India, Its Life and Thought

by John P. Jones

In ancient Vedic times there obtained here, so far as we can see, much more sober views of chronology than at present. It was much later that the imagination of Hindu writers took full wing and carried the people into the all but infinite reaches of Puranic chronology. One must wait for the elaboration of Vishnu Purana, for instance, in order to meet that apparent sobriety of mathematical detail which is utilized to add credibility to the most fantastic time system that imagination ever devised.

Christians of the West have doubtless erred on the side of excessive brevity in their theories and beliefs about the beginnings of history and especially in their attempt to locate the origin of the human race. Until recently, it was thought that our human progenitor, Adam, was created no more than sixty centuries ago, and that the whole history of mankind is consequently confined to that brief space of time. In the same way the practical mind of the West has pictured to itself the termination of human life and history upon earth at some not very remote date in the future. Science has already shown the error of the former, as history is likely to demonstrate the falsity of the latter theory.

But India has, with much greater daring and with more of unreason, carried back many billions of years the origin of mankind and has painted vividly a future whose expanse is as the boundless sea.

We are now, it is said, at the close of the first five thousand years of Kali yuga. And this same yuga, or epoch, has 427,000 years still in store for us and our descendants! Before it arrived, the other three yugas—Kritha, Tretha, and Dwapara—had passed on; and these, together, were equal to more than ten thousand divine years, or to nearly four million human years! These four epochs equal a total of 4,320,000 human years, and this is called a "maha-yuga." This in itself would stagger the practical mind of the West. But it is only the very threshold of Hindu chronology! There are seventy-one of these great epochs in a "Manuvanthara," or the period of one Manu, or human progenitor. And there are many of these Manus with their periods. For instance, there are fourteen of them required in order to cover the time called "Karpa," or one day in the life of Brahmâ. And after Brahmâ has spent his modest day everything is destroyed and his godship spends an equal period in sleep and rest. Then begins another Brahmâic day, in which a new succession of Manus spend, with their progeny, their interminable epochs. And thus one series of epochs follows another, sandwiched in by equally long spaces of lifeless darkness. And this goes on until Brahmâ has completed his divine life of one hundred years; and then comes the final dissolution. Having gone on as far as this, there is no reason why the imagination should rest at this point; and so Vishnu Purana, which, of course, is composed in praise of that god, claims that one day of Vishnu is equal to the whole life of Brahmâ!

No one can bring within the range of his thought or imagination one tithe of the years, divine or human, which are included in this marvellous chronology. A billion years are but as a day to the Hindu mind.

And if any one is anxious to know the exact place at which we have arrived in this chronological maze, the same Purana informs us that we are five thousand years advanced in the Kali yuga of "Varâha karpa," or the first day in the second half of Brahmâ's life. And thus we are supposed to live not far (say a few billion years!) from the middle of the Hindu chronological system. One may better realize the length of the system if he remembers that we have yet to spend of the present Kali yuga alone more than seventy times the whole of the old Christian chronology from Adam to the present time! And yet, as compared with the whole system described above, Kali yuga is less than one day in a thousand years. And that largely measures the difference between the imagination of the West and the same developed faculty in the East!

It is quite unnecessary to say that the prehistoric Manus of previous yugas are absolutely imaginary creatures, since history can tell us practically nothing about the head of our race, even in the present Hindu dispensation. There is not a line of history or of reliable tradition that will enable us to reach farther back than five or six thousand years in this quest for the origin of our race. There was, of course, a beginning of human life on earth; and we may, just as we please, call the progenitor "Manu" or "Adam." But, according to the Hindu chronological system, six thousand years only carries us just back into the last yuga, and is as but yesterday in the march of the divine æons of the past. Certainly, writers whose productions are unreliable as a guide to the events of the past century or two are only indenting upon their imagination when they descant upon the chronological data of the Puranas.

One of the principal evils connected with this measureless time system is found in the fact that it helps to destroy the confidence of all intelligent men in the historicity of characters and events which would otherwise be worthy of our credence. For example, the question is asked whether such a man as Rama Chandra ever existed. We at once reply in the affirmative; for does not the Ramayana dwell upon his exploits, and are there not other reasons for believing that such a hero lived in ancient times in this land?

And yet when the Puranas tell us that this same Rama received his apotheosis and appeared as an incarnation of Vishnu in the Tretha yuga, say one or two millions of years ago, we are astounded at the credulity of those who could write such a statement as well as those who can accept it; and we are led to question whether, after all, Rama ever existed or is simply a poetic conception carried far away into an imaginary time. Thus the chronology of the land tends to cast a cloud of doubt and suspicion over all that is historical, traditional, or legendary in the literature of the people.

Still greater than this is the unfortunate influence of such a system upon the people themselves, in helping to destroy any appreciation that they would otherwise have of historic perspective. It is well known that the people of India have throughout the ages been the most wanting in the ability to write and soberly to appreciate historic facts.