Duration of the Kalpas, Yugas, and Manvantaras in the Rg Veda
The Vedas are the only reliable Indic source of the events in the 3,000 year period of cosmic encounters with the Earth, referred to herein as the ‘Vedic Period’. The Hindu period, which followed, produced many books which are the basis of most of the eastern religions but cannot be relied upon as accurate depictions of the astronomical events in the Vedas, which remain a complete mystery to the world at large. The Hindu classics (Brahmanas, Mahabharata, Ramayana), Puranas, and Upanishads do supply some helpful summaries and clarify specific words because the authors had a more natural understanding of Sanskrit than modern scholars. But the books written after the end of the Vedic Period (687 BC) became more and more fictitious, introducing distortions of the Vedic accounts of astronomical encounters (Cyclic Catastrophism), the elucidation of which were the entire purpose of the Vedas.
Three Worlds
Ancient, as well as modern, scholars do not understand that there was a specific date (687 BC) at which the ‘three worlds’ Venus, Mars and Mercury, referred to below, left the vicinity of the Earth and entered their current planetary orbits. Within a generation, the true nature of the deities was lost and they became viewed as super-heroes with human characteristics and reasoning. Although still visible by large telescopes, modern astronomers have no tools with which to study even the recent past, and as a result assume that the planets have been in their current orbits for billions of years (uniformitarianism). The fact that these worlds were close to the Earth during the Vedic Period means that the ancient texts comprise a treasure trove of information, not only of their cyclic close encounters with the Earth, but also of their makeup and indeed, the cosmogony of the entire solar system. This ‘sacred’ knowledge will never be attained by scratching their surfaces by automatons or human beings.
Inflation of the Kalpa
The most blatant distortions of the Rg Veda in the later Hindu documents appear in the form of enormous inflations of the duration and number of cycles (Kalpas), their divisions (Yugas) and durations (Manvantaras). The Vishnu Purana, translated by H. H. Wilson, is considered the ‘authority’ on these periods. The primary distortion originates from the Vishnu Purana which states that a Kalpa comprises 12,000 divine years, divine years being an undefined unit. Then, based on a statement to the effect that “a day of the gods equals one year of mortals”, this is multiplied by 360 and 1000 of these periods is said to be equal to a ‘Day of Brahma’ which equals a Kalpa. This gives a total of 4,320,000,000 years in a Kalpa. At the end of each ‘Day of Brahma’ a dissolution (naimittika) of the universe took place and a ‘Night of Brahma’ of equal length ensued, followed by a new cycle of creation ” … during which period the three worlds are converted into one great ocean when the lotus-born god, expanded by his deglutation of the universe and contemplated by the yogis and gods in Janaloka, sleeps on the serpent Sesha.”
During each Day of Brahma Mars orbited the Earth above Mt. Kailash, Indra’s ‘home on Earth’. Each dissolution occurred when Mars left its geostationary orbit, thus all of the gods (surface features, including Brahma) disappeared. The serpent Sesha was the coil of seven rings surrounding the island at the north pole of Mars from which Brahma rose during each encounter. During each Night of Brahma, Mars was in a planetary orbit, which crossed the orbit of the Earth. After a Night of Brahma, roughly equal in duration to a Day of Brahma it was recaptured in its geostationary orbit beginning a new Day of Brahma and the gods, the surface featues in the northern hemisphere, reappeared out of the primordial ocean.
Interestingly, the Vedas state that a day and night of Brahma comprise a year of Brahma and his life lasts 100 such years.
Concerning the inflated length of the Kalpa in the Hindu myth, the author, John Muir states: “Of this elaborate system of Yugas, Manvantaras and Kalpas of enormous duration, no traces are found in the hymns of the Rg Veda.”
Yugas
The authors of the Vedas were familiar with the word Yuga, which frequently occurs in the sense of age, generation, or tribe. Thus in the Rg Veda … Yuge yuge means “every age”, uttard yugani “future ages”, uttare yuge “in a later age” etc. A footnote states: “In Professor Wilson’s Dictionary three senses are assigned to yuga (neuter): (a) a pair; (2) an age as the Krita, Treta etc.; (3) a lustre, or period of five years. .Regardless of the inflations it is clear that the Vedic yugas are not of equal length, rather comprising four periods of declining duration within each Kalpa. The Rg Veda states that the yugas were defined based upon the nature or qualities (gunas) of the bodies created by Prajapati (blasted into space from the hardened lava column at Mars north pole, the Biblical ‘column of smoke and fire’) during each Kalpa. (The same feature was Brahma in the Hindu period). The true meaning of these gunas were without ambiguity to the Vedic people but not well defined in any text. Muir guesses sattva = goodness, rajas = passion and tamas = darkness. This last term suggests that they are all physical descriptions, possibly sattya = brightness and rajas = speed.
Manvantara
Of all these terms, the most revealing is Manvantara. “Within that period of a Day of Brahma, 14 Manus reign, and a Manvantara, or period of Manu, is consequently = the 14th part of a day of Brahma.” Manu was the first man, comparable to Adam in the Bible. This is a small clue to the actual duration of a Kalpa, implying that a ‘period of Manu‘ is a year of man(kind). Thus each encounter of Mars (Indra in the Vedas) with the Earth in a geostationary orbit over Mt. Kailash (Indra’s home on Earth), also called a ‘Day of Brahma’, lasted some 14 years – quite different than the Hindu 4,320,000,000 years. Mars then left Earth orbit for a comparable period (day of Brahma = night of Brahma) then was recaptured.
Upon each capture of Mars, its oceans were drawn to its north pole, which remained facing the Earth during each encounter. Gradually sub-surface rock beneath its north pole melted and was drawn up thru cracks, forming a glowing ‘world egg’ (Hiranyagarbha) which, as it expanded, rose above the northern ocean. Corroboration of this process is given in the Vishnu Parana: “… in the Varatha Kalpa … This lord of creatures, discovering by inference, when the world had become one ocean, that the Earth lay within the waters and being desirous to raise it up, assumed another body. As formerly, at the beginning of the Kalpas, he had taken the form of a fish, a tortoise, and so forth, (so now) entering the body of a boar … The boar then rises from the lower regions, tossing up the earth with his tusk … the supreme soul, the upholder of the earth, lifted her up quickly and placed her upon the great waters. Resting upon this mass of water, like a vast ship, she does not sink, owing to her expansion … created on the surface of the earth all those mountains which had been burnt up in the former creation … Becoming next pervaded with the quality of passion, that divine being Hari (Vishnu), assuming the form of Brahma, with four faces, effected the creation.”
The Sanskrit word here transated “earth” actually referred to the island at Mars’ north pole, the sacred land (the firmament or heaven) in every ancient culture, still visible to NASA probes on Mars. The sense of this quotation proves that the Kalpas were not of extreme durations. They were repeated, since the Vedic author has knowledge of numerous previous encounters. It also makes clear that Brahma, the Vedic Prajapati, was considered the creator and as stated previously, lived one hundred Days and Nights of similar durations, approximately 30 years each.
The 30-year cycle of Mars capture and release, resulted from a capture period of 14.4 years plus a release period of 15.6 years. The difference is due to the fact that Mars was captured where its orbit crossed the orbit of the Earth around Nov. 1, whereas the releases of Mars occurred at the other crossing point, around the vernal equinox (March 21st). Thus, if the proportionality of the Yugas given in the Vishnu Parana are retained, their lengths would be Krita = 5.55, Treta = 4.16. Dvapara = 2.77 and Kali = 1.38 years, adding up to a Day of Brahma = 14.4 years, a Manvantara.
Avataras of Vishnu
Initially each Kalpa was given a name based on the shape of the land that first appeared above the ocean. These were called the reincarnations of Prajapati or Brahma, later changed to the ‘Avatars of Vishnu’. Similarly, the appearance of the ‘risen land’ was greatly celebrated by the Egyptians who associated each creation with the animal shapes with which they were familiar, such as the hippopotamus and alligator. In Egyptian texts, the hardened lava column (Prajapati in Vedas, Brahma in Hindu myth) which rose to great heights (2300 km) from the northern island was Osiris, more physically referred to as the Tet or Djed pillar. In the Bible, this feature was called ‘the column of smoke and fire’, also the archangel Michael at the time of the Exodus.
The Duration of the Vedic Period
There were seven large volcanoes in the northern hemisphere of Mars, which are present in the ancient texts of every culture, e.g. the seven sisters of Zeus (Brahma), or the Pleiades, the Japanese Subaru, etc. The Rig Veda states that the ‘seven holy rishis‘ lived 3030 years. Thus each cycle of 30 years was repeated 100 times, the number of years in the life of Brahma, giving about 3000 years for the entire Vedic Period. Greek myth also claims that the Olympic gods ruled the earth for 3,000 years. Given Velikovsky’s accurate determination of the last ‘raash‘ (commotion) at 687 BC, places the birth of proto-Venus, which triggered the cosmic events, around 3700 BC, soon after which it passed close to, and overturned the Earth twice. I maintain that this destruction is described in Genesis 1:2 “And the earth became void and without form (tohu and bohu)”. This event removed the Neanderthal gene pool, in preparation for God’s creation of mankind. 3700 BC agrees with the age of mankind and the Bible estimated by many biblical scholars.
Embodied Spirits were Asteroids
In Cyclic Catastrophism, what were characterized as creations of ’embodied spirits’ by Prajapati or Purusha in the Vedas (Brahma in Hindu texts), were hot, glowing bodies ejected from the large volcanic vent at the north pole of Mars during each Kalpa. These expulsions temporarly shattered the vertical, hardened lava tubes which comprised Prajapati temporarly darkening the area, but the lava flow, drawn upward by the tidal force of the Earth, continued and the feature reformed. Mars suffered innumerable convulsions during each encounter due to alignments with the Moon (or Sun and Moon combined). As a result it became deconstructed during each Kalpa, changing the characteristics of the bodies blasted into space. Some escaped with less velocity and/or were less bright. Ejected near-surface rocks were darker, i.e. not glowing. In many instances bodies were ejected in “pairs which cohabited”, i.e. remained together orbiting the Earth, consistent with modern findings of paired Near Earth Asteroids. Also common were rapid-fire streams (Sanskrit ambhamsi) of shining bodies ejected from the same volcanic vent on Mars. One such stream struck the near side of the Moon, forming, and remaining in the lunar maria. Thus, most of the lunar rocks collected by Apollo astronauts were recently blasted from the interior of Mars.
Sura versus Asura
A great mystery has existed to this day due to the Rg Veda’s description of two classes of deities, the suras (gods, literally glowing) and the asuras, originally translated ‘demons’, the opposite of gods, based on the Sanskrit convention of negation of a word by a preceding ‘a’. This is no longer considered the correct interpretation. Indic scholars currently believe it to be a combination of the root ‘asu‘ (breath) and ‘ra‘ (possessing). However, the actual physical meaning of this word, as is true with many Sanskrit words, remains unknown to this day. Fortunately, Cyclic Catastrophism makes sense of many such words, all of which are related to planetary encounters, still unknown to the world at large. Before the planets approached the earth early in the Vedic Period, they appeared much as the planets do today. Although they are only seen by reflected light we say they ‘glow’. This was also the common term, sura (glowing) designating astronomical bodies during the Vedic Period, which became synonymous with ‘god’. However, when Venus and Mars approached close to the Earth, they could be seen at night to be surrounded with gaseous atmospheres. As a result, they were described as ‘breath-possessing’, i.e. asu-ra. Because proto-Venus was, and still is, hot, it was surrounded by a brilliant gaseous robe, which could be seen at night. This was the origin of the closely associated deities Mitra–Varuna. Mitra meaning ‘solid’, while Varuna had a magnificent robe, confirmed by statements in Hindu texts that Mitra ruled the day, i.e. could be seen in the heavens along with the Sun because it glowed, and Varuna ruled the night, at which times his glorious robe could also be seen. Mars, when it was first ejected by proto-Venus from its ancient orbit was a living planet, It was called a sura because it glowed by reflected sunlight but when it got really close, orbiting the Earth at 44,400 km, its atmosphere could be seen, thus the Vedas quote Indra as saying “I too am an asura“. Cyclic Catastrophism teaches that Mars’ atmosphere, oceans, biosphere (as Soma) and many valuable mineral deposits were blasted to the Earth during the Vedic period, so it is no longer is an asura.
Zarathustra’s Ahura-Mazda
The Vedic Mitra–Varuna (Venus) was probably the inspiration for Zarathustra’s principal deity Ahura–Mazda, but the literal translation ‘Wise Creator’ implies that he had no first-hand knowledge of proto-Venus when it was close to the Earth. This reinforces evidence that his birth date was 596 BC, after the Vedic Period ended. Ahura–Mazda’s actual power lay in his greater rta in the Vedas ( Hindu dharma then kharma), which was actually the greater tidal force (gravitation) of Venus, as compared to Mars. Another corroborating factor is suggested by the fact that Zoroastrianism casts Mars (Angra Mainu) as Lord Mazda’s evil adversary, whereas the Vedas praise Mars as Indra (Lord).
Think, in this battered Caravanserai Whose portals are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his destined Hour, and went his way. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
As quoted in this post, “Of the enornmously inflated lengths of the Kalpas, Yugas and Manvantaras in Hindu books, there is no record in tthe Rg Veda”
John Ackerman said this on May 27, 2014 at 12:52 am
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Mohenjo-Daro Destroyed by Indra Archaeology Hinduism | Ramani's blog said this on May 3, 2014 at 5:54 pm