History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c23.s1.123

c23.s1.123

Buddhaghosa gives another account of the *mahākappa*, according to which its duration seems comparatively modest; a *mahākappa* is the time taken to exhaust a great lake seven times, by removing one drop of water every hundred years.² This definition agrees with that of the *Bhagavatī* in so far as it introduces a lake (*sara*) into the calculations. But here the *mahākappa* consists of only seven *sara*, in place of the 300,000 of the *Bhagavatī*.