वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

424 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
yuga may be taken to have, at the longest, denoted a period of
10,000 years in the days of the Atharva Veda Saṁhitâ. Now
it is found that Manu and the Mahâbhârata both assign 1000,
2000, 3000 and 4000 years to the four yugas of Kali, Dvâpara,
Tretâ and Kṛita respectively. In other words, the durations of
Dvâpara, Tretâ and Kṛita are obtained by doubling, trebling and
quadrupling the duration of Kali ; and taking into consideration
that Kṛita (which Mr. 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 Sandhyâṁsha periods
intervening between the different yugas. Thus the Kṛita 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 ordi-
nary 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 ghatîs 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 Kṛita comprise 4800, Tretâ 3600, Dvâpara
2400 and Kali 1200 years. Now at the time of the Mahâbhârata
or the Code of Manu, the Kali yuga had already set in ; and if the