वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

422 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. his year, while a hundred such years constitute his life-time, at the end of which a grand deluge overtakes the whole universe including Brahmâ. Now according to the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali form a yuga of gods, and a thousand such yugas make a Kalpa or a day of Brahmâ of 12,000,000 years, at the end of which a deluge destroys the world. The Purâṇas, however, have adopted a different method of computation. The four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are thete said to con- stitute a Mahâ-yuga ; 71 such Mahâ-yugas constitute a Man- vantara, and 14 Manvantaras make a Kalpa, which, according to this method of counting, contains 4,320,000,000 years. The dieffrence between the durations of a Kalpa according to these two methods is due to the fact that the years making up the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are considered to be divine in the latter, while they are obviously human in Manu and the Mahâbhârata. For further details the reader is referred to the late Mr. S. B. Dixit's History of Indian Astronomy in Marâṭhi, Prof. Raṅgâchârya's essay on Yugas, and Mr. Aiyer's Chronology of Ancient India, a book, in, which the question of yugas and especially that of the beginning of the Kali yuga, is subjected to a searching and exhaustive examina- tion. The Hindu writers on astronomy seem to have adopt- ed the same system, except Âryabhaṭṭa, who holds that 72, and not 71, Mahâ-yugas make a Manvantara, and that a Mahâ- yuga is divided into four equal parts which are termed Kṛitâ, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali. According to this chronological system, we are, at present, in the 5003rd year (elapsed) of the Kali yuga of the 28th Mahâ-yuga of the 7th ( Vaivasvata ) Manvantara of the current Kalpa ; or, 1, 972, 949, 003 year s have, in other words, elapsed since the deluge which occured at the beginning of the present or the Shvëta-vârıha Kalpa. This estimate is, as observed by Prof. Raṅgâchârya, quite be- yond the limit admitted by modern geology ; and it is not