Kali Yuga: What Is the Dark Age of Hindu Cosmology?

The last and darkest of the four Hindu ages, 432,000 years long, which by tradition began in 3102 BCE, the year Krishna left the earth.

The Kali Yuga is the fourth and darkest of the Hindu ages, traditionally 432,000 years long. By tradition it began in 3102 BCE, when Krishna left the world after the Mahabharata war.

Hindu cosmology divides time into four repeating ages, or yugas: Krita (Satya), Treta, Dvapara, and Kali. Each is shorter and more degraded than the one before. The Kali Yuga, the present age, is traditionally 432,000 years long, and a full cycle of four ages is 4,320,000 years. A thousand such cycles make one day of Brahma.

The Mahabharata and the Puranas describe the signs of Kali. The Vishnu Purana, in H. H. Wilson's 1840 translation, foretells a time when wealth alone confers rank, rulers plunder their subjects, lives grow short, and dharma declines. At its end, the avatar Kalki will appear and a new golden age begin.

The traditional start date is 3102 BCE, reckoned by Indian astronomers. Aryabhata, writing in 499 CE, said he was 23 years old when 3,600 years of the Kali Yuga had passed. In tradition the age began when Krishna departed the world, after the Mahabharata war. The date is the result of calculation backward, not of a record kept at the time.

The number 432,000 has fascinated comparative mythologists. Berossus gives exactly 432,000 years for the reigns of the Babylonian kings before the Flood. Whether that is coincidence or a shared inheritance of numbers is unknown. Both numbers are multiples of 3,600 and of 60, the round numbers of Babylonian mathematics, which may be part of the answer.