I struggled for a long while to understand this area of religion or way of life of these people and lately its all coming clearer the more I study and the more and more comparative religion studies I undertake.
In Hinduism a "day of Brahma" or one thousand mahayugas is equal to 4.32 billion years, measuring the duration of the world.
..... (scientists estimate the age of the Earth at 4.54 billion years)
Each of these kalpas are further divided up into 14 manvantara periods, each lasting 71 yuga cycles (306,720,000 years).
Preceding the first and following each manvatara period is a juncture (sandhya) the length of a Satya-yuga (1,728,000) years.
Two kalpas constitute a day and night of Brahma. A "month of Brahma" is supposed to contain thirty such days (including nights), or 259.2 billion years.
According to the Mahabharata, 12 months of Brahma (=360 days) constitute his year, and 100 such years the life cycle of the universe.
Fifty years of Brahma are supposed to have elapsed, and we are now in the shvetavaraha-kalpa
of the fifty-first; at the end of a Kalpa the world is annihilated.
"The duration of the material universe is limited. It is manifested in cycles of kalpas.
A kalpa is a day of Brahmā, and one day of Brahmā consists of a thousand cycles of four yugas, or ages: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga.
The cycle of Satya is characterized by virtue, wisdom and religion, there being practically no ignorance and vice, and the yuga lasts 1,728,000 years.
In the Tretā-yuga vice is introduced, and this yuga lasts 1,296,000 years.
In the Dvāpara-yuga there is an even greater decline in virtue and religion, vice increasing, and this yuga lasts 864,000 years.
And finally in Kali-yuga (the yuga we have now been experiencing over the past 5,000 years) there is an abundance of strife, ignorance, irreligion and vice, true virtue being practically nonexistent, and this yuga lasts 432,000 years.
In Kali-yuga vice increases to such a point that at the termination of the yuga the Supreme Lord Himself appears as the Kalki avatāra, vanquishes the demons, saves His devotees, and commences another Satya-yuga.
Then the process is set rolling again. These four yugas, rotating a thousand times, comprise one day of Brahmā, and the same number comprise one night. Brahmā lives one hundred of such "years" and then dies.
These "hundred years" total 311 trillion 40 billion (311,040,000,000,000) earth years. By these calculations the life of Brahmā seems fantastic and interminable, but from the viewpoint of eternity it is as brief as a lightning flash.
In the Causal Ocean there are innumerable Brahmās rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic. Brahmā and his creation are all part of the material universe, and therefore they are in constant flux."(Bhagavad-gītā As It Is 8.17) Wikipedia
Images @ Eminpee Fotography
