Cyclical time

Johannes Bronkhorst
johannes.bronkhorst@unil.ch

Cyclical time in India

(paper presented at the Fest-Symposium for Axel Michaels, Heidelberg, 30th May 2014)

Axel Michaels's Hinduism: Past and Present is a wonderful book. Having said
that, I must add that its title makes me uneasy. It does not say but suggests to me
that the past is here used to understand the present. This can be done, but the past
that really explains the present is primarily the past of tradition, or rather
traditions, the past as conceived of by those in the present. And the past of
tradition is a selected past, a constructed past, sometimes even an invented past
that supports and confirms the self-image of those who belong to those traditions.
The past of tradition is not always the same as the past of the historian. The
historian, if he takes his job seriously, tries to break out of traditional preferences
and construct an image of the past that is not influenced by present concerns. And
indeed, the past of the historian has often no or only very little relevance for the
presence. Consider as an example the perhaps most important recent historical
discovery in South Asia: the exploration of Gandhra as an important Buddhist
centre during the centuries surrounding the beginning of the Common Era. Its
exploration has brought to light numerous manuscripts of unprecedented
historical significance and much else, but the relevance of these discoveries for
the present is dubious at best. They may tell us how the huge Buddha statues
destroyed by the Taliban a few years ago got there in the first place, but little else
about the region as it is at present.
Let me emphasize that Michaels's book is far more sophisticated than
these introductory remarks might suggest, and more than once he shows a
developed historical sensitivity. There is however a question of focus. A
presentation that uses the past to understand the present runs the risk of
overlooking aspects of the past that do not help to understand the present, but that
are yet very important for understanding this or that particular historical period. I
will illustrate this with an example: cyclical time in India. And I will begin with a
passage from Michaels's book (p. 300):

Cyclical time

The best-known expression of the cyclical image of the world is the

doctrine of the four ages of the world (yuga). The calculation of time is
complex and has not been handed down uniformly. According to [a
common calculation], the course of the world consists of the change of
unfolding (sarga, pratisarga) or creation (si) and dissolution (pralaya),
presented as day and night in the hundred-year life of the god Brahm.
Such a Brahm day lasts from creation to the decline of an eon (kalpa).
And every Kalpa lasts a thousand great ages of the world (mahyuga),
corresponding to twelve thousand god years or 4,320,000 human years,
which are divided into four ages of the world (yuga), and each of them has
a tenth long dawn and dawn and dusk, in which Brahm (or Viu) rests.
The whole thing is repeated a thousandfold, a hundred Brahm years or
311 billion and forty million human years. When this epoch (para) is over,
the world declines. The coarse material will again become subtle primeval
material, in which the constituents are in balance, until they are shaken
either by themselves or by a divine impulse and the cycle of the
emergence and passing away of the world (sasra) continues.
According to this calculation, the current age, the Kaliyuga, began on
February 18, 3102 B.C.
This is a good description of the view of time that can be found in many Puras
and elsewhere, a view that is often presented as a characteristic feature of
Hinduism. For understanding the present or the recent past, it is adequate.
However, it overlooks the fact that for some three or four centuries beginning in
the first century BCE and ending roughly at the time of the Guptas, this was not
the way many Brahmins (and others who followed their ideology) thought about
cyclical time at all. They rather thought that the present Yuga, far from
continuing for many thousands of years to come, was about to come to an end
right now.
Michaels makes some perceptive remarks in this context. They read as
follows (p. 302): The Yuga doctrine may testify to a shock in the trust in the
world. Its emergence may be connected with the crises that erupted with the
infiltration of foreigners into northwest India. This infiltration of foreigners, or
rather the invasions of foreigners, took place when the Mauryan empire
collapsed, i.e. during the centuries following the year 185 BCE: Greeks,
Scythians and others succeeded each other in conquering parts of northwest India,
and the suffering they brought was great.

Cyclical time

However, this still leaves us with a riddle, and Michaels is aware of it. If
the centuries just preceding and following the beginning of the Common Era were
so horrible (at any rate for the Brahmins), would these Brahmins not rather
believe that the end of the world, or at least of the present world period, was near
there and then? As Michaels points out (p. 302): The Revelations of Saint John
or Dantes gloomy visions might appear much more about the end of the
world According to the scheme that Michaels presents, this end would in India
still be thousands of years away, hardly the kind of distance to make sense of
present disasters.
As stated above, there is evidence supporting the following position. The
Brahmanical inhabitants of northwestern India did indeed suffer greatly as a
result of the foreign invasions of that time, and they actually came to think that
the end of the present world period (yuga) was near. A number of sources state
quite unambiguously that this end was expected to happen in the very near future,
and some of them even add that a new Ktayuga was to be expected soon. To the
extent that they specify the date of the end of the present world period, their
judgments vary. The earliest date proposed is somewhere around the middle of
the first century BCE. But expectations of this kind were still alive in the third
century CE. After that date they make place for complaints about a stretched out
Kaliyuga that will go on for thousands of years to come.
The relevant evidence is to be found in a number of different texts. The
earliest and most important one is the Yuga Pura, which is part of a longer text,
the Grgya-jyotia. Second in importance are certain portions of the
Mahbhrata, most notably a discussion between King Yudhihira and the sage
Mrkaeya in the third book. Thirdly, there are two Puras, considered to be
among the oldest, viz. the Vyu Pura and the Brahma Pura. One could
finally mention some passages from the Mnava Dharmastra (the so-called
Manusmti) for some additional evidence.
Let us begin with the Yuga Pura. This text describes, in the form of a
prophecy, a number of invasions that took place after the collapse of the Mauryan
Empire. It mentions the Greeks (yavana) and the akas and the war and
destruction these invaders bring. What is more, it presents these disasters as

Cyclical time

indicators of the approaching end of an era, of a Yuga. The invasions of the

Greeks and the akas take place at, and signify, the end of the last of four Yugas,
the Kali-Yuga. The text concludes with an indication that a new series of four
Yugas will begin soon.
There can be little doubt that the author of (this portion of) the Yuga
Pura really believed that the end of the Kali-Yuga was near.1 In his opinion it
would take place soon after the invasions of the akas; this allows us to determine
the time when the text must have been composed.2 At this time, then, there were
at least certain Brahmins, presumably those who suffered most from the repeated
invasions that struck northwestern India, who thought that the end of the world
or more precisely, the end of the present world-period was near.
Also the Mahbhrata contains a passage that prophesizes the approaching
end of the Kali-Yuga. As already indicated, this happens in a discussion between
King Yudhihira and the sage Mrkaeya.3 It, too, contains a list of oppressive
ruling dynasties; one of these (the bhras) appears to justify the conclusion that
this prophecy was written, or given its present shape, in 250 CE or later.4
This concrete prophecy may be a late addition of the Mahbhrata, but
clearly earlier portions were very much aware of the notion of the end of the

Mitchiner 2002, 86; Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 98-99; 2009, 417.

Second half of the first century BCE, according to Mitchiner (2002, 93). Interestingly,
the Vikrama era, which begins in the autumn of year 58/57 or in spring 57/56 BCE, is
called kta in early inscriptions; its first inscriptional occurrence dates from 239 CE (D.
R. Bhandarkar in Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum vol. III, revised edition, pp. 187 ff.;
Falk 2012, 131). Kta is, of course, also the name of the first of the four Yugas, and
therefore of the beginning of a new cycle. Is this coincidence? Indian tradition links this
era to a King Vikramditya who presumably was victorious over the akas in that year
(Mitchiner 2002, 81 f.; Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 99; Witzel 2003, 95-96; Kulke,
Rothermund 1998, 72 f.). Understandably, already Bhandarkar (ibid., pp. 197-198)
considered the possibility that the Kta era might have been thought of as the new KtaYuga.
Sharma (1982, 202-203 n. 79; 2001, 62 n. 97), with a reference to Dhruva 1930,
states: It is argued that the Kali description of the Yuga Pura belongs to c. 50 BC but
the Purana seems to have been a work of the third century AD. Dhruva himself,
however, dates the text to the beginnings of the first century B.C., that is to say, to the
first or the second decade thereof (1930, 45).
3
Mhbh 3.186-189. Here, and only here, the Mahbhrata directly describes the end of
the Kali-Yuga (using the expression yugnta; everywhere else this expression is used in
comparisons); Gonzlez-Reimann 2010, 69; 2002, 64 ff.
4
Mitchiner 2002, 46.
2

Cyclical time

Yuga,5 for the yugnta is frequently invoked in comparisons.6 These comparisons

give us a clear image of how the end of the Yuga was thought of: It is a time of
great destruction, caused mainly by natural forces: torrential rains, implied by the
rolling clouds and the thunder; earthquakes, hinted at by the shaking produced by
Arjunas conch as well as by the fallen guardians of the quarters; terrible winds
; and an intense, resplendent Sun; but most of all fire, an all-consuming fire
that destroys everything. There are also comets or meteors, as well as negative
planetary configurations. In the Epic this destruction is often associated
with the god Rudra (iva), who is said to rage at yugnta.7 The chronological
position of the Mahbhrata, perhaps roughly contemporaneous with the Yuga
Pura, to which later additions were made at least until the prophecy of
Mrkaeya, strongly suggests that these comparisons with the end of the Yuga
were not mere innocent poetic metaphors. They rather compared events in the
Mahbhrata with horrors that might arrive to the composers of the text in a not
too distant future.
Unlike the majority of Puras, the Vyu Pura and the Brahma
Pura do not describe the miseries of the Kali-Yuga in general (as do the other
Puras), but rather of the end of the Kali-Yuga. What is more, these Puras,
unlike most others, do not describe the lengths of the Yugas in terms of divine
years. The same is true of the Mnava Dharmastra, which gives the lengths of
the Yuga in years, i.e., ordinary human years. The Kali-Yuga, for example, lasts
1'000 years. We must assume that these texts are still based on the assumption
that the end of the Kali-Yuga, with all the horrors that accompany it, is near.
Suppose now that I have been able to convince you that certain Brahmins
(perhaps most or all of them) did indeed believe, some two thousand years ago,
that the end of the world was near. What relevance would that have for
understanding the presence? The answer is: none whatsoever. This historical fact
5

This destruction at yugnta, which clearly does not refer to the transition between one
individual yuga and the next, seems to allude either to an undefined long period of time,
or to the end of the cycle of all four yugas (Kta, Tret, Dvpara and Kali) taken as a
whole. The four yugas taken together are commonly referred to as a yuga, what the
Puras would call the mahyuga, the great yuga, or the caturyuga, the fourfold yuga.
Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 71-72.
6
As shown in Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 64-73
7
Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 71.

Cyclical time

was forgotten (more precisely: reinterpreted) by subsequent traditions, and even

many modern scholars overlooked it until recently. One might argue that this kind
of information should have no place in a book that tries to understand present
Hinduism in the light of its past. As a historian, I find it yet fascinating, because
in my research I try to focus on this or that specific period of India's past, without
necessarily considering its relevance for other periods. At the time we are talking
about, the belief in impending disasters including the end of the world itself, was
no doubt very important, and may have strongly affected people's daily lives. But
I find it impossible to argue that this historical understanding contributes in any
crucial way to our understanding of present-day India.
This leaves us with two questions. The first one is: Are we aware that we
risk distorting our understanding of India's past if we try to use it to understand
the present? Will we not be tempted to do cherrypicking, choosing only those
aspects of the past that have left discernable traces in the present? Are we not in
this way creating a new tradition with the usual features that characterize
traditions, such as a selective attitude towards the past?
The second question came up earlier, and I repeat it here: To what extent
do we need to know the past in order to understand the present? This claim is
regularly presented as an argument in defence of historical studies in the broadest
sense; also Indologists use it to justify the existence of their field of study and
research.
As may have become clear from what I said earlier, I have serious
reservations about this last claim. I am not at all sure that the past, i.e. the
historian's past, always contributes to an understanding of the present. The recent
discoveries in Gandhra, and the new awareness of the way the Yugas were
initially thought of in Brahmanism, are examples: I do not see what they
contribute to an understanding of the present. But if historical studies do not
always contribute to a better understanding of the present, does this not mean that
they are just a waste of time and taxpayers' money? Or perhaps quite simply an
indulgence without benefit to society at large?
I do not think that historical studies are just a waste of time and money,
even from the perspective of present-day society. But they are not, or at least not

Cyclical time

entirely, justified by the supposed understanding they bring of the modern world.
I have proposed an altogether different justification in an article that came out in
the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft a few years ago. But
since this is not the subjectmatter of this meeting, I will say no more about it.
I conclude with a citation that I take from a paper that Sheldon Pollock
recently read here in Heidelberg. Pollock cites a lecture given by Leopold von
Ranke in 1854; it contains the following remarkable sentence (p. 20): "Jede
Epoche ist unmittelbar zu Gott, und ihr Wert beruht gar nicht auf dem, was aus
ihr hervorgeht, sondern in ihrer Existenz selbst, in ihrem Eigenen selbst." Seen
this way, the past does not derive its value and interest from its contribution to the
present. And if we wish to study any period of the past, we must try not to reduce
it to ancillary status with respect to the present.

Bibliography:
Bronkhorst, Johannes (2011): Indology, what is it good for? Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft 161(1), 115-122.
Bronkhorst, Johannes (2015): The historiography of Brahmanism. History and
Religion: Narrating a Religious Past. Ed. Bernd-Christian Otto; Susanne
Rau & Jrg Rpke. Berlin Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
(Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, 68.) Pp. 27-44..
Michaels, Axel (2004): Hinduism: Past and Present. Princeton & Oxford:
Princeton University Press.
Pollock, Sheldon (2014): "What is South Asian knowledge good for?" South Asia
Institute Papers 1, 1-22.
URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-savifadok-31831
URL: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/volltexte/2014/3183