The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.9.2

c16.9.2

Aiyer compares with Latin quatuor) means ‘four’ in Sanskrit literature, the names of the yugas may perhaps be derived from this fact. We are, however, concerned with the duration of the four yugas, and adding up the numbers given above, we obtain 10,000 years for a cycle of four yugas, or a Mahâ-yuga, according to the terminology explained above. Manu and Vyâsa, however, add to this 10,000 another period of 2,000 years, said to represent the Sandhyâ or the Sandhyâmsha periods intervening between the different yugas. Thus the Krita age does not pass suddenly into Tretâ, but has a period of 400 years interposed at each of its ends, while the Tretâ is protected from the contact of the preceding and the succeeding yuga by two periods of 300 years each, the Dvâpara of 200 and the Kali of 100 years. The word Sandhyâ denotes the time of the dawn in ordinary literature; and Mr. Aiyer points out that as the period of the dawn and the gloaming, or the morning and the evening twilight, is each found to extend over three out of thirty ghatis of a day, so one-tenth of the period of each yuga is assigned to its Sandhyâ or the period of transition into another yuga; and that it is not improbable that these supplementary periods were subsequent amendments. The period of 10,000 years for a cycle of the four yugas is thus increased to 12,000, if the Sandhyâ periods are included in it, making Krita comprise 4800, Tretâ 3600, Dvâpara 2400 and Kali 1200 years.