Origin 200 BCE to 400 CE
The full span of Brahma's own existence: a hundred of his years, each year three hundred and sixty of his day-nights, each day-night one kalpa of creation followed by an equally long kalpa of dissolution. Multiplied out at 4,320,000,000 years to a single kalpa, the whole life comes to roughly 311.04 trillion years. Sanskrit tradition names the whole span a Para and its midpoint a Parardha; the present moment is reckoned to fall in the second half, the Dvitiya Parardha, within the fifty first of Brahma's hundred years. When this span closes, Brahma himself along with the three worlds passes away in a greater dissolution, beyond the nightly renewal a single kalpa brings.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodThe highest named unit in this atlas's yuga vocabulary, standing directly above Kalpa: one hundred years of Brahma, each year three hundred sixty day-nights, each day-night one kalpa of creation and one of equal-length dissolution, so thirty six thousand kalpas in all. The single kalpa presently underway falls within the fifty first of Brahma's hundred years. 1 Origin of the NamePara is Sanskrit for the far or highest measure, the whole extent of something; Parardha combines it with ardha, half, naming the halfway point of that whole span rather than a separate unit of its own. 1 Rival Systems
A Rival System's AttributionManu's own reckoning of cosmic time stops at the single kalpa, Brahma's day paired with an equally long night; the text never extends the count to a hundred such years or names the terms Para or Parardha, both of which are the Vishnu Purana's own elaboration rather than Manu's. 3 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Vishnu Purana: a hundred of Brahma's own years, each built from his day and his equally long night, make up the whole span of his existence, and half of that whole span has already elapsed. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
The full span of Brahma's own existence in Hindu Puranic cosmology, a hundred of his years built from the kalpa and its following night, the largest cyclical unit this atlas records in that tradition.
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