Time in Ancient Hindu Texts: Time is defined as duration of creation then divided into different divisions as per the Sun’s duration and its further division of the duration.
Then we describe the time as duration of creation of the universe, year,month ,day,hour,minute,second etc.
The Bhagavad Gita verse 8.17 tells duration of this creation as per Brahma’s day in Brahma loka or universe.
By human calculation, a thousand ages taken together is the duration of Brahma’s one day. And such also is the duration of his night.
The duration of the material universe is limited. It is manifested in cycles of kalpas. A kalpa is a day of Brahma, and one day of Brahma consists of a thousand cycles of four yugas or ages: Satya, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali.
The cycle of Satya is characterized by virtue, wisdom and religion, there being practically no ignorance and vice, and the yuga lasts 1,728,000 years.
In the Treta-yuga vice is introduced, and this yuga lasts 1,296,000 years.
In the Dvapara-yuga there is an even greater decline in virtue and religion, vice increasing, and this yuga lasts 864,000 years.
And finally in Kali-yuga (the yuga we have now been experiencing over the past 5,000 years) there is an abundance of strife, ignorance, irreligion and vice, true virtue being practically nonexistent, and this yuga lasts 432,000 years.
In Kali-yuga vice increases to such a point that at the termination of the yuga the Supreme Lord Himself appears as the Kalki avatara, vanquishes the demons, saves His devotees, and commences another Satya-yuga.
Then the process is set rolling again. These four yugas, rotating a thousand times, comprise one day of Brahma, the creator god, and the same number comprise one night. Brahma lives one hundred of such “years” and then dies.
वेदों के अनुसार ब्रह्मांड की आयु क्या है
These “hundred years” by earth calculations total to 311 trillion and 40 million earth years. (Time in Ancient Hindu Texts)
By these calculations the life of Brahma seems fantastic and interminable, but from the viewpoint of eternity it is as brief as a lightning flash. In the causal ocean there are innumerable Brahmas rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic. Brahma and his creation are all part of the material universe, and therefore they are in constant flux.
In the material universe not even Brahma is free from the process of birth, old age, disease and death. Brahma, however, is directly engaged in the service of the Supreme Lord in the management of this universe-therefore he at once attains liberation.
Elevated sannyasis are promoted to Brahma’s particular planet, Brahmaloka, which is the highest planet in the material universe and which survives all the heavenly planets in the upper strata of the planetary system, but in due course Brahma and all inhabitants of Brahmaloka are subject to death, according to the law of material nature.
So different loka or universe has different time scales. (Time in Ancient Hindu Texts)
We have many examples of time travel in vedas in which different time duration of a day is there at different universes.
This is the story of the brahma-vimohana-lila, or the bewilderment of Brahma by Krishna.
Several thousand years ago, Krishna descended to the earth as an avatara and was playing as a young cowherd boy, tending calves in the forest of Vrindavana (south of present-day New Delhi). To test Krishna’s potency,
Brahma used mystic power to steal Krishna’s calves and cowherd boy friends and hide them in suspended animation in a secluded place. He then went away for a year of earthly time to see what would happen.
Krishna responded to Brahma’s trick by expanding Himself into identical copies of the calves and boys. So, when Brahma returned, he saw Krishna playing with the boys and calves just as before. Brahma became bewildered.
Checking the boys and calves he had hidden, he found they were indistinguishable from the ones playing with Krishna, and he couldn’t understand how this was possible.
Finally Krishna revealed to Brahma that these latter boys and calves were identical with Himself, and He allowed Brahma to have a direct vision of the spiritual world.
Now, it turns out that even though Brahma was absent for one earth year, on his time scale only a moment had passed. The Sanskrit word used here for a moment of time is truti. (Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.13.40)
There are various definitions of a truti, but the Vedic astronomy text called the Surya-siddhanta defines a truti to be 1of a second. If we accept this figure, then one year on earth corresponds to 13,750 of a second in the time of Brahma.
As I pointed out, King Kakudmi’s visit to Brahmaloka took 27 times 4,320,000 earth years. If we multiply this by 1we find that in Brahma’s time King Kakudmi’s visit lasted 3,456 seconds, or just under an hour.
This is consistent with the story that the king had to wait for a musical performance to finish before having a brief conversation with Lord Brahma.
Although the time dilation involved in visits to Brahmaloka is extreme, such large time dilations do arise in the theories of modern physics.
For example, suppose that instead of crossing the event horizon of a black hole, Joe Smith simply came close to the event horizon and then went back out into space to rejoin the person observing his journey.
If he had come close enough to the event horizon, he would find that although his trip seemed short to him, millions of years had passed, and the observer had died long ago
Revati, daughter of King Kakudmi
The best description of “Time Travel” in Mahabharata is the story of King Kakudmi/Raivata of Kushasthali, who travelled Brahma’s palace (planet?) with his daughter Revati.
Mahabharata describes this even of even “older times”, perhaps thousands of years ago. King’s daughter was extremely beautiful and intelligent and hence, King Kakudmi considered that ‘his friend Brahma’ could only help him find a suitable husband for Revati. The event is further described in Mahabharata as under:-
When the king with his daughter reached the court of Brahma, there was some celebrations going around and the Apsara were dancing hence, Brahma motioned at the king to wait for the dance to end.
At the end of dance, Brahma asked the king for the reason for his visit and when told about suggesting Revati’s suitable groom, Brahma smiled and said, “Do you know how much time has elapsed during your travel and time spent in the court? Thousands of years have passed, hundreds of your generations have already ruled the earth and your kingdom. Nobody might remember you anymore. By now 27 Chaturyugas have elapsed. But in the future (by the time King Kakudmi returns to earth), there is only one suitable groom “who will understand you and marry your daughter. He will be Balarama, brother of Krishna” !
Hugely surprised the king returned to earth with his daughter and found that the entire planet has undergone fantastic changes, the geography, vegetations, atmosphere and also the humans have changed. Humans now were much smaller, intellectually weaker and physically frail. When they approached few people, those people were surprised to see them, they also didn’t remember the king, but had heard of King Kakudmi thousands of years ago!”
Somehow king and princess searched and reached Balarama and explained him. Balarama married Revati. But after that, Balarama used his plough’s tip to “reduce the height of Revati to his own”. After that the king went to Badrinath.
The above story does indicate that, thousands of years ago, even before the Mahabharata:-
- 27 Chaturyugas (108 yuga-cycles) definitely is a very long time which father and daughter spent in travel to Brahma. As per the modern science, theory of traveling that far and elapse of time on the earth has been accepted.
- Extraordinary stature, size and intellect of the people during the reign compared to 5100 years from today (Mahabharata occurred in 3138 BCE as per Puranas and other records); has vastly reduced with the passage of time.
However, the time of the event when Kakudmi visited Brahma can only be calculated on the basis of 27 Chaturyugas that had elapsed in between, and even more, adding the time taken by them to return to Earth.
Other Incidents (Time in Ancient Hindu Texts)
Yoga Vashishtha, the text which states conversations between Vashistha, a rig vedic teacher, and various Gods and Kakbhushubdi, a creature which stands outside of normal time and sees all.
It recounts the cyclical nature of time, where Kakabhushundi has seen Ramayan 11 times with different outcomes and seen Mahabharat 16 times with different results, but, after seeing Daksha Yagya twice, he did not either care to see it again or saw no point to seeing any more, as it ended the same way each time.
Further conversations talk about the atoms or anu at quanta m level and inside each quantum level are different universes. A sorrowful queen is shown that her husband is still alive in one of the quantum or atomic universes and ruling wisely and is given the option to join him there.
The idea of Heisenberg’s Principle is enunciated when a rishi visits and illustrates a decision tree by showing how several parallel universes, with all possible results of a decision, could occur and uses that illustration to explain why he took the decision he did in this universe.