Time & Philosophy

Time existed from time immemorial!

Time is a scale, to measure of length of existence of an object in the universe or the universe itself. Time can be defined as stretch between two successive events where an action discontinues or continues to exist. For example, “age” is stretch of continued existence between two events (between birth and current moment or birth and its death). Time has units of measurement. It is similar to measure of distance between two locations and has units of measurement. We all know how to tell current time, in terms of year, date, day, hours, minutes, etc – llike, its 14th Dec, a Saturday, at 10am in Bangalore. At same time the time across the earth in California will be 13^th Dec, a Friday evening, 8:30pm. Humans evolved and standardized the procedure to measure time over centuries. There are many aspects of time with many units to measure, and along with standard units there are also units used for measurement in each community or region using traditional methods. Traditional time measuring methods are still actively used.

Universal Calendar: Day and Time

Time can be referring to current, past or future time. Comparing it with distance, there is no past or future in distance. Depending on the direction of travel – you can always know what is ahead or what is behind. If you change the direction, the one behind will become the one ahead. Time always moves in one direction, that is towards the future. Our Past will be always be past. Present will become past when Time passes through that point in time, and future will become Present where Time arrives to that point. We cannot reverse the direction of time (at least not for now!). You may recollect or remember a moment of experience at a specific time in past, but you cannot go back to that past moment. When we look at distant universe through telescopes like Hubble or James Webb, we’re actually seeing the universe as it was few millions of years ago—because the light from those distant regions is only just reaching us. In a way, we’re watching t0 the past in real time!

Interesting question is when did Time start? For example, we are currently in year 2025, so can we say Time started 2,025 years ago? In a way yes, but knowing that earth existed for more than 4 billion (4,000,000,0000) years – so, can we say Time started that long ago? If so, why are we not for example writing the current year as 4,00,02,025? Science has proved that Earth formed out of cosmic events in the early part of universe formation thus Time existed before Earth. Universe formation started with an event called Big Bang and before that Big Bang nothing existed, not even time. Thus Time and Universe have come into existence on the day of Big Bang, which happened @14 Billion years ago. Lucky enough, for this discussion we can skip understanding complex concepts of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and space-time 4 dimensional continuum.

It is impractical for us to refer our current year measured from Big Bang. Infact our ancestors didn’t know about Big Bang or its time of occurrence, which is still being determined shifting by few million years here and there. Thus humans decided to measure time from a specific important event that is significant for the society. Thus it has to be significant and important event for everyone to count years from that event, that can be related by whole world. For example Hindu calendars in India even today declare year as “Salivahan Saka”. Year 2025, is 1946 per Salivahana Saka. It is the years measure from the time Salivahana dynasty started ruling in South India, which is a major event as that dynasty ruled for 400+ years. Similarly there is Vikram Samvat used in Hindu calendars in Northern India, it’s the year since Vikramaditya Emperor started ruling Northern India. However these are very specific to Indian subcontinent and specific significant events to their history. For someone in another country they may not be relavant. Thus humans decided to take one major event that can be of significance to whole human community on earth. Romans have considered Birth of Christ as one such event and that has become a universal standard. For example year 2025 is the number of years since birth of Jesus Christ. It is also referred as AD (“Anno Domini”, in Latin means “in the year of our Lord”), and years before birth of Christ are referred as BC. However with already existing local measures and the new globally accepted way of measuring had to align.

Calendar is published as a document, almanac for each year. Calendars helped everyone to know start of year, seasons, weeks, months, etc. There are various types of calendars, each published for their communities or region. Some of the popular calendars are Chandramana, Suryamana, Julian, Gregorian, Hijri – these are all based on movements of Moon or Sun in the sky. Since Vedic period, Hindu Calendars are either Chandramana (lunar based) or Suryamana (Sun based) calendars. Even today most of the Hindus follow the same calendar to track festivals and religious events.  Hijri is calendar adopted by Arabs after the establishment of Islam. It is still used for all Islamic religious practices. Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Ceasar to replace Roman Calendar which is further refined by Pope Gregory XIII in year 1582 to introduce Gregorian calendar. Many Eastern Orthodox Church even today refer Julian Calendar for religious events. However, for all civilian purposes, Gregorian calendar is used as standard calendar today, across the world. It has introduced leap year to align number of days in lunar calendars with number of days in solar calendar. In summary, looking back to the history of Calendar formation and Time, religious institutations and religious practices have major contribution towards measuring Time.

Calendars were originally published to let every one know the day when to celebrate religious festivals, and to assist farmers with agricultural planning. As the Calendar has measurements based on Sun and Moon positions relative to Earth, these Calendars are not universal but only for Earth. As the civilization progressed, Time is standardized and defined by Scientists, and Governaments but less by religious institutions.

The Hindu calendar is still published every year and it is based on Vedic astrology teachings. The position of Moon and Sun are computed with respect to planets, and all festivals & religious events are defined based on planetary movements, different from Gregorian calendar date/time. There are other units commonly used in Hindu calendar for specific purposes, for example a “Tithi” of a day, and specific hours in a day which is considered auspicious or inauspicious, etc which are used for all religious activities and spiritual practices. It explains how intertwined the time-keeping is with religion or culture.

Hindu Calendar:

The Hindu calendar is published every year at the beginning of the year, which is different from Jan/1^st. Most celebrate New Year as a festival, and it is right at the start of Indian Spring, called Vasantha – which is at the beginning of Indian Summer. Indian Vedic teachings include study on astrology and planetary movements – which are used for the Calendar publishing. A year is known as Samvatsara or Varsha in Sanskrit. Every year has a unique name, and a unique incrementing number. There are 60 unique names of Years, which are cyclic, means names recycle after 60 years. For example, Prabhava is first year, Akshaya is 60^th year, and repeats. Current year 2024-25 is called “Krodhi” (38^th in 60).

Hindu calendar is closely related to the movements of planets Bruhaspati (Jupiter) and Sani (Saturn). They align in the sky once every 60 years, thus 60 names. Depending on the tradition followed, the Hindu calendar can be Lunar or Solar, but year names remain same. All Festivals, cultural events, religious observances, and harvest celebrations are scheduled according to these calendars, though they arrive few days later in Solar calendar (surya maana) compared to Lunar calendar (chandra maana). For day to day civilian purposes, everyone follows Gregorian calendar. Modern Hindu calendars publish corresponding details of Gregorian calendar, while keeping the traditional aspects of almanac.

New year first day is celebrated as a religious festival publishing new Hindu calendar or Almanac, called “Panchangam”, for that year. Panchangam literally translates to “5 parts”, as the Calendar contains five critical parts called – “Tithi”, “Nakshatra”, “Yoga”, “Karana”, “Vaara”. Panchangam describes 32 aspects of a year but these five are more important for daily life.

• Tithi and Paksha: is Moon position relative to Sun, which is given a name. There are 15 names, starting from Amavasya (new moon day) to Pournami (full moon day) called Shukla Paksha and then repeat of Tithis from Pournami to Amavasya called Krishna Paksha. And these two pakshas make a maasa (month).
• Nakshatra: is the stellar position in which Moon is located for an observer from that region There are 27 Nakshatras (stars).
• Yoga:  represents angular position relationship between Sun and Moon – there are 27 Yogas.
• Karna: Every Tithi has two Karnas. Overall there are 11 Karnas – 4 of them occur only once in a month, while rest 7 reoccur in the same month, repeating 8 times.
• Vaara: this represents day of the week.

These five components are critical for someone to perform ritual for the day, including Puja – everyone refers to Panchangam daily to know such details. When Panchaangam is released at the start of new year, will list all 365 days along with respect five components for each day, and many other details for that day are detailed, including sunrise and sunset time, Tithi change over time, festivals, any lunar/solar eclipse – their exact day and time of occurrence, auspicious/inauspicious time period for each day. etc. A year also is broadly classified as Uttarayana (Sun moved northern direction) and Dakshnayana (Sun moved towards south). Panchangam also details about position of each planet along with Sun and Moon, and based on which predictions for each Zodiac sign is published. These are computed based on Jyotish Shastra (Astrology) calculations, which is part (anga) of Vedas. There are select few scholars (called Sidhantis) who have good knowledge on the Jyotish Shastra and they typically author the Panchangam. Hindu tradition also has concept of 4 Yugas, each yuga consisting of few hundred thousand years. More about it when we discuss on Philosophy of Time.

Thus, Hindu Calendar, for a given location on Earth, the Time of the day is uniquely identified by following 10 values: Yuga, Samvatsara, Maasa, Vara, Dakshnayana or Uttarayana, Sukla Paksha or Krishna Paksha, Tithi, Nakshatra, Yoga, and Karna. Budhism and Jainism also follow similar to Hindu calendar. However Roman or Julian or Gregorian calendars may not have those 10 aspects. It is not a coincidence of these 10 parameters in Hindu calendar but it is intrinsic to its Philosophy of Living and concept of Time, which we will cover in next part.

(To continue 2^nd part on Time & Philosophy )