The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.9.4

c16.9.4

and as people were unwilling to believe that they could be in a yuga other than the Kali, this solution of the difficulty was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years. The same device converted, at one stroke, the 12,000 ordinary years of a Mahâ-yuga into as many divine, or 360 × 12,000 = 4,320,000 ordinary years, affecting in a similar way the higher cycles of time like Manvantaras and Kalpas. How the beginning of the Kali yuga was thrown back, by astronomical calculations, to 3102 B. C., when this hypothesis of ‘divine years’ was adopted, is a separate question by itself; but not being pertinent to the subject in hand we need not go into it in this place. Suffice it to say that where chronology is invested with semi-religious character, artifices or devices, like the one noticed above, are not unlikely to be used to suit the exigencies of the time; and those who have to investigate the subject from a historical and antiquarian point of view must be prepared to undertake the task of carefully sifting the data furnished by such chronology, as Prof. Rangâchârya and Mr. Aiyer have done in their essays referred to above.