According to the theory of special relativity by Einstein, the flow of time can change due to the influence of speed or gravity. Someone traveling near the speed of light, or living very close to a strong gravitational field (like a black hole) would age much slower than someone living here on Earth.
The Vedas also speak about the relativity of time, but bring it to a new level by explaining how the flow and perception of time changes in different planetary systems. What is a lunar year (360 days) in Bhu-Mandala, is just one day for the demigods in Swargaloka. Conversely, what is a day for us is 100 years for people being punished on the hellish planets.
If we go higher, the differences become even more acute. What is 8.64 billion years in Bhu-Mandala is just a set of day and night for the inhabitants of Brahmaloka, the highest planet in this universe.
It’s described (SB 2.2.26) that the inhabitants of Brahmaloka, as well as great sages, live for an entire parardha (50 years of Lord Brahma or 155.52 trillion years in Bhu-Mandala), which is practically limitless by our calculation. An attentive reader may point out that on SB 2.2.26 a different number is given for the life of the great sages: 15,480,000,000,000 years. This difference appears to have come from two factors: the first is that in this passage Prabhupada calculated starting from a rounded number (4.3 billion years for the day of Brahma, instead of 4.32), which results in 154.8 trillion years instead of 155.52. The second factor is that it appears that one zero was lost in the process of typing and preparing the book, resulting in the published number, 15,480,000,000,000. If however, we follow the formula that Prabhupada gives, we can easily calculate the number.
As we can see, the higher we go in the sequence of planetary systems, the longer the lifespans of the inhabitants become. How exactly they experience such long spans of time is a mystery to us. By different descriptions, it seems that they indeed experience it as a very long period, but sometimes get carried away and don’t notice the passing of time. For example, it’s described that at the beginning of His current day, Lord Brahma meditated for 100 years on the demigods (36,000 years). In Brahma’s time, this is a very insignificant period, just 0.36 seconds. However, it’s still described as something surprising. At the same time, when King Kadrumi went to visit Lord Brahma on his planet to consult about the marriage of his daughter, Revati, he became distracted watching the performance of some gandharvas, and when he returned to Earth, he saw many ages had passed. Just as in many other passages described in the Vedas, these apparently contradictory statements reveal higher levels of reality we have difficulty conceiving with our limited brains. In any case, the practical implication is that beings on the higher planets don’t become old like us and things don’t degrade quickly like here.
It’s mentioned on SB 3.11.38 that the entire lifetime of Brahma equals one mimesa (about half a second) for Lord Maha-Vishnu, but even this seems to be figurative, indicating that the life of Brahma equals a very insignificant period of time for Him, since Lord Maha-Vishnu (just like everyone in the spiritual planets) is not at all affected by the passage of material time.
Another detail hinted in the Puranas is that time on our planet, in the current age we live, is different from the time in Bhu-Mandala that is referred to in most passages of the Srimad Bhagavatam. This is an important detail to take into account if we want to connect the dates given in the Srimad Bhagavatam with historical and geological events on our planet.
This idea was first published in the in the book “The Big Bang and The Sages”, by Madhavendra Puri das and Siddharth Chhabra. In their research, they discovered a commentary by Sridhar Swami (the original commentator of Srimad Bhagavatam) on Vishnu Purana (1.3.7) which led to the conclusion that a day in Bhu-Mandala equals two days of our time. This discovery was named “Sridhara Swami’s factor of two”.
It appears that the reality people were living in previous eras is not exactly the same as we live now. The Bharata-Varsa mentioned in the Puranas is much larger than modern India. It’s mentioned that Bharata Varsa is 9000 yojanas (72,000 miles) from north to south, which is several times larger than our planet. It’s also mentioned that the Himalayas were 80,000 miles high, which is 14,553 times higher than what we can measure today. This hints that currently we don’t live in the same Bharata varsa that is mentioned in the scriptures, but in some kind of gross projection of it, that appears in the form of our spherical planet. If we take it into consideration, it’s not surprising that time here is different.
All the dates given in the Puranas are given in accordance with the time in Bhu-Mandala, but time in other parts of the cosmos goes at different rates. Historically, Puranic scholars believed that time on our planet flows at the same rate as time in Bhu-Mandala, but the discovery that time here actually goes faster has several implications. If two years here equals one year in Bhu-Mandala, we need to multiply all the cosmic dates given in the Puranas by two to get the actual dates of events according to the time on our planet.
Apart from the reference from Sridhara Swami, the biggest argument in favor of this thesis is that when we apply it, the dates for universal events in the Puranas almost perfectly match geological dates calculated by modern studies.
When we apply the Sridhara Swami’s factor of two, the date of the creation of the solar system given in the Puranas becomes 4.562 billion earthly years ago (2,281,000 x 2), and the date for the great mass extinction at the end of the reign of the last Manu began 251.15 million years ago (107,575,000 x 2). These numbers almost exactly match the 4.567 billion years (for the creation of the solar system) and 251.9 million years (for the permian triassic extinction) given by modern studies.
Even more interesting is that when Sridhara Swami’s factor of two is taken into account, the Puranas give a date for the beginning of the universe that is very close to modern studies.
It’s mentioned that we are living on the first day of the second half of the life of Brahma. As mentioned in Srimad Bhagavatam 3.11.34, as well as in other references, the life of Brahma is divided into two parardhas, each corresponding to 50 years of his life. The Vayu Purana (2.38.240) mentions that all the constituents of the Universe last for a single parardha, and at the end of this period, they are completely dissolved. At the end of each day of Brahma, the universe is partially destroyed, but all the material elements, as well as the higher planets of the universe, remain. However, at the end of the first half of his life complete destruction takes place, and all the planets, as well as the material elements, are fully disintegrated and the universe is created anew.
This is confirmed in the commentary of Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura on SB 3.11.37, where he mentions that all the high planetary systems, including Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapaloka, and Satyaloka were dissolved at the end of the first half of Brahma’s life, and all the sages living in these planetary systems entered the body of Maha-Vishnu and had to wait until the next creation at the beginning of the current day of Brahma. Still, according to Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, the current Kalpa is called Padma-kalpa, which indicates that in this Kalpa all the planetary systems are created anew from the material elements deposited in the steam of Brahma’s lotus flower.
By this description, we can understand that such complete devastation happened at the end of the previous day of Brahma. After this event, there were 8.64 billion years (4.32 billion x 2) of the night of Brahma, and then 616.896 million years of the Pratisamdhi and the Manvantara Sandhya (308.448 million x 2), plus 4.562 billion years (2.281 x 2) since the creation of our solar system. This brings the total since the total annihilation to 13.819 billion years of the time on our planet.
The most widespread estimation of the date of the beginning of the universe in scientific circles is 13.801 billion years ago. Again, we can see that the modern date almost perfectly matches the date given in the Puranas. It’s also important to keep in mind that modern theories, as well as the calculations for cosmic events given by modern studies, are constantly being refined. In 1929, for example, Hubble calculated the age of the Universe at about 2 billion years. Later, in 1958, Sandage calculated that the Universe is much older, calculating that the correct age of the Universe should be somewhere between 4 and 18 billion years. In 2003, a study conducted by Spergel put it at around 13.7 billion years. The number was raised to 13.75 in 2011 in a study by Komatsu, 13.772 in 2013 (Bennet et al.), 13.799 in 2015 (Lawrence), and finally 13.801 in 2018 (Aghanim et al.). The difference to the Vedas in the last study is already less than 0.15% and future studies may put the value still closer to the one given in the Puranas.
Another possible implication of the Sridhara Swami’s factor of two is in the understanding of recent events. The Puranas mention that Kali-yuga lasts for 432,000 years. However, just as other numbers mentioned, this number refers to time according to Bhu-Mandala. When we apply the Sridhara Swami’s factor of two, the total duration of Kali-yuga becomes 864,000 years according to time on our planet, of which a little over 10,000 years passed, pushing the beginning of Kali-yuga further away in history, close to the end of the previous ice age, when the geography of our planet, as well as the placement of coastal cities, was considerably different.
Taking all of this into account we can see that understanding the dates given in the Srimad Bhagavatam is not so easy, because different passages mention different units of time. Most of the time, dates are given according to time in Bhu-Mandala, and we need to adjust to the time on our planet if we want to relate these dates to geological events. There are also passages that mention time according to other units, like Manvantaras, Kalpas, Divya-yugas, years of the demigods, etc.