[Advaita-l] Is the idea of 'anAditva' logical?

[Anand Hudli]

>The yugas are not that long. Some scholars in the past have wrongly
interpreted such a time scale for the Chturyuga. The Chaturyuga is only
12,000 years long. Manu Smriti and Mahabharata clearly says so. The >Vayu
>purana, Matsya purana as well as the Bhagavatam also support this.

The 12,000 figure for a mahAyuga only means that the unit of time is a year
of devas. Remembering that a year of devas is 360 human years, it means the
mahAyuga is 360 times 12,000 or 4,320,000 years long which agrees with the
earlier figure. The following two shlokas from the sUrya siddhAnta, an
authoritative text on Astronomy, make this idea clear:

सुरासुराणामन्योन्यमहोरात्रं विपर्ययात्।
तत्षष्ट्ः षड्गुणा दिव्यं वर्षमासुरमेव च॥१.१४॥

The days and nights of devas (gods) and asuras (demons) are opposed to each
other (when it is day for the devas it is night for asuras and vice versa).
Six times sixty of such days make a year of the devas and asuras).

तद्द्वादशसहस्राणि चतुर्युगमुदाहृतम् ।
सूर्याब्दसंख्यया द्वित्रिसागरैरयुताहतैः॥१.१५॥

12,000 of those divine years is the duration of a Chaturyuga (mahAyuga).
This number corresponds to 4,320,000 solar (saura) years (अयुत or 10,000
multiplied by द्वात्रिंशदधिकचतुःशतैः or 432).

Anand