The end of the Kali Yuga in 2025: Unraveling the mysteries of the Yuga Cycle

Note: This article has been published on the Graham Hancock website, Viewzone and Cakravartin. It has been translated into German, and published in the Nexus Magazine, vol. 44, December-January 2013. An abridged version of this article has also appeared in the Science to Sage Magazine, August 2012 issue.
 

Part 1: Unraveling the Yuga Cycle Timeline

A number of ancient cultures believed in a Cycle of World Ages in which we gradually descend from a state of spiritual perfection and material abundance to one of ignorance and scarcity. In ancient India, this was called the Yuga Cycle. The Yuga Cycle doctrine tells us that we are now living in the Kali Yuga; the age of darkness, when moral virtue and mental capabilities reach their lowest point in the cycle. The Indian epic The Mahabharata describes the Kali Yuga as the period when the “World Soul” is Black in hue; only one quarter of virtue remains, which slowly dwindles to zero at the end of the Kali Yuga. Men turn to wickedness; disease, lethargy, anger, natural calamities, anguish and fear of scarcity dominate. Penance, sacrifices and religious observances fall into disuse. All creatures degenerate. Change passes over all things, without exception.

 

The Kali Yuga (Iron Age) was preceded by three others Yugas: Satya or Krita Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age). In the Mahabharata, Hanuman gave the following description of the Yuga Cycle to the Pandava prince Bhima:

"The Krita Yuga was so named because there was but one religion, and all men were saintly: therefore they were not required to perform religious ceremonies… Men neither bought nor sold; there were no poor and no rich; there was no need to labour, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will…The Krita Yuga was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred, or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. The universal soul was White… the identification of self with the universal soul was the whole religion of the Perfect Age. In the Treta Yuga sacrifices began, and the World Soul became Red; virtue lessened a quarter. Mankind sought truth and performed religious ceremonies; they obtained what they desired by giving and by doing. In the Dwapara Yuga the aspect of the World Soul was Yellow: religion lessened one-half. The Veda was divided into four parts, and although some had knowledge of the four Vedas, others knew but three or one. Mind lessened, Truth declined, and there came desire and diseases and calamities; because of these men had to undergo penances. It was a decadent Age by reason of the prevalence of sin.”[1]

And now we are living in the dark times of the Kali Yuga, when goodness and virtue has all but disappeared from the world. But when did the Kali Yuga begin? And when does it end?

The Kali Yuga Start Date

In spite of the elaborate theological framework which describes the characteristics of this age, the start and end dates of the Kali Yuga remain shrouded in mystery. The popularly accepted date for the beginning of the Kali Yuga is 3102 BCE, thirty-five years after the conclusion of the great battle of the Mahabharata. This is remarkably close to the proposed beginning of the current “Great Cycle” of the Mayan Long Count Calendar in 3114 BCE. 

It is generally believed that the start date of the Kali Yuga - 17/18 February, 3102 BC - was computed on the basis of the information in the Sanskrit astronomical treatise, the Surya Siddhanta, according to which the five “geocentric planets” (i.e. the planets visible to the naked eye) - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - were aligned to 0° of Aries (near the star zeta Piscium) at the beginning of the Kali Yuga.

However, modern astronomical calculations have revealed that, on 18 February, 3102 BCE, the five geocentric planets occupied an arc of roughly 41° in the sky. The longitudes of the planets, calculated using P.V. Neugebauer's Chronological Tables, show that Saturn's distance from Jupiter was 41°. This cannot be considered as a conjunction by any means. Far more spectacular "alignment" of planets has occurred in the preceding and succeeding centuries. 

Most importantly, the Surya Siddhanta does not ever specify that such an alignment of planets took place at the beginning of the Kali Yuga. On the contrary, the Surya Siddhanta explicitly states that this conjunction of planets at 0°  of Aries takes place at the end of the Golden Age (Satya / Krita Yuga). The text states: “Now, at the end of the Golden Age (Krita Yuga), all the planets, by their mean motion – excepting however their nodes and apsides – are in conjunction in the first of Aries.”[2]

 

Unfortunately, however, this simple statement was misrepresented by some of the early commentators, in their eagerness to find an astronomical rationale for the 3102 BCE date, and it has subsequently been promulgated as a fact.

The general understanding in ancient Hindu astronomy was that at the beginning of the present order of things, all the planets commenced their movement together at 0° of Aries; and all the planets return to the same position in the heavens, at certain fixed intervals, resulting in a universal conjunction. As per the Surya Siddhanta, this conjunction takes place at the end of the Golden Age.

Similar information regarding the conjunction of planets is also present in the ancient Greek texts. In the Timaeus, Plato refers to a “Perfect Year” which elapses at that moment when the sun, moon and the planets all return to the same relative position despite all their intervening reversals.[3] This idea was echoed by the 3^rd century Roman writer Censorinus, who said that the orbits of the sun, moon and the five wandering planets complete one “Great Year of Heraclitus”, when they are brought back together at the same time to the same sign where once they were.[4] 

 

This “Great Year” which is known by various other names – “Perfect Year”, “Platonic Year”, “Supreme Year of Aristotle” etc. - was variously represented as being of 12,954 years (Cicero) or 10,800 years (Heraclitus) duration. 

There can be no doubt that the 3102 BCE date for the beginning of the Kali Yuga was not based on any information in the Surya Siddhanta or any other astronomical text. The date virtually pops out of nowhere. It is sometimes claimed that the date can be derived from a statement made by the noted astronomer Aryabhatta in the Sanskrit text Aryabhatiya, where he writes that:

 “When sixty times sixty years (i.e. 3600 years) and three quarter Yugas had elapsed, twenty-three years had then passed since by birth.”[5]

This means that Aryabhatta had composed the text when he was 23 years old and 3600 years of the current Yuga had elapsed. The problem here is that we do not know when Aryabhatta was born, or when he composed the Aryabhatiya. He does not even mention the Kali Yuga by name, and simply states that 3600 years of the Yuga had elapsed.  Scholars generally assume that the Kali Yuga had started in 3102 BCE, and then use this statement to justify that the Aryabhatiya was composed in 499 CE. However, we cannot use the reverse logic i.e. we cannot say that the Kali Yuga must have started in 3102 BCE since the Aryabhatiya was composed in 499 CE, for we do not know when Aryabhatta lived or completed his work.

Another source is the Aihole inscription of Pulakesin II of Badami, which was incised on the expiry of 3735 years after the Bharata war and 556 years of the Saka kings. If we take the beginning of the Saka Era as 78 CE, then the Bharata War took place in 3102 BCE, and the Kali Yuga, which started 35 years after the Bharata War, began on 3067 BCE. But we must remember that there is an Old Saka Era as well, whose beginning date is disputed, and for which various dates have been proposed by scholars ranging from 83 BCE – 383 BCE.[6] If the Aihole inscription refers to the Old Saka Era, then the Kali Era starts a few hundred years before 3102 BCE.

The truth is that, there is no text or inscription which gives us an unambiguous date for the beginning of the Kali Yuga. There is no astronomical basis for the start date, nor do we have any evidence that Aryabhatta or any other astronomer had calculated the date. Before the 6th century CE, the date does not figure in any Sanskrit text or inscription. It could have been invented by later-day astronomers or adopted from some other calendar. The vagueness surrounding the origin of this very important chronological marker makes its validity highly suspect.

The Yuga Cycle Duration

The task of figuring out this date from the ancient Sanskrit texts, however, is fraught with difficulties, since a number of inaccuracies have crept into the Yuga Cycle information contained within them. In many Sanskrit texts the 12,000 year duration of the Yuga Cycle was artificially inflated to an abnormally high value of 4,320,000 years by introducing a multiplication factor of “360”, which was represented as the number of “human years” which constitutes a “divine year”. The renowned Sanskrit scholar and nationalist leader of India, B.G.Tilak had mentioned in his book, The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), that:

“The writers of the Puranas, many of which appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian, era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali Yuga had passed away...An attempt was, therefore, made to extend the duration of the Kali Yuga by converting 1000 (or 1200) ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human years…this solution of the difficulty was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years.”[7]

However, certain important Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata [8] and the Laws of Manu [9], which scholars believe were composed earlier than the Puranas, still retain the original value of the Yuga Cycle as 12,000 years. The Mahabharata explicitly mentions that the Yuga Cycle duration is based on the days and nights of human beings. The Zoroastrians also believed in a Cycle of the Ages of 12,000 years’ duration. The Great Year or Perfect Year of the Greeks was variously represented as being of 12,954 years (Cicero) or 10,800 years (Heraclitus) duration. Surely, the Yuga Cycle cannot be of different durations for different cultures.

In the book The Holy Science (1894), Sri Yukteswar clarified that a complete Yuga Cycle takes 24,000 years, and is comprised of an ascending cycle of 12,000 years when virtue gradually increases and a descending cycle of another 12,000 years, in which virtue gradually decreases. Hence, after we complete a 12,000 year descending cycle from Satya Yuga -> Kali Yuga, the sequence reverses itself, and an ascending cycle of 12,000 years begins which goes from Kali Yuga -> Satya Yuga. Yukteswar states that, 

“Each of these periods of 12,000 years brings a complete change, both externally in the material world, and internally in the intellectual or electric world, and is called one of the Daiva Yugas or Electric Couple.”[10]

In this complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years duration, there are two back-to-back Kali Yugas – a descending Kali Yuga and an ascending Kali Yuga - as well as two back-to-back Satya Yugas. 

Figure 1: An ascending and descending Yuga Cycle of 12000 years constitute the 24000-year complete Yuga Cycle, as postulated by Sri Yukteswar. Credit: Bibhu Dev Misra.

The 24,000 year duration of the complete Yuga Cycle closely approximates the Precessional Year of 25,765 years, which is the time taken by the sun to “precess” i.e. move backwards, through the 12 zodiac constellations. Interestingly, the Surya Siddhanta specifies a value of 54 arc seconds per year for precession, as against the current value of 50.29 arc seconds per year. This translates into a Precessional Year of exactly 24,000 years! This raises the possibility that the current observed value of precession may simply be a temporary deviation from the mean.

The concept of an ascending and descending cycle of Yugas is not a proposition that Sri Yukteswar alone believed in. This idea is still prevalent among the Jains of India, who are one of the oldest religious sects of the country. The Jains believe that a complete Time Cycle (Kalachakra) has a progressive and a regressive half.  During the progressive half of the cycle (Utsarpini), there is a gradual increase in knowledge, happiness, health, ethics, and spirituality, while during the regressive half of the cycle (Avasarpini) there is a gradual reduction in these qualities. Each half cycle is comprised of six smaller periods, and together these two half cycles constitute a complete Time Cycle. These two half cycles follow each other in an unbroken succession for eternity, just like the cycles of day and night or the waxing and waning of the moon. 

The ancient Greeks also appear to have believed in an ascending and descending Cycle of the Ages. The Greek poet Hesiod (c. 750 BC – 650 BCE) had given an account of the World Ages in the Works and Days, in which he had inserted a fifth age called the “Age of Heroes”, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. In Hesiod’s Cosmos, Jenny Strauss Clay writes:

“Drawing on the myth in Plato’s Statesman, Vernant also claimed that the temporal framework of Hesiodic myth, that is, the succession of races, is not linear but cyclical; at the end of the age of iron, which he divides into two, the cycle of races starts again with a new golden age or, more likely, a new age of heroes, as the sequence reverses itself…Vernant himself offers a solution when he remarks that ‘there is not in reality one age of iron but two types of human existence.’ ”[11]

This is very interesting. Jean-Pierre Vernant, who is a highly acclaimed specialist in ancient Greek culture, clearly believes that the Cycle of the Ages reverses itself as per Hesiod’s account. Not only that, he states that the Iron Age has two parts, which corresponds exactly to Yukteswar’s interpretation in which the descending Kali Yuga is followed by the ascending Kali Yuga. We can surmise, in this context, that the “Age of Heroes”, which immediately followed the Bronze Age in Hesiod’s account, must be the name ascribed by Hesiod to the descending Kali Yuga.

The evidence from different sources supports the notion of a complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years, comprised of an ascending and descending cycle of 12,000 years each. This brings us to the question of the relative durations of the different Yugas in the Yuga Cycle, and the transitional periods, which occur at the beginning and end of each Yuga, and are known as Sandhya (dawn) and Sandhyansa (twilight) respectively.  The following values are provided in the Sanskrit texts for the duration of the Yugas and their respective dawns and twilights.

·         Satya Yuga (Golden Age): 4000 years + 400 years dawn + 400 years twilight = 4800 years

·         Treta Yuga (Silver Age): 3000 years + 300 years dawn + 300 years twilight = 3600 years

·         Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age): 2000 years + 200 years dawn + 200 years twilight = 2400 years

·         Kali Yuga (Iron Age): 1000 years + 100 years dawn + 100 years twilight = 1200 years

Since so many inaccuracies have crept into the Yuga Cycle doctrine, as pointed out by Yukteswar and Tilak, we also need to question the accuracy of the relative durations of the Yugas mentioned in the Sanskrit texts. 

Yugas of Equal Length
Although the Yuga Cycle is mentioned in the ancient accounts of around thirty ancient cultures, as described by Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the history of science at MIT, in the book Hamlet's Mill (1969), we find very little information regarding the relative durations of the different ages within this cycle. This is quite surprising. Nearly all the accounts tell us that virtue and righteousness decreases as we move from the Golden Age to the subsequent ages. Some of them specifically mention that virtue decreases by a quarter in every age. However, there appears to be scant mention of the durations of the ages themselves.

 

If the duration of each Yuga decreased from one Yuga to the next, shouldn’t this important point also have been mentioned in these accounts?

 

In the few accounts where the durations of the Yuga are specified, we find that each age in the Yuga Cycle is of the same duration. For instance, the Zoroastrians believe that the world lasts for 12,000 years, which is divided into four equal ages of 3,000 years each. 

 

The Romaka Siddhanta (“Doctrine of the Romans”) was one of the five doctrines mentioned by the Indian astronomer Varahamihira (c. 6th century CE) in his treatise called Panchasidhantika. Varahamihira wrote that, in the Romaka Siddhanta, the duration of a Yuga is 2850 solar years.  This is very close to the Persian value of 3000 years.

Therefore, the durations of the four Yugas mentioned in the Sanskrit texts (i.e. 4800, 3600, 2400, and 1200 years) deviate from the norm. The duration of each Yuga, in this sequence, decreases by 1200 years from the previous one. This is an arithmetic progression which is rarely, if ever, found in natural cycles. This seemingly unnatural sequence raises the question whether the Yuga durations were deliberately altered at some point in the past, in order to give the impression that the duration of each Yuga decreases in tandem with the decrease in virtue from one Yuga to the next. 

Here is the most startling fact: Two of the most famous astronomers of ancient India, Aryabhatta and Paulisa, both believed that the Yuga Cycle is comprised of Yugas of equal duration! In the 11^th century, the medieval scholar Al-Beruni had travelled across India for 13 years, questioning and conversing with learned men, reading the Sanskrit texts, observing the religious rites and customs, and had compiled a comprehensive commentary on Indian philosophy, sciences and culture. In Alberuni’s India, Al-Beruni mentions that the Yuga Cycle doctrine was based on the derivations of the Indian astronomer Brahmagupta, who in turn derived his knowledge from the Sanskrit Smriti texts. He makes an interesting statement in this regard:

“Further, Brahmagupta says that “Aryabhatta considers the four yugas as the four equal parts of the caturyuga (Yuga Cycle). Thus he differs from the doctrine of the book Smriti, just mentioned, and he who differs from us is an opponent”.[12]

The fact that Aryabhatta believed the four Yugas to be of equal duration is extremely pertinent! Al-Beruni reasserts this in no uncertain terms: “Therefore, according to Aryabhatta, the Kali Yuga has 3000 divya years….each two yugas has 6000 divya years…each three years has 9000 divya years.” Why would Aryabhatta subscribe to such a belief? Did he have access to sources of information that are lost to us now?

Surprisingly, it was not only Aryabhatta, who held this point of view. Another celebrated astronomer of ancient India was Paulisa, who had apparently earned Brahmagupta’s favor by supporting the 4:3:2:1 ratio for the duration of the Yugas. According to Al-Beruni, however, “it is possible that Paulisa simply mentions this method as one among others, and that it is not that one in particular which he himself adopted.”[13] This is evident from Paulisa’s belief regarding the Caturyuga (Yuga Cycle), as documented by Al-Beruni: 

“Of the current caturyuga (Yuga Cycle), there have elapsed three yugas i.e. according to him 3,240,000 years i.e. 9000 divya-years. The latter number represents three-fourths of the years of a caturyuga.”[14] This indicates that Paulisa believed that each Yuga was of 3000 divine years’ duration. He uses the same method while presenting his calculations for the duration of a kalpa where “he (Pulisa) has not changed the caturyugas into exact yugas, but simply changed them into fourth parts, and multiplied these fourth parts by the number of years of a single fourth part.”[15]

This clearly indicates that two of the most respected astronomers of ancient India, Aryabhatta and Paulisa, believed in a Yuga Cycle that comprised of 4 Yugas of equal duration of 3,000 divine-years each. However, their opinion was overshadowed by the contradictory view held by Brahmagupta. He railed against Aryabhatta and the other astronomers who held differing opinions, and even abused them. Al-Beruni says about Brahmagupta:

“He is rude enough to compare Aryabhatta to a worm which, eating the wood, by chance describes certain characters in it without understanding them and without intending to draw them. “He, however, who knows these things thoroughly, stands opposed to Aryabhatta, Srishena, and Vishnucandra like the lion against gazelles. They are not capable of letting him see their faces. ” In such offensive terms he attacks Aryabhatta and maltreats him.”[16]

We can now understand why Brahmagupta’s opinion finally prevailed over that of the other astronomers of his time, and it certainly did not have anything to do with the inherent soundness of his logic, or the authenticity of his sources.

It is time for us to stop standing in opposition to Aryabhatta, Paulisa, Srishena, Vishnucandra and others like the “lion against gazelles”, and instead take cognizance of the very real possibility that the Yugas in the Yuga Cycle are of equal duration, and the 4:3:2:1 sequence of the Yugas may have been a mathematical manipulation that crept into the Yuga Cycle doctrine sometime prior to 500 CE.  It is possible that this manipulation was introduced because people were inclined to believe that the duration of a Yuga should decrease in tandem with the decrease in virtue and human longevity from one Yuga to the next. A neat formula was devised in which the total duration of the Yugas added up to 12,000 years.

 

However, there was one problem. If the Kali Yuga is of 1,200 years duration, then it should have been completed many times over, since its proposed beginning in 3102 BCE. In order to circumvent this potentially embarrassing situation, another complexity was introduced. Each “year” of the Yuga Cycle became a “divine year” comprised of 360 human years. The Yuga Cycle became inflated to 4,320,000 years (12,000*360) and the Kali Yuga became equal to 432,000 years (1,200*360). Humanity became consigned to an interminable duration of darkness. 

The Saptarshi Calendar

The original Yuga Cycle doctrine appears to have been very simple: A Yuga Cycle duration of 12,000 years, with each Yuga lasting for 3,000 years. This cycle is encoded in the “Saptarshi Calendar” which has been used in India for thousands of years. It was used extensively during the Maurya period in the 4^th century BCE, and is still in use in some parts of India.  

 

The term “Saptarshi” refers to the “Seven Rishis” or the “Seven Sages” representing the seven brightest stars of the Great Bear constellation (Ursa Major). In Vedic astronomy, these seven stars are collectively called Saptarshi Mandala, while in Western astronomy they are known as the Big Dipper asterism. They are regarded as the enlightened rishis who appear at the beginning of every Yuga to spread the laws of civilization. 

 

The Saptarshi Calendar used in India had a cycle of 2,700 years; it is said that the Seven Sages spend 100 years in each of the 27 “nakshatras” (lunar asterisms) which adds up to a cycle of 2,700 years. The 2,700 year cycle was also referred to as a “Saptarsi Era” or a “Saptarsi Yuga”.

Figure 2: The Great Bear or Ursa Major constellation. The seven bright stars are identified with the Seven Sages. A straight line drawn through Merak and Dubhe passes close to Polaris, the pole star. Credit: Sanu N, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

If the 2,700-year cycle of the Saptarshi Calendar represents the actual duration of a Yuga, then the remaining 300 years out of the total Yuga duration of 3,000 years (representing 1/10^th of the Yuga duration), automatically represents the “transitional period”, before the qualities of the subsequent Yuga are fully manifested. In accordance with the current convention, this intervening period can be broken up into two separate periods of 150 years each, one occurring at the beginning of the Yuga, known as Sandhya (i.e. dawn), and the other at its termination, known as Sandhyansa (i.e. twilight). 

The total duration of the Yuga Cycle, excluding the transitional periods, is equal to (2700*4) i.e. 10,800 years, which is same as the duration of the “Great Year of Heraclitus” in the Hellenic tradition! This clearly indicates that the underlying basis of the Cycle of the World Ages in both India and Greece was the 2700 year Saptarshi Cycle.

It is agreed by historians that the Saptarshi Calendar that was in use during the Maurya period in the 4^th century BC, started in 6676 BCE. In the book, “Traditions of the Seven Rsis”, Dr. J. E. Mitchiner confirms this: 

“We may conclude that the older and original version of the Era of the Seven Rsis commenced with the Seven Rsis in Krttika in 6676 BC…This version was in use in northern India from at least the 4^th century BC, as witnessed by the statements of Greek and Roman writers; it was also the version used by Vrddha Garga, at around the start of the Christian era.”[17]

In fact, the recorded chronology of Indian kings goes back further than 6676 BCE as documented by the Greek and Roman historians Pliny and Arrian. Pliny states that, “From Father Liber [Roman Bacchus or Greek Dionysus] to Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), Indians reckon 154 kings, and they reckon (the time as) 6451 years and 3 months.”[18] Arrian puts 153 kings and 6462 years between Dionysus and Sandrokottos (Chandragupta Maurya), to whose court a Greek embassy was sent in 314 BC.[19] Both indications add up to a date of roughly c.6776 BCE, which is a 100 years prior to the beginning of the Saptarshi Calendar in 6676 BCE. 

It is obvious from the accounts of Pliny and Arrian that they must have identified a specific king in the Indian kings list, who corresponded to the Greek Dionysus or Roman Bacchus, and whose reign had ended at around c.6776 BCE. Who could that have been? 

 

According to the renowned scholar and Orientalist Sir William Jones, Dionysus or Bacchus was none other than the Indian monarch Rama. In his essay “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India” (1784), Sir William Jones “deems Rama to be the same as the Grecian Dionysos, who is said to have conquered India with an army of satyrs, commanded by Pan; and Rama was also a mighty conqueror, and had an army of large monkeys or satyrs, commanded by Maruty (Hanuman), son of Pavan. Rama is also found, in other points, to resemble the Indian Bacchus.”[20] 

 

Sir William Jones also points out that, “Meros is said by the Greeks to have been a mountain of India, on which their Dionysus was born, and that Meru is also a mountain near the city of Naishada, or Nysa, called by the Grecian geographers Dionysopolis, and universally celebrated in the Sanskrit poems.”[21]

Figure 3: The Dionysian “satyrs” are very similar to the “vanaras” who accompanied Rama in his war campaign against Ravana. Source: Collage of images from Wikimedia Commons

Both Pliny and Arrian were aware of these associations. Pliny had placed the Dionysian satyrs “in the tropical mountains of India”, while, 

“We learn from Arrian (Hist.Ind. p 318, 321) that the worship of Bacchus, or Dionysus, was common in India and that his votaries observed a number of rites similar to those of Greece…On this account, when Alexander entered India, the natives considered the Greeks as belonging to the same family with themselves; and when the people of Nysa sent the principal person of their city to solicit their freedom of the Grecian conqueror, they conjured him by the well-known name of Dionysus, as the most effectual means of obtaining their purpose. ‘O King, the Nyssaeans entreat thee to allow them to enjoy their liberties and their laws, out of respect to Dionysus .’”[22]

The identification of Dionysus with Rama provides us with fresh perspectives. According to the Indian tradition, Rama had lived towards the end of the Treta Yuga (Silver Age), and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) had started soon after his demise. This implies that the 6676 BCE date for the beginning of the Saptarshi Calendar, which is a 100 years after Dionysus i.e. Rama, indicates the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga in the descending cycle.

 

The Yuga Cycle Timeline
Taking 6676 BCE as the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga in the descending cycle, the 2700-year Saptarshi Yuga as the actual duration of a Yuga, and a 300-year period of transition between the Yugas, the entire timeline of the Yuga Cycle gets unraveled.

Figure 4: The Yuga Cycle timeline based on the Saptarshi Calendar

The timeline indicates that the ascending Kali Yuga, which is the current epoch in which we are living, will end in 2025 CE. The full manifestation of the next Yuga – the ascending Dwapara – will take place in 2325 CE, after a transitional period of 300 years. The ascending Dwapara Yuga will then be followed by two more Yugas: the ascending Treta Yuga and the ascending Satya Yuga, which will complete the 12,000 year ascending cycle. 

The Sanskrit text Brahma-vaivarta Purana describes a dialogue between Lord Krishna and the Goddess Ganges. Here, Krishna says that after 5,000 years of Kali Yuga there will be a dawn of a new Golden Age which will last for 10,000 years (Texts 49-61). This can be immediately understood in the context of the Yuga Cycle timeline described here. We are now ending the Kali Yuga, nearly 5,700 years since its beginning in 3676 BCE. And the end of the Kali Yuga will be followed by three more Yugas spanning 9,000 years, before the ascending cycle ends. 

 

Part 2: The Archaeological and Historical Evidence

As per the Yuga Cycle doctrine, the transitional periods between Yugas are always associated with a worldwide collapse of civilizations and severe environmental catastrophes (pralaya), which wipe out virtually every trace of any human civilization. The new civilization that emerges in the new Yuga is guided by a few survivors of the cataclysm, who carry with them the technical and spiritual knowledge of the previous epoch. 

Many ancient sources tell us of the enigmatic group of “Seven Sages” (“Saptarshi”) who are said to appear at the beginning of every Yuga and promulgate the arts of civilization. We find them in legends and sacred texts all over the world – in Mesopotamia, India, Polynesia, South America and North America. They possessed infinite wisdom and power, could travel over land and water, and took on various forms at will. The Saptarshi Calendar of ancient India appears to have been based on their periodic appearance at the beginning of every Yuga.

As we shall see, the transitional periods between the Yugas correlates very strongly with the severe cataclysmic events that regularly impact our planet, as reflected in the archeological records. In addition, the transitional periods are correlated with a number of important dates recorded in various ancient calendars and scriptures.

The End of the Last Ice Age

The first transitional period in the 12,000 year descending Yuga Cycle is the 300 year period at the end of the Golden Age from 9976 BCE – 9676 BCE. This is the time when the last Ice Age came to a sudden end in exactly 9703 BCE. Quite dramatically, in the span of a single year, the climate reverted from the glacial conditions of the Ice Age to the warm, moist, Holocene period that we live in now.

 
Many ancient legends refer to this time period. In the Timaeus, Plato tell us that the Golden Age island-kingdom of Atlantis sank into the ocean due to violent earthquakes and floods, in a “single day and night of misfortune” in c.9600 BCE. The Zoroastrians believe that the present world was created by Ahura Mazda 9000 years before the time of Zoroaster, who lived between the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. This indicates that, as per the Persians, the world was re-created by Ahura Mazda sometime between 9700 BCE - 9600 BCE.

The flood legends of many ancient cultures tell us of a global Deluge that occurred after the end of the Golden Age. These accounts talk of enormous walls of water that submerged the entire land to the highest mountain tops, accompanied by heavy rain, fireballs from the sky, intense cold and long periods of darkness. In the Indian tradition, this flood took place at the end of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age). The survivor of this great deluge was Manu, the progenitor of mankind, who is placed at the head of the genealogy of Indian kings.

In recent years, a team of international team of scientists found compelling evidence that the earth was bombarded by multiple fragments of a giant comet nearly 12,900 years ago, which triggered the start of a rapid and intense cooling period called Younger Dryas, which lasted for nearly 1200 years till c.9700 BCE. The force of the comet impact, combined with the vicious cold snap that followed, brought about the extinction of a large number of North American megafauna including wooly mammoths and giant ground sloths, and ended a prehistoric civilization called the Clovis culture – the first human inhabitants of the New World.[23]

Figure 5: Temperature changes during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene period, with the Younger Dryas period clearly marked out. Temperature graph based on Greenland ice core data. Credit: United States Geological Survey, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Younger Dryas period ended as abruptly as it started, for reasons not fully understood. Geologists from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) in Copenhagen studied the Greenland ice core data in 2008 and concluded that the Ice Age ended exactly in 9703 BCE [24]. In an interview with the Danish paper Politiken, researcher Jorgen Peder Steffensen said that, “in the transition from the ice age to our current warm, interglacial period the climate shift is so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed.”[25] In a span of a single year, temperatures increased by 10 – 15°C in many parts of the world.

It is quite significant that the 9703 BCE date for the end of the Ice Age and the sudden climate shift falls within the 300 year transitional period at the end of the Golden Age from 9976 BCE – 9676 BCE, and as such, it provides the first important validation of the Yuga Cycle timeline identified here. As soon as the period of transition was over, civilizations began to sprout up everywhere. The megalithic culture at Gobekli Tepe, where the earliest layers have been dated to c.9600 BCE, is one such instance.
 

The Black Sea Catastrophe
The 300 year transitional period between the Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) extended from 6976 BCE – 6676 BCE and coincides with a significant environmental event: the Black Sea Catastrophe of c.6700 BCE.

The Black Sea once used to be a freshwater lake. That is, until the Mediterranean Sea, swollen to the brim with melted glacial waters, cut through the narrow land bridge at Bosporus and catastrophically flooded the Black Sea. Torrents of water had gushed through the Bosporus and plunged into the Black Sea at a rate nearly 400 times that of Niagara Falls. This raised the water levels of the Black Sea by several hundred feet, flooded more than 60,000 square miles of land, and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline by around 30%.[26]

 
In 1998, geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman presented the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis in their book Noah’s Flood: The New Discoveries About the Event That Changed History. This catastrophic flooding event unleashed an apocalyptic scenario in the region, displaced the farming communities located along the shores of the Black Sea and fundamentally changed the course of civilization in Southeastern Europe and western Anatolia.

Figure 6: The Black Sea catastrophe, before and after. The water from the Mediterranean (Aegean) Sea, cut through the narrow Bosporus Strait, and plunged into the Black Sea, creating a gigantic waterfall. Every day for two years, 42 cubic km of sea water cut through the narrow channel and plunged into the lake — more than 200 times the flow over Niagara Falls. Source: NASA, Public Domain Image.

Similar major flooding events were taking place in many parts of the world, as massive glacial lakes, swelled by the waters of the melting ice, breached their ice barriers, and rushed into the surrounding area. Sometime between 6900 BCE – 6200 BCE the Laurentide ice-sheet disintegrated in the Hudson Bay and an enormous quantity of glacial waters from the inland Lake Agassiz-Ojibway discharged into the Labrador Sea. This was the single largest North Atlantic freshwater pulse of the past 100,000 years, which raised average global sea level by up to 1.4 m (4.6 feet).[27]

 
A number of very powerful earthquakes had rocked northern Sweden between 7000 – 6000 BCE, creating several kilometer-long “Endglacial Faults” (EGF). The longest of them is the Parvie (a Lappish word meaning, “Wave in the Ground”) fault, which, at 155 km, is the world’s longest known EGF. In some areas, Parvie resembles, “a 10m tsunami crest frozen in the rock”. It is possible that the global chain of cataclysmic events during this transitional period may have been triggered by a single underlying cause, which we are yet to find out.
 

The Comet Impact in the Indian Ocean
The 300-year period of transition between the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) and the Kali Yuga (Iron Age) extended from 3976 BCE – 3676 BCE. The archaeological and geological records show that this was a time of massive environmental upheavals all over the world - primarily tsunamis and aridification events - which completely changed the course of human civilization. The period of transition was followed by the almost simultaneous emergence of the river-valley civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley at around 3500 BCE. 

The prehistoric Ubaid Period of Mesopotamia came to an abrupt end in c.3700 BCE, accompanied by a catastrophic flooding of the city of Ur near the Persian Gulf. After a gap of nearly 200 years, the early Protoliterate period emerged at around 3500 BCE. The African Humid Phase ended at around 3900 BCE, and by 3500 BCE sand dunes had started reclaiming the Sahara. The Gerzean Culture which emerged in Hierakonpolis, Upper Egypt, in c.3500 BCE laid the foundations for the cultural accomplishments of Dynastic Egypt.

In Eastern Arabia, the Arabian Bifacial and Ubaid period (c.4500 – 3800 BCE) was followed by the onset of extreme arid conditions. As a result, there is no evidence of human presence in the region for approximately 1,000 years, the so-called “Dark Millennium”. In Syria, mass graves at Tell Brak, dating from c. 3800 - 3600 BCE, have been unearthed, suggesting that large-scale violent conflicts occurred during this period.

The Holocene Impact Working Group, led by Dallas Abbot of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, have identified the 29-km wide Burckle Crater, located about 1500 km southeast of Madagascar and 12,500 feet below sea-level, as the signature of an impact event that took place in the Indian Ocean. According to the scientists, the impact triggered a mega-tsunami with 200 m high waves that created the chevron dunes found along the coast of southern Madagascar and Western Australia.[28]

Figure 7: The Burckle Impact Crater in the Indian Ocean (31˚ S, 61˚ E) is the most likely source for the chevron dunes of Southern Madagascar and Western Australia, and the sinking of Dwaraka and the flooding of Ur. Credit: Google Maps.

The radiocarbon dating of the largest Western Australian chevrons gives us a specific date for the impact-generated tsunami event: 3700 BCE.[29] This date falls in the period of transition from the Dwapara Yuga to the Kali Yuga from 3976 BCE – 3676 BCE.

 

This provides us with a strong basis to postulate that the submergence of the legendary golden city of Dwaraka, which had been built by the brother-deities Krishna and Balarama on the western coast of India, was probably due to the tsunami waves generated by the impact event at around 3700 BCE. The giant waves then, probably, traveled up the Persian Gulf and brought about the flooding of Ur. 

The great battle of the Mahabharata, which is said to have taken place around 35 years prior to the submergence of Dwaraka, and can now be dated to sometime around 3735 BCE. Interestingly, the year of World Creation in the Jewish religious calendar is 3761 BCE. Thus, a number of important historical dates are lining up within close proximity around this time.

The archaeological data from the Indus Valley indicate that period from 4000 BCE to 3500 BCE was a “transitional phase” between the Pre-Harappan and the Early Harappan settlements. After this period of Yuga-transition was over in 3676 BCE, almost miraculously, we see the emergence of new civilizations everywhere. The large Bronze Age civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley appeared almost simultaneously at around 3500 BCE.

The Greek Dark Ages

The Yuga Cycle timeline indicates that the 300 year period of transition between the descending and ascending Kali Yugas extended from 976 BCE – 676 BCE. This overlaps with the 400 year period from 1200 BCE to 800 BCE, known as the Greek Dark Ages, when a large number of cities across the ancient world were destroyed and burnt to the ground, never to rise again, and most of the cultural elements and religious institutions of the Bronze Age were lost forever. 

Historians regard the Greek Dark Ages as a period of transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. Robert Drews writes that: “Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century (c.1200 – 1100 BCE) almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”[30]

This was one of the worst calamities in history that brought about a complete collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations throughout the Aegean, Anatolia, Cyprus, North Africa and the Levant, and plunged the entire region into a Dark Age that lasted for nearly four hundred years. In the Aegean, the palace-centered Mycenaean civilization disappeared and was forgotten until it was dug up by archaeologists in the 19th century. Almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed and abandoned. The powerful Hittite Empire of Anatolia, with its megalithic constructions and large, mobile, militaries vanished. The period from 1070 BCE – 664 BCE is the “Third Intermediate Period” of Egypt, when the Libyans and the Kushites claimed the throne, at a time of political turmoil, social disintegration, droughts and famine. In Southern Mesopotamia, many cities went up in flames, and the only ancient empire that survived to some extent was Assyria. 

The effect of this catastrophic collapse on the people and culture of the Eastern Mediterranean was far-reaching. There was large-scale depopulation and the people lived in isolated, small settlements. Famine gripped the lands, resulting in a mass migration of people. The construction of monumental buildings ceased. The pottery had simple geometric patterns – a far cry from the intricate, figurative decoration of Mycenaean ware. Iron replaced bronze as the metal of choice for manufacturing tools and weapons. The Linear B writing of the Mycenaean period was forgotten, and the Greeks had to re-learn the alphabet from the Phoenicians in the 8th century BCE. The ancient trading networks came to a grinding halt.

Figure 8: A map of the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean. Credit: Lommes, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The battle of Troy, and the subsequent destruction of the city of Troy, had been dated by many Greek writers to this time. Ephorus dated it to 1135 BCE, Sosibius to 1172 BCE, and Eratosthenes to 1184 BCE. In fact, the Greek philosophers generally thought of the Greek Dark Ages as a time when a “Shift in the Ages” took place from the Age of the Heroes to the Iron Age, which corresponds to the transition from the descending Kali Yuga to the ascending Kali Yuga.

However, this was not just a collapse of the ancient Greek civilization; there was a worldwide collapse of civilization during this period. In India, the Late Harappan phase of the Indus Valley civilization ended at around 1000 BCE.[31] After a gap of nearly 400 years we see the emergence of the 16 Great Kingdoms (Mahajanapadas) in the Gangetic plains at around 600 BCE, marking the beginning of the Iron Age culture of India.

Catastrophe also struck the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica at this time. The center of Olmec culture in the early years i.e. around 1600 BCE, was at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. However, in c.950 BCE there was a wholesale destruction of San Lorenzo monuments. The site was abandoned at around 900 BCE, and the center of power shifted to La Venta soon afterwards. Mesoamerican scholars believe that drastic environmental changes may have been responsible for this shift in Olmec centers, with certain important rivers changing course.

When the ascending Kali Yuga began in 676 BCE, much of the knowledge, traditions, and skills from the descending Kali Yuga were forgotten. Possibly in response to this grave social crisis, a number of philosophers and prophets appeared at this time, trying to re-discover the lost wisdom, and spread it amongst the ignorant masses. Among them were Buddha (623 BCE), Thales (624 BCE), Pythagoras (570 BCE), Confucius (551 BC), Zoroaster (600 BCE), and Mahavir Jain (599 BCE). But much sacred knowledge was irretrievably lost. For instance, the original Vedas were comprised of 1,180 sakhas (i.e. branches), of which only 7 or 8 sakhas (less than 1 %) are remembered now. Various errors, omissions, and interpolations also crept into the ancient texts as they were being revised and written down. The mistakes in the Yuga Cycle doctrine were some of them.

The Yuga Cycle timelines proposed here accurately mirrors the worldwide environmental catastrophes that accompanies the transitional periods between Yugas. Every 2,700 years our planet is impacted by a series of cataclysmic events for a period of a few hundred years, which brings about a total or near total collapse of civilizations across the world. In every case, however, civilization restarts immediately after the period of destruction.

 

In recent years, many independent historians and researchers have realized that the concept of a Yuga Cycle is a far better descriptor of ancient history, than the model of linear progress favored by mainstream historians. Egyptologist John Anthony West mentions in his article “Consider the Kali Yuga” that:

“Since Egypt's Old Kingdom, up until very recently…civilization has been going down, not up; simple as that. We can follow that degenerative process physically in Egypt; it is written into the stones and it is unmistakable. The same tale is told in the mythologies and legends of virtually all other societies and civilizations the world over...Progress does not go in a straight line from primitive ancestors to smart old us with our bobblehead dolls and weapons of mass destruction; our traffic jams and our polluted seas, skies and lands. There is another, and far more realistic, way to view history. Plato talked about a cycle of Ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron (or Dark) Age; a cycle, a wave form - not a straight line. A similar understanding is reflected by virtually all other ancient accounts. The best known, and by far the most elaborately developed of these systems, is the Hindu, with its Yuga Cycle, which corresponds to the Platonic idea of four definable Ages.”[32]

It is evident that the Yuga Cycle used to be tracked using the Saptarshi Calendar. It was of 12,000 years’ duration, comprised of four Yugas of equal duration of 2,700 years each, separated by transitional periods of 300 years. The complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years was comprised of an ascending and descending Yuga cycle, which followed each other for eternity like the cycles of day and night. For the past 2,700 years, we have been passing through the ascending Kali Yuga, and this Yuga is coming to an end in 2025. 

In accordance with convention, the 300-year transitional period following 2025 can be broken into two periods of 150 years each. The first 150-year period -  the “Twilight of Kali”- is when the Kali Yuga structures may collapse due to a combination of wars, environmental catastrophes, and cosmic changes, while the second 150-year period - the “Dawn of Dwapara”- is the time when the spiritually evolved systems and philosophies of the ascending Dwapara Yuga may begin to emerge. It is likely, though, that the twin processes of collapse and emergence will progress simultaneously throughout the entire 300-year transitional period, albeit at different intensities. 

The rapid degeneration of our materialistically driven society into corruption, hatred and violence on one hand, and the current upswing in extreme weather phenomena on the other, may be indicative of the fact that the effects of the transitional period are already underway. We need to be aware of these greater cycles of time that govern human civilization, and the changes that are looming in the horizon.

PS: In addition to the Yuga Cycle, the Vedic texts tell us of a larger cycle of time known as the "Day and Night of Brahma" which extends over 24 million years i.e. 1000 complete Yuga Cycles. This cycle shows a strong correlation to the 26 million-year cycle of Mass Extinctions on our planet. I have discussed this in the article, "A Day and Night of Brahma and the Cycle of Mass Extinctions".

References:

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[1] The Mahabharata 3.148, https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m03/m03148.htm
[2] Surya-Siddhanta, tr. by Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, ed. by Phanindralal Gangooly, University of Calcutta, 1935, p. 41.
[3] Plato, Timaeus, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html
[4] Censorinus, De Die Natali 18.11.
[5] Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata, ed. by Kripa Shankar Shukla, Indian National Science Academy, 1976, p. 95, Kalakriya Section verse 10.
[6] Richard Salomon, Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages (Oxford University Press, 1998) 181.
[7] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, The Manager, Kesari, Poona, 1903.
[8] Mahabharata 12.231, https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m12/m12b058.htm.
[9] The Laws of Manu 1.69-71, https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/manu/manu01.htm.
[10] Sri Yukteswar, The Holy Science, 1894, p xi.
[11] Jenny Strauss Clay, Hesiod’s Cosmos, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p 83.
[12] Alberuni’s India (AD 1030) tr. by Dr. Edward C. Sachau, London, 1910, Chapter XLII.
[13] Ibid, p 375.
[14] Ibid, p 376.
[15] Ibid, p 375.
[16] Ibid, p 376.
[17] J.E. Mitchiner, Traditions of the Seven Rishis, Motilal B, Delhi 1982, p. 163.
[18] Pliny, Natural History 6.59-60.
[19] Arrian, Indica 9.9.
[20] Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol 21, 1826, p 677.
[21] Sir William Jones, “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India” (1784), Republished by J. Ghose & Co, Calcutta, 1876, https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.219477/2015.219477.The-Gods_djvu.txt
[22] The Edinburgh encyclopaedia, Volume 3, 1830, p 174.
[23] "Nanodiamond-Rich Layer across Three Continents Consistent with Major Cosmic Impact at 12,800 Cal BP", The Journal of Geology, 2014, volume 122, p. 475–506.
[24] Jørgen Peder Steffensen, "Determination of end of the Ice Age?" Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, https://nbi.ku.dk/english/sciencexplorer/earth_and_climate/golden_spike/determination_of_end_of_ice_age/
[25] Danish Arctic research dates Ice Age, Politiken.dk, 11 Dec 2008,   http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article611464.ece
[26] Geologists Link Black Sea Deluge To Farming's Rise, New York Times, December 17, 1996 http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/17/science/geologists-link-black-sea-deluge-to-farming-s-rise.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
[27] Garry K.C. Clarke et al, “Paleohydraulics of the last outburst flood from glacial Lake Agassiz and the 8200 BP cold event”, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2004, Vol. 23, pp. 389-407.
[28] Dallas Abbott et al, “Largest natural catastrophes in Holocene and their possible connection with comet-asteroid impacts on the Earth”, March 2010, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010avh..confE..13A
[29] S. R. Scheffers et al, “The Holocene paleo-tsunami history of West Australia”, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2008, Vol.270, No.1-2, pp. 137-146
[30] Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton University Press, 1993) 4.
[31] Jim G. Shaffer, “Reurbanization: The Eastern Punjab and Beyond”, Studies in the History of Art, 1993, vol. 31, pp. 53–67.
[32] John Anthony West, Consider the Kali Yuga, March 2008, http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/WestJA2.php?p=1