How Ancient Hindus Predicted the Universe’s Vastness
Westerners called their large numbers “absurd.” But these scholars laid the groundwork for modern-day math and physics.
On a moonlit night in Vrindavan, Krishna dances with the gopis in a boundless swirl of flutes, anklets, and divine mischief. But this isn’t just any dance. This is the Raslila, a dance so intense it bends time.
As the Bhagavata Purana, a Hindu text written in the first millennium, recounts, that night was no ordinary one. It lasted a kalpa, or 4.32 billion years. Because when a Hindu god loves, he doesn’t check the clock. There are countless other examples of Hindu texts engaging in large yet incredibly specific numbers: in the Mahabharata, 18 akshauhinis — a military unit made up of 21,870 chariots, 21,870 elephants, 65,610 cavalry, and 109,350 infantry — fight in the legendary Kurukshetra war. The four Yugas, cosmic epochs that cycle through time, span millions of years. The Kali Yuga — our current age of moral and spiritual decline — lasts 432,000 years. (We’re only in the year 5126.)
At first glance, these numbers might seem like mythological flourishes, but they communicate something more profound. They ask us to stretch — to imagine time, love, war, and divinity on a scale so vast, so infinite, that it’s impossible to count. In this numerical system, kalpas, yugas, and Brahma’s lifespan stretch past the limits of our own human experience. More importantly, they reveal irrevocable truths about how ancient Indians perceived the universe, influencing modern physics to this day.