\textit{Myriad} concerns: Indian macro-time intervals (\textit{yugas}, \textit{sandhyās} and \textit{kalpas}) as systems of number

DOI10.1007/S10781-013-9196-1MaRDI QIDQ389341zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors W. Randolph Kloetzli

Publication date 20 January 2014

Published in Journal of Indian Philosophy (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-013-9196-1

zbMATH Keywords

acrophonic number system Apollonius of Perga Hindu decimal number system kalpa sexagesimal number system yuga

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of Greek and Roman mathematics (01A20) History of Indian mathematics (01A32)

Review text

After a thorough analysis of the main texts in which the \textit{yuga/kalpa} system is put forward, the author finds that ``the \textit{yuga/kalpa} system can be understood as a system of number and notation; the \textit{yuga} built around three powers of ten (hundreds, thousands and the 10,000 of the \textit{caturyuga}; the \textit{kalpa} with a second order of number, 10,000 as its basis, multiplied by a thousand or thousands. He then raises the following questions: ``What might be the basis for these formulae of thousands and ten thousands? And what logic might limit these formulae to just three names for powers of ten when many terms for larger powers of ten were known to Indian authors? (p.\ 638) The answer arrived at is: ``The \textit{yugas/kalpas} would then be a formula for the totality of possible numerical expression in three systems of number -- Hindu decimal, Greek acrophonic and Babylonian sexagesimal. So, what we find in the epics and \textit{Purāṇas} and presumably in the corresponding Buddhist and Jain speculation about the divisions of time, are reformulated or reimagined \textit{yugas} -- the joining of systems of number expressed as measures of time. ``Larger numbers and correspondingly greater units of time derive from taking the \textit{kalpa}, arguably the \textit{koṭi} or 107 divine years, as a new base for numeration and multiplying it by the hundred years of the lifetimes of Brahmā. This approach to large numbers has a nearly identical counterpart in the \textit{Lalitavistara} where the Buddha provides the names of ever larger numbers beginning with the base unit of the \textit{koṭi} and increasing by powers of one hundred. This strategy appears to change in the Buddhist approach to the 64 macro-time intervals of its \textit{kalpas}, apparently built around the \textit{myriad myriad} rather than the \textit{koṭi}. (p.\ 648) The meta-analysis of \textit{Cik Damadian} [``Le code des universaux linguistiques et des langages, Revue Roumaine de Linguistique. Cahiers de Linguistique Théorique et Appliquée 17, No. 1, 67--86 (1980)] could have been taken into consideration to explain the role of 64 in Buddhist texts, a matter left open in this paper.

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