12.231, https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m12/m12b058.htm

[ii] The Laws of Manu 1.69-71, https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/manu/manu01.htm

[iii] The Laws of Manu 1.83, https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/manu/manu01.htm

[iv] Mary Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, Manchester University Press, 1984, p. 20.

[v] Richard Francis Burton, Etruscan Bologna: A study by Richard F. Burton, Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1876, p. 92.

[vi] Censorinus, De Die Natali 18.11.

[vii] Cornelius Tacitus, The Works of Tacitus: The History, Germany, Agricola, and Dialogue on orators, Vol. II, George Bell & Sons, 1889, p. 412.

[viii] “ASTVAṰ.ƎRƎTA”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/astvat-ereta-savior