The Kali Yuga

According to Bhagavata Purana (1, 14:1 ff), the advent of the present Kali–yuga, the age of quarrel and hypocrisy, was heralded by portents of a terrifying nature: the sacred images in temples seemed to weep and mourn, deception and misunderstanding polluted the dealings among relatives, and everywhere people became increasingly greedy and violent. Above all this, there prevailed severe disruptions in the characteristics of seasons.

This would have occurred in 3102 BC as the Dvapara–yuga (or third yuga) of the twenty-eighth “millennium” of the seventh and present Manu, Vaivasvata, came to an end.

Confirming the starting date, Aryabhata, a famous Hindu astronomer born in 476 BC, writes that he was 23 years old when 3,600 years of the present Kali–yuga had elapsed, which yields 3,600 – 23 – 476 = 3101 BC. The difference of one year can be accounted for by the use of a “zero” year in the conversion to the Western calendar.

Now as I said in a previous post (“More about Maha-yugas and Kalpas”) the precise start, on the midnight of 18 February in 3102 BC, was presided by an alignment of the seven traditional planets, including the Sun and Moon. According to the jyotisha–shastras, the texts of astronomy of the old Hindus, this is perfectly normal: the Surya–siddhanta, for example, which measures the time in days from the beginning of the Kali–yuga, assumes that the positions of all planets, in their two cycles, are aligned at “zero” day in relation to the star Zeta–Piscium, which is used by the said shastras to measure the celestial longitudes. Such alignment would have had minimal deviations and anyway, it would be a very rare phenomenon, as from that date to our days were only found three intervals of ten years in which there had been such exact alignment.

Here the question arises: why should the passage from one age to the next be determined by an alignment like the one depicted, if it is rather the cycle of precession of equinoxes the key factor for determining the length of the human cycle? To give a precise answer is not very easy; but if we consider that the circumference described by the Earth’s axis does not have a real starting point (since, as in a common year, it is actually conventional), it is very likely that some triggering factor, like the planetary synods or grouping of all the planets on one side of the sun while the Earth is on the other (which occur every 180 years approximately) could cause additional climatic disturbances to precipitate the passage from a yuga to the next. With regard to this, there is a suggestive connection with the fact that the "El Niño" phenomenon, which such dreadful disorders caused in recent years, appears to have begun in the year 3100 BC approximately; and we may also remember the concept of a “perfect year,” the time the planets take to align themselves back again at their startup point, which coincides with the “great year” of 12,960 common years of the Greek and Roman traditions.

In connection with the probable starting point of the present Kali–yuga, some authors have highlighted the fact that, at some time in the sixth century BC, the traditional doctrines underwent diverse re-adaptations and reformulations in several key areas of the world: in Greece by Pythagoras, in Persia by Zarathustra, in China by Confucius, etc., re-adaptations which, given the universality of the phenomenon, would have been a sort of preparation for the start of a new Era. We must admit that this date around the sixth century BC, while imprecise, sounds more plausible as a starting point than 3102 BC, which crashes frontally with the believe in an uninterrupted progress of humanity from the development of agriculture and the invention of writing onwards. Yet in favor of 3102 BC can be argued, apart from the unusual planetary alignment depicted, the singular coincidence with the “zero year” of the start of the Mayan and Egyptian civilizations (in 3113 BC the former, around 3100 the latter), without a doubt significant as such start coincides with the beginning of writing around the world and seems to draw, for the same reason, a veil between history proper – the written history – and pre-history, about which virtually nothing is known with absolute certainty. In the other hand, it has been suggested, based on astronomical calculations, that the great epics Mahabharata would date back from 3100 BC as it would be partially contemporary of Satapatha Brahmana, where it is said that the Krittikas (the Pleiades) «do not turn from the East» – i.e. they were on the celestial Equator. Add to all this the persistent allusions, both in oral and written tradition, to ancient, highly sophisticated civilizations that were spiritually more advanced than ours and disappeared as a consequence of dreadful cataclysms which erased all traces of their passage on Earth, and the picture becomes more complete: if one or more of these civilizations existed before our written history, it would push the specific weight of history back by several millennia and turn the year 3102 BC into a comparatively recent date.

But let us deal with the difficulty that is obviously central in our study: ¿Are we really in the Kali–yuga, the age of quarrel and darkness? If so, ¿in which phase of it? And, ¿is it possible that we have been in it for so long?

I will try to answer these questions on my next post. Stay tuned please.

(First published Qassia 25 Feb 2008)