Page 569 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

350 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCfiC HOME

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. Ra~gacharya 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 MahabMrata are
concerned, they preserve for us a reminiscence of a cycle
of 10,000 years comprising the four yugas, the KFita, the Treta
the Dvapara and the Kali; and that the Kali yuga of one
thousand years had been already set in. In other words, Manu
and Vyasa obviously speak only of a period of 10,000, or,
including the Sandhyas, of 12,000 ordinary or human ( not
divine ) years, from the beginning of the Kpta 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 apparently assigned
to one yuga. It is not, therefore, unlikely that the Atharva
Veda takes the Kpta, the TretA, the Dvapara and the Kali
together, and uses the word yuga to denote the combined dura-
tion of all these in the passage referred to above. Now consider-
ing the fact that the Kpta age is said to commence after a
pralaya or the deluge, Manu and Vyasa must be understood
to have preserved herein an old tradition that about 10,000
years before their time ( supposing them to have lived at the
beginning of the Kali age of 1200 years ), the new order of things
commenced with the Kpta age; or , in other words, the deluge
which destroyed the old order of things occurred about 10,000
years before their time. The tradition has been very much
distorted owing to devices adopted in later times to make the
traditional chronology suit the circumstances of the day. But
still it is not difficult to ascertain the original character of the
tradition; and when we do so, we are led to conclude that the
beginning of the new order of things, or to put it more scienti-