The Astounding Length of the Chronological System

In ancient Vedic times there obtained here, so far as we can see, much more sober views of chronology than at present. It was much later that the imagination of Hindu writers took full wing and carried the people into the all but infinite reaches of Puranic chronology. One must wait for the elaboration of Vishnu Purana, for instance, in order to meet that apparent sobriety of mathematical detail which is utilized to add credibility to the most fantastic time system that imagination ever devised.

Christians of the West have doubtless erred on the side of excessive brevity in their theories and beliefs about the beginnings of history and especially in their attempt to locate the origin of the human race. Until recently, it was thought that our human progenitor, Adam, was created no more than sixty centuries ago, and that the whole history of mankind is consequently confined to that brief space of time. In the same way the practical mind of the West has pictured to itself the termination of human life and history upon earth at some not very remote date in the future. Science has already shown the error of the former, as history is likely to demonstrate the falsity of the latter theory.

But India has, with much greater daring and with more of unreason, carried back many billions of years the origin of mankind and has painted vividly a future whose expanse is as the boundless sea.

We are now, it is said, at the close of the first five thousand years of Kali yuga. And this same yuga, or epoch, has 427,000 years still in store for us and our descendants! Before it arrived, the other three yugas—Kritha, Tretha, and Dwapara—had passed on; and these, together, were equal to more than ten thousand divine years, or to nearly four million human years! These four epochs equal a total of 4,320,000 human years, and this is called a "maha-yuga." This in itself would stagger the practical mind of the West. But it is only the very threshold of Hindu chronology! There are seventy-one of these great epochs in a "Manuvanthara," or the period of one Manu, or human progenitor. And there are many of these Manus with their periods. For instance, there are fourteen of them required in order to cover the time called "Karpa," or one day in the life of BrahmÂ. And after Brahm has spent his modest day everything is destroyed and his godship spends an equal period in sleep and rest. Then begins another BrahmÂic day, in which a new succession of Manus spend, with their progeny, their interminable epochs. And thus one series of epochs follows another, sandwiched in by equally long spaces of lifeless darkness. And this goes on until Brahm has completed his divine life of one hundred years; and then comes the final dissolution. Having gone on as far as this, there is no reason why the imagination should rest at this point; and so Vishnu Purana, which, of course, is composed in praise of that god, claims that one day of Vishnu is equal to the whole life of BrahmÂ!

No one can bring within the range of his thought or imagination one tithe of the years, divine or human, which are included in this marvellous chronology. A billion years are but as a day to the Hindu mind.

And if any one is anxious to know the exact place at which we have arrived in this chronological maze, the same Purana informs us that we are five thousand years advanced in the Kali yuga of "VarÂha karpa," or the first day in the second half of BrahmÂ's life. And thus we are supposed to live not far (say a few billion years!) from the middle of the Hindu chronological system. One may better realize the length of the system if he remembers that we have yet to spend of the present Kali yuga alone more than seventy times the whole of the old Christian chronology from Adam to the present time! And yet, as compared with the whole system described above, Kali yuga is less than one day in a thousand years. And that largely measures the difference between the imagination of the West and the same developed faculty in the East!

It is quite unnecessary to say that the prehistoric Manus of previous yugas are absolutely imaginary creatures, since history can tell us practically nothing about the head of our race, even in the present Hindu dispensation. There is not a line of history or of reliable tradition that will enable us to reach farther back than five or six thousand years in this quest for the origin of our race. There was, of course, a beginning of human life on earth; and we may, just as we please, call the progenitor "Manu" or "Adam." But, according to the Hindu chronological system, six thousand years only carries us just back into the last yuga, and is as but yesterday in the march of the divine Æons of the past. Certainly, writers whose productions are unreliable as a guide to the events of the past century or two are only indenting upon their imagination when they descant upon the chronological data of the Puranas.

One of the principal evils connected with this measureless time system is found in the fact that it helps to destroy the confidence of all intelligent men in the historicity of characters and events which would otherwise be worthy of our credence. For example, the question is asked whether such a man as Rama Chandra ever existed. We at once reply in the affirmative; for does not the Ramayana dwell upon his exploits, and are there not other reasons for believing that such a hero lived in ancient times in this land?

And yet when the Puranas tell us that this same Rama received his apotheosis and appeared as an incarnation of Vishnu in the Tretha yuga, say one or two millions of years ago, we are astounded at the credulity of those who could write such a statement as well as those who can accept it; and we are led to question whether, after all, Rama ever existed or is simply a poetic conception carried far away into an imaginary time. Thus the chronology of the land tends to cast a cloud of doubt and suspicion over all that is historical, traditional, or legendary in the literature of the people.

Still greater than this is the unfortunate influence of such a system upon the people themselves, in helping to destroy any appreciation that they would otherwise have of historic perspective. It is well known that the people of India have throughout the ages been the most wanting in the ability to write and soberly to appreciate historic facts.

They are great thinkers and wonderful metaphysicians, but they are not historians. The meagre history of India which has come down to us was not written by the people themselves. Not until recently, and then under the influence of western training, did any reliable book of history emanate from the brain and hand of a native of this land. All that we know of the ancient history of India comes to us in two ways. It is known indirectly through the language and literature and ancient inscriptions of the past. Historians of to-day have to study the science of language, and especially the growth of the Sanscrit tongue; and, through an intimate knowledge of the same, they arrive approximately at the time in which many of the most important books of the land have been written and at the dates of the events narrated in them. Or they may be helped, to some extent, to learn this history by a study of the teachings of the books themselves, which may indicate the time in which they were written. A few inscriptions and coins give the dates of certain reigns, which thus bring us directly and briefly into the correct era of certain important events.

But the bulk of the history of India comes through foreigners. At different periods in the history of the land men of other nationalities visited India and then recorded their observations concerning the country and the people. The Greeks were great travellers and keen observers in ancient times. They came to India and left in their books such statements about the land as assist us to understand its condition at that period. Then the Chinese, in the early centuries of the Christian era, visited this land and recorded in their works much of interest about the social and religious condition of the people. Later, the Mohammedan conquest brought many foreigners into India, and some of the writers of Islam give us further insight into the affairs of the country. From the fifteenth century the Romish missionaries have conveyed, through their reports to Rome, much of information concerning the people and their life. And thus the history of India has largely depended upon the keen and careful observations and statements of men of other lands who came here for travel, trade, or religion. But Indians themselves have, at no time, contributed to this most important department of literature. We may search in vain for even one volume of reliable history out of the myriad tomes of embellished narratives which have emanated from the fertile brains of the men of India. How shall we account for this strange and very striking fact? It must be, in part, owing to the innate passion of India at all times for poetic embellishment and exaggeration. A cool, scientific, unadorned statement of a fact or of an event has never satisfied the soul of the children of the tropics. Hence, the history of the past becomes legend, human heroes are painted as divine, and epochs and eras are lengthened out to almost eternal proportions.

Now the most serious result of all this is that the people have come firmly to believe that these wild exaggerations, which were written by some dreamy poets of the past, are the sane and cool expressions of simple historic fact; and thus they have largely lost the true sense of historic perspective, are unable to distinguish between fact and fancy, and are strangers to the lessons of the past. For it must be remembered that the teachings of former ages, and especially the life-lessons and character-influences of those generations of men, have less and less of significance to us the farther we throw them back into the dim and hazy realm of the prehistoric and legendary. The near past, with its familiar voices and its heroes of real flesh and blood, brings to us an appeal to life and noble endeavour to which we are always glad to respond; while the remote characters of myth and of legend neither impress us with their reality nor inspire us to a higher and better life.

And, in the same way, these immensely drawn-out Æons of the past make it impossible for those who believe in them rightly to appreciate the significance and importance of the present. One's presence in the world and the value of his best activity for the world's good can mean something to him if he appreciate the fact that there is no great distance to the very beginning of human history. Though his span of life is small, it nevertheless has a definite relationship to the whole of history, and there is some encouragement for a man to work for the good of his race. But this encouragement dwindles into nothingness when a man believes in those many Æons of human life, each Æon being in itself an immense reach of billions of years.