“Astronomy and the Vedic Calendar” (SB 3.21.18)
Thompson offers a detailed account of the Vedic conception of time. He then compares time reversibility equations considered within contemporary physics with the cyclic process of cosmic creation and annihilation described in the Purāṇas. Thompson also discusses the Eastern lunar calendar and its 360-day year.
TRANSCRIPT: Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 21, Text 18. “Astronomy and the Vedic Calendar.” Alachua - November 21, 1996 / (081
[Text 18]:
[Your wheel, which has three] naves, rotates around the axis of the imperishable Brahman. It has thirteen spokes, 360 joints, six rims and numberless leaves carved upon it. Though its revolution cuts short the lifespan of the entire creation, this wheel of tremendous velocity cannot touch the lifespan of the devotees of the Lord.
Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:
The time factor cannot affect the span of life of the devotees. In Bhagavad-gītā it is stated that a little execution of devotional service saves one from the greatest danger. The greatest danger is transmigration of the soul from one body to another, and only devotional service to the Lord can stop this process. It is stated in the Vedic literatures, hariṁ vinā na mṛtiṁ taranti: without the mercy of the Lord, one cannot stop the cycle of birth and death. In Bhagavad-gītā it is stated that only by understanding the transcendental nature of the Lord and His activities, His appearance and disappearance can one stop the cycle of death and go back to Him. The time factor is divided into many fractions of moments, hours, months, years, periods, seasons, etc. All the divisions in this verse are determined according to the astronomical calculations of Vedic literature. There are six seasons, called ṛtus, and there is the period of four months called cāturmāsya. Three periods of four months complete one year. According to Vedic astronomical calculations, there are thirteen months. The thirteenth month is called adhi-māsa or mala-māsa and is added every third year. The time factor, however, cannot touch the lifespan of the devotees. In another verse it is stated that when the sun rises and sets it takes away the life of all living entities, but it cannot take away the life of those who are engaged in devotional service. Time is compared here to a big wheel which has 360 joints, six rims in the shape of seasons, and numberless leaves in the shape of moments. It rotates on the eternal existence, Brahman.
om ajñāna-timirāndhasya
jñānāñjana-śalākayā
cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena
tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ
śrī-caitanya-mano-'bhīṣṭaṁ sthāpitaṁ yena bhū-tale
svayaṁ rūpaḥ kadā mahyaṁ dadāti sva-padāntikam
So, the translation again:
Your wheel, which has three naves, rotates around the axis of the imperishable Brahman. It has thirteen spokes, 360 joints, six rims and numberless leaves carved upon it. Though its revolution cuts short the lifespan of the entire creation, this wheel of tremendous velocity cannot touch the lifespan of the devotees of the Lord.
I just happened to see an advertisement for a tragic movie. It had a picture of a young woman's face and it said: In three months she will not be able to recognize her face; in six months she won't be able to use her hands; in a year, only a miracle can save her. Apparently, it's a story about someone who has some irreversible disease, which is going to slowly reduce their body to its original elements. So, looking at that ad, I was just thinking: Well, all you have to do is multiply the times a little bit and this applies to anybody. Say, well, let's see: In 30 years you won't recognize your face. Surely in 50 years, only a miracle can save you.
So, there's this time factor which carries things away. And here it is referred to using the idea of the year as a wheel. So, there are a number of things that can be said about this. I was thinking one interesting point has to do with the idea that everything passes away. This is a bit mysterious. It turns out in physics, if you look at the basic equations, the physicists have governing matter, it turns out that they're time reversible, which means that you can run everything backwards. And that means in one sense, nothing ever passes away according to those equations.
[5:02]
It's a bit of a paradoxical situation which caused quite a bit of controversy in physics, because we see that things do pass away. But if the fundamental equations of physics say that things don't pass away, well, what's going on there? And it turns out if you look into it, a lot of issues come into play because what happens is according to the laws of physics – large scale structures that you can see, such as what you see in this room: people's bodies and the structure of the room and so forth – these are gradually transformed into submicroscopic patterns in the course of time. So, that means that in one sense they never pass away because they continue to exist on a sub-microscopic level.
But on the other hand, they do pass away in the sense that obviously when a pattern becomes submicroscopic, it's no longer part of our experience. So things are continually going out of large scale existence and into submicroscopic existence. But since the equations of physics are time reversible, that means the opposite thing has to be happening. So, things must be continually passing from sub-microscopic state of existence up to a large-scale state. And that includes everything that we see. So that's an implication of physics. But it's interesting to see that actually that's not accepted because no one is accepting that, for example, the pattern that represents you, let's say a hundred years ago existed on a submicroscopic level and now it's just become manifest. Whereas it will be accepted that the pattern that defines you, as a physical body that is, in a hundred years will continue to exist as a submicroscopic pattern. So, as far as physics goes, it's completely symmetrical. But what you find is nonacceptance of the first thing and acceptance of the second, which is a little bit of a paradox hidden in modern science.
But of course, the trouble with the first idea, namely that your existence was in the form of a submicroscopic pattern, that becomes amplified. One wonders: Well, where did the submicroscopic pattern come from? Now, of course, it's the fact that, on one level this is accepted that this happens because when an embryo develops from a fertilized egg, you have a pattern within the egg, which is certainly on a microscopic level, namely, on the level of the DNA making up the genes and so forth. And then that is read out and somehow transformed to produce the ultimate child that emerges. So, you do have things on a submicroscopic level coming up to the macroscopic.
But the question is, where did the patterns come from on the submicroscopic level? And if you look at this picture of physics objectively, you'll see that what you ultimately would have to conclude is that either it was there from eternity on a submicroscopic level or else some other agency had to insert it at some point. And that would be a process of creation, which is a little bit of a problem from the modern scientific perspective.
But anyway, what you do find is that there is a symmetry as far as physics goes between creation and annihilation. And curiously enough, often in Vedic literature you also have a symmetry between creation and annihilation in the material cosmos. And then in the spiritual world, you don't have either of those principles. You just have everything eternally existing. So, the process of generating the material energy is one in which the two principles of tamo-guṇa and rajo-guṇa are introduced. Tamo-guṇa is the principle that destroys everything and breaks everything down. And rajo-guṇa is the principle of creation that builds everything up. These are sort of two sides of the same coin. So anyway, some observations about time.
[10:01]
Ultimately time is a bit of a mystery. What is time anyway? Now, it's been said that astronomers don't address the question of “what is time.” They just measure it, which is a lot easier than figuring out what it ultimately is. So, I just thought I'd mention something about the different numbers pointed out in this verse. Curious thing about this verse is that this is very much like the kind of thing that you can find in the Ṛg Veda. You'll find verses almost identical to this in the Ṛg Veda. It refers to the year, for example, as having 360 days, which is interesting. And if you look through the entire Bhāgavatam, you will not anywhere find a reference to the year as having 365 days – it's 360 days in every instance. But this is a reference to a more sophisticated system based on lunar months.
It turns out that in the Vedic system, the month is typically lunar. There's some solar months systems also. But a lunar month is determined by the phases of the moon. And it can go from full moon to full moon. In our calendar that's how the months are measured. It's also possible for the lunar month to go from new moon to new moon. So, if it goes from new moon to new moon, that's called amanta. And full moon to full moon is called parimanta. And in most of northern India today, the parimanta system is used, but it used to be that the amanta system was more common. And in South India, I understand that that is still the one that is used.
Now as it happens, a lunar month is just short of 30 days in length. Actually it's 29.53 days. And this creates various complexities because, well, for one thing, you don't have an integer number of days in a month. So, what they did was take that 29.53 days and divide it into 30 equal intervals. Those are called tithis, and so then you have 30 of those in a month. So it works out very nicely. It turns out that Ekādaśī, for example, is a tithi. Ekādaśī is not an ordinary 24 hour day, but it's one of these 30th of a month divisions.
So, now as it turns out, if you have 12 months, which are about 29 point something days, you see, that doesn't come out even to 360 days. It comes out a little bit short of 360. So what do you do? Well, Śrīla Prabhupāda is pointing out here what in fact is done. It turns out you come about 10 days short and so in three years you're about 30 days short, so you add another month and that's an adhi-māsa and that's the 13th month that's being referred to in this verse. And it turns out that there are fairly sophisticated calculations for doing that. I was looking into that and there's an interesting story there having to do with the beginning of Kali-yuga. Now we say that Kali-yuga began 5,000 years ago, but in fact there's an exact date that Kali-yuga began on: February 18th, 3102 BC. And let me be more exact. Kali-yuga began at 12 o'clock in the morning on February 18th, 3102 BC.
Now, this isn't like the Bishop of Ussher calculating when the creation occurred, which was 4,004 BC. It turns out you can find out what Vedic month that date corresponds to. And in fact, if you go back in time and consider all the adhi-māsas and so forth, going back to that date, you find that that date is the first of Caitra in 3,102 BC, which is interesting because there are different systems also in India for the beginning of the year and Śrīla Prabhupāda alludes to that here. Pretty much the system we follow, although we don't really talk about it much, is the one in which Mārgaśīrṣa is the beginning of the year. That's the next month after Kārttika. In other words, Kārttika ends the year and then it begins again with Mārgaśīrṣa. But another system is, it begins with Caitra. So, Kali-yuga then begins on the first of Caitra, which is appropriate.
[15:48]
Now, the interesting thing is astronomically, it's also quite true. If you look at that date, first of Caitra 3102 BC, you'll find that that's a new moon day. In fact, on that date, the sun and the moon are precisely lined up, which means it's a new moon. Another interesting feature is these month names are named after constellations of stars. So, Kārttika for example, is named after Krittika, and Krittika is the Pleiades. Any morning you can see that before maṇgala-ārati. So, Caitra is named after Citra, which is another star.
There are 27 nakṣatras with different names and the months are named after them. And the system was that a month is named after a nakṣatra in which the moon becomes full during that month. That's the original system. So, it turns out that if you look at that date, 3102 BC, the first of Caitra, and then you go 15 days and you come to the full moon, the moon actually has a conjunction with Citra. So it's an exact match up.
Now it turns out that there are a lot of other curious features about this date. It seems that all of the planets are lined up at that date. Now they're not lined up perfectly because they never line up perfectly in a straight line, but they come as close as they ever come. And in fact, one way to calculate that date is go backwards with an astronomy ephemeris and look for alignments of all of the planets in which the sun and moon go opposite Citra. And you'll get that date, you'll get exactly, the 18th of February 3102 BC. So, the date is completely determined astronomically.
Another curious thing about it is if you look at Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which supposedly weren't even known prior to 100 years ago, you'll find that they're lined up at that date also. So, that's just a little bit about the Kali-yuga date. Of course, the idea is that, that's a change of yugas. So, everything lines up as a new starting point at that time. That's the concept behind it. So, when we say that Kṛṣṇa's pastimes and so on took place 5,000 years ago, you can make a much more precise statement, as it turns out. There's a lot more to that than meets the eye. So, I'll stop there. Are there any questions? Yeah.
Question: [unclear]
Answer: I couldn't quite hear. What?
Q: [unclear]
A: Advantage to the lunar calendar versus the solar calendar? Well, one advantage of the lunar calendar is that if you can count and look at the sky, you can tell what month it is. In fact, it was a very practical system for people who knew the constellations because when the moon is full or near to being full, you just see where it is in the sky and by what constellation it is near, you know what the month is. And in practice you have to do a little bit of simple calculation in order to know where you are in the month. But basically speaking, that would mean that anybody, let's say a farmer or cowherd boy or whatever, could know what the date was just by looking at the sky. So, in that sense, it was a practical system, whereas nowadays I don't think we can do that. How are we going to know what the date is unless we have a calendar?
[20:39]
On the other hand, you get into this complexity of the added months and so forth. So, that becomes quite complicated. The Sūrya-siddhānta has a calculation for that that uses a series of 15 digit numbers. The neat thing though is the calculation works all the way back to that Kali-yuga date. I checked it out. And that means it works for the last 5,000 years without making a mistake of a single day in the entire time, which is not bad. But anyway, yeah?
Q: [unclear]
A: Excuse me.
Q: [unclear]
A: That is about Gaura-pūrṇimā, February 18th. You see, there's a gradual shifting of things as the centuries go by. But yeah, that's about Gaura-pūrṇimā time, roughly speaking.
Q: [unclear]
A: Excuse Me?
Q: [unclear]
A: I couldn't quite hear. What?
Q: [unclear]
A: Oh, well the Western calendar is a little bit strange if you look at September, October, November, December, because it's seven, eight, nine, ten. So you're off by two. So, at some point, some change was made in the month system in the West because we're off by two months. December should be 12, not 10.
Q: [unclear]
A: It's hard to say. The Western calendar is solar of course. In India they also have a solar system. The date given for Lord Caitanya's birth that Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura gave is based on solar months. So, because what was it? The 23rd of Phalgūn, something like that. It's not a lunar month. That's a solar month. In the solar month you just take the 365 and a quarter days and divide them into 12 equal units. So, that has nothing to do with the moon necessarily. A full moon can land anywhere in a solar month. But in one sense it's easier as far as the year is concerned. Murli Vādaka Prabhu?
Q: [unclear]
A: It's a rather helter-skelter theory if you think about it, because it means that, just like everything that you have in this room, all the people in it, all the detailed features of them would be stored up, let's say a million years ago in the form of tiny situations in the position of atoms. So, all that would have to be encoded in that way, in such a way. Then as time passes, that information comes out and finally becomes manifest to form the patterns of people and so on that you see in this room. So, it's just like a completely un-unified catalog of information. We just have to say that all that data is just there. And it was there a million years ago because it was there 1,000,001 years ago, and that's because it was there 1,000,002 years ago and so on ad infinitum. So there's something a little bit unsatisfactory about that.
You could call that the “chaotic catalog theory.” But, the Kṛṣṇa theory means you have to go beyond atoms and numbers and so forth and describe something that's essentially unified. Of course, a lot of scientists will jump ship immediately as soon as you start saying something like that. But, the idea is that you have an eternally existing source that has unity and harmony in it, whereas this just a “chaotic catalog” just has this little bit of information and that little bit of unrelated information and so on, just there somehow.
[25:27]
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, the trouble with the simple idea is that ultimately information cannot be compressed beyond a certain limit. Nowadays, you can learn about this with computers because information compression has now become an important thing for computers. To cram more stuff onto your hard disk you have an information compression algorithm. Now the trouble is, if you compress it too much, you can't get it back. It's like what I was saying about reversible and irreversible transformations. So, information is compressible to a point. Then if you compress it more, then you lose information. So, if you say everything was simple, that would imply unlimited compressibility of information. But is that possible? Such a thing hasn't been demonstrated and there's very good evidence against it.
So, information theory goes against Darwin's theory of evolution. Or what it amounts to is, it says, Darwin's theory of evolution ultimately depends on pure chance. All the talk about physical processes of selection and so on really misses the essence of the thing. The essence of it is pure chance. Yeah?
Q: [unclear]
A: It happens on various occasions. Alignments that good happen every, let's say 3000 years or so. I checked it for the last 6,000 years. Computers are great fun. What I did was just get an ephemeris program and I had it check every day for the last 6,000 years. That is from 4,000 BC up to 2000 AD. And it ran for three days on a Pentium. But I got a read out of, you know, the planetary positions every day for the last 6,000 years. So, I know how many alignments there were. And it turned out there were three as good as the one in Kali Yuga. And there were two others as it turned out. So, it's a pretty darn good alignment.
Q: [unclear]
A: Events at the others? The other dates? Well, you see the trouble with that question is that history is full of disasters. Practically any year you can think of, something horrible happens. So, it's hard to say, but the two other dates, one of them was about 1500 BC and the other one was about 1000 BC. So yeah, they came close together, but those were the only ones. There were none in the AD period, curiously. So, that's the way it worked out. Yeah.
Q: [unclear]
A: That's a metaphorical wheel, too. Yeah, it's a metaphorical wheel, although you can see it every night if you'd like, the wheel of time, all the stars spin around every night. You can say the big dipper is like the hand of a clock because the big dipper never... Well, it's under the horizon for part of the time. If you could see the little dipper more clearly, that would be a really nice clock hand. But it's hard to see. But you'd see it just spins around once every night like a big clock. And then if you note the stars every morning, if you look at the pattern of stars, you'll see it shifted a little bit. For example, the Pleiades just before maṇgala-ārati, now the Pleiades are over there. You go back to about June and they were just on the horizon coming up just before maṇgala-ārati. So, things are gradually shifting.
[30:24]
So in a sense, you have a real clock in the sky. But it's also metaphorical because 360… what have you got? Joints it says. Well, that refers to days obviously, 13 spokes would be months and so forth. So, in the Fifth Canto where it refers to the chariot of the sun, it's also a metaphorical chariot because it's made of months and seasons and so forth. So...
Q: [unclear]
A: Pṛthu… Priyavrata, right.
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, the sun isn't metaphorical. I would say the chariot of the sun described in the Fifth Canto is metaphorical because it explicitly says that it's made of seasons, months and so forth. So, that's metaphorical.
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, they're probably not metaphorical.
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, I've always wondered about that because not only that, the Vālikhilyas are the size of a thumb, right? So you have the sun, which is rather large by all estimates. And then the sages in front of it are not just our size, which would be extremely small compared to the sun, but they're the size of a thumb, as a matter of fact. So, well there....Pardon me? Ah… who's thumb? Ah… that's a good question. I have to be careful with those sizes of thumbs.
But, in any case, of course there's a story about the Vālikhilyas and Garuḍa. It seems that once upon a time there was a gigantic tortoise and a gigantic, I believe, elephant, and they were fighting since time in memorial. I almost think that they were supposed to be an incarnation of Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra in order to carry out their famous feud. So, they were truly in the spirit of feuding. So, this gigantic elephant and gigantic tortoise we're battling away. And meanwhile, Garuḍa was quite young. He had just hatched out, and he was a little bit awkward as a youth. Anyway, he was hungry, and Garuḍa is not a vegetarian. So, he was directed to eat the elephant and the tortoise to put them out of their misery.
So, he grabbed one in each set of talons and flew off with them. And then he had to find a place to land in order to eat them as any proper bird would do. So, he landed on the limb of this gigantic tree and the limb was many miles across or something like that. And of course, his weight was so great that the limb broke off with a tremendous cracking sound. And he realized at that moment that the Vālikhilyas were on the limb of that tree. Excuse me?
Q: [unclear]
A: That's the length of the branch. Okay. Well, I mean, in 800 miles you can have a pretty big thumb. So, anyway, the branch cracked off and Garuḍa was warned; "Well, don't offend to these sages. If they curse you that would not be good." So, he grabbed onto the branch, still holding onto the elephant and the tortoise, and I forget exactly how it ended up, but he managed to gently deposit the sages and then have his meal. So anyway, small note on the Vālikhilyas. Pardon me?
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, anyway. So, all glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda.
[NOTE: this audio recording ends with an after class conversation that is difficult to hear. Part of it is transcribed below.]
Q: [unclear]... when you made that video I thought you were trying to show [unclear]. So, you showed physically the graphic of the [unclear] like it really existed but you're saying that it doesn't though? That's what I'm saying, like why did you make that? Cause I thought you were trying to show us the physical [unclear]
A: That's what I did in the video. No. [unclear]. It doesn't say that Bhū-maṇḍala was metaphorical.
Q: [unclear]
A: Bhū-maṇḍala. It doesn't say that's metaphorical. So that's described as having real inhabitants and also doesn't say that the sages are metaphorical, but it says the wheel is made of so many months and seasons and so on.
Q: So, that's what I'm saying, why did you show the video then?
A: Well you see what I'm showing in that video, and the purpose of the video, is presenting things from the scientific viewpoint also. And what I'm showing is that the dimensions work out according to astronomy.
Q: So what you should say is...
A: What I did say – if you listen to what I said in the video – you hear me say, in fact, that even Bhū-maṇḍala is a map. That's what I actually said. I said, well this can be viewed as a map. And I even showed it visually in the beginning of the video. I faded out the colorful picture and showed a diagram made of fine lines...
Q: Right.
A: ...and said, this can be seen as a map of the solar system.
Q: I was just under the impression that the chariot wheel is real… [unclear] or something like that.
A: I did say that.
Q: You did?
A: Oh yeah.
Q: Okay. [unclear]
A: Oh yeah. [unclear]
Q: Cause I know there's a different dimension in that whole thing with the astrological [unclear], there's so many different dimensions.
A: Well, you see, there are higher dimensions...
Q: Right. Which is hard to build physically out of material.
A: Well, you have to explain the whole thing in terms of… physically, how higher dimensions can work. And that's another whole subject [unclear]... talk about quite a lot also.
Q: But that would be, you're addressing in your video also.
A: In that video, no. That's too much to go into in that one video. Basically there's two aspects to the approach in presenting Vedic cosmology. One is to say that there's real astronomy there – it's not just some mythological story. You see, if it's just a mythological story then you wouldn't expect the numbers to correspond to actually measurable in astronomy, but they do.
Q: So, that proves that those numbers are real. That's your point?
A: My point is it proves that whoever came up with this, really knew something about science as we have today. In other words, you're not just going to have a mythological story.
Q: Right.
A: And my point is, even an astronomer of today would have to agree that there's something really scientific in the Fifth Canto. And that's a big admission to make in the beginning because the standard response to something like the Fifth Canto would be: this is just poetry made up by some totally unscientific person. So… but my point is: no, there's real astronomy there. So, that's the first point. Now, once that is accepted, then the point I'm going to make is that there are higher dimensions to be described also. So, that's why we don't literally see all that cosmic geography...
Q: Of the big tree and all that stuff?
A: Where's the tree with branches 800 miles long?