Category
Yugas (World Ages)
10 entries. Click any to see everything it connects to.
The yugas are the four world ages of Hindu cosmology (Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali), which run in sequence, each shorter than the last, before the cycle begins again. The lengths given in the Puranas are enormous and vary between texts. The scheme is a cyclical rather than a linear account of time, and the present age is identified as the Kali Yuga.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 10
- Size of the Traditional Set
- 4 world-ages 1
Origins
- Origin Period
- Set out in the Sanskrit epics and Puranas, roughly the fourth century BCE to the tenth century CE; the figures given differ between texts 2
- Place of Origin
- South Asia; the scheme is classical Hindu cosmology and is also received, with different lengths, in Jain and Buddhist cosmologies 2
- Origin of the Name
- Sanskrit yuga, "yoke", and so a span joined together: an age or generation. 1
Structure
- Structure
- Four ages, Satya (Krita), Treta, Dvapara and Kali, each shorter and less virtuous than the last, together making a mahayuga; a thousand mahayugas make a kalpa, one day of Brahma. The lengths given in the Puranas vary. 1
Status
- Status Today
- Living tradition, practised today 2
Learn More
The Four World-Ages
The yugas are the four world-ages of Hindu cosmology, Satya (or Krita), Treta, Dvapara and Kali, which run in sequence, each shorter and more degenerate than the last, before the cycle begins again. Satya Yuga is an age of truth and virtue; each following age sees dharma decline, until Kali Yuga, the present age, the shortest and darkest, after which the cycle renews.
The lengths given in the Puranas are enormous and vary between texts, reaching into hundreds of thousands of years, with the four together making a mahayuga and a thousand mahayugas making a kalpa, a day of Brahma.
Decline and renewal
The scheme frames history as a long decline from an original perfection, with the present understood as Kali Yuga, and it carries a strong moral and religious charge: the erosion of virtue across the ages, and the promise of renewal when the cycle turns. Similar four-age schemes of decline appear in other traditions, notably the Greek and Roman ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron.
The atlas gives each yuga its character, its traditional length, and its place in the cycle. The yugas are the largest of the temporal cycles gathered under Cosmic Cycles.
Enter a year to compare these entries as the atlas records them at that moment. Leave it empty for the present. A year before the common era is entered with a minus sign, so 44 BCE is minus 44.
Four Ages
4
Puranic Cosmic Cycles
5
Modern Reinterpretation
1