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

426 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
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 anti-
quarian 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.
From a consideration of the facts stated above it will be
seen that so far as the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata
are concerned, they preserve for us a reminiscence of a cycle
of 10,000 years comprising the four yugas, the Kṛita, the
Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali; and that the Kali yuga of
one thousand years had then already set in. In other
words, Manu and Vyâsa obviously speak only of a period of
10,000, or, including the Sandhyâs, of 12,000 ordinary or hu-
man (not divine) years, from the beginning of the Kṛita to
the end of the Kali yuga; and it is remarkable that in the
Atharva Veda we should find a period of 10,000 years ap-
parently assigned to one yuga. It is not, therefore, unlikely
that the Atharva Veda takes the Kṛita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara
and the Kali together, and uses the word yuga to denote the
combined duration of all these in the passage referred to above.