Many people in the world are in different professions, practicing various cultures,
ideologies, and living in different places. But there is one concept which is common
in everyone's life, that is Time! I have many questions regarding this construct. What is Time?
How is it calculated? How is this all made possible? Not just for thousands of years but for millions
and trillions of years?
There are many definitions for time. If you go through the resources,
you will find several meanings that will confuse you at times.
Here is a brief definition but it may not be scientific.
Time is the bridge between past, present, and future. But still, it is a complex concept to understand. Okay! Let me share with you what I know about time. For example, consider a tree in the Spring season, with beautiful leaves and fruits. After some duration, the color of the leaves fade away and they fall from the tree and we call it the autumn season. As it gets dried, the tree starts growing new leaves again, making a beautiful green umbrella. Here, we can observe the changes of trees from one moment to another. Even for humans, beginning from the fetus stage in the womb to a corpse in the mortuary, many changes take place in the human body. So, we can say that “whichever that makes changes is time”. Time is not seen, but it is felt. It gives all kinds of feelings, emotions to the things happening in life. We all know that we measure temperature in degrees, distances in meters, weights in kilograms; Lifespan in ... Yeah! Time is also a measurement of life.
During 3500 BC, the Babylonians started one type of system called the Sexagesimal system. They follow 60 as the base, just as we follow the decimal system by taking 10 as a base. Again, based on that, they calculated days as (60/2=30), months as (60/5=12). Now the question is "Why did they take 60?". Now recall what I said, it was during 3500 BC, which matches with Veda Vyasa's period. They took 60 as a base because the cycle of the year is 60. Each era has 60 cycles of years according to Panchangam (astrological calendar). Based on astrological influences, the name of the year would represent the character of that year. Every 60 years, one cycle completes and the names repeat in the next cycle like prabhava, vibhava, and so on. This year 2020-21, what we call “Sharvari” is one among those. So, they took 60 as the base. Whatever Veda Vyasa has given in those days was taken by the people across the world and then they started making these things happen. Unfortunately, the name was erased and patent rights were taken by the people of later times.
Time is a gap between one action to another action or one moment to another moment.
Egyptians during 1534 BC, took only 10 months in a year. Then, by the influence of the British during the Romans, they were forced to make some new adoptions. When the Gregorian calendar started taking place, they were forced to add certain things, and then the 12 months system became a standard for them, making January the first month, and March is the first month according to the calendar of Telugu people, as we take Ugadi (which comes in March) as the first month. Even then, there was no standardization for them. In the 16th century, it was all started by Galileo Galilei, he standardized the concept of ‘Time’ by making a pendulum. Newton in the 17th Century adopted the same thing. He wanted to make Standardization with minimum errors. In the 1940s, Switzerland standardized a clock called the Swiss clock and of course, wrist watches came from them. After that, the most stabilized atom Caesium 133 was standardized. Whatever they made, definitely there will be a few errors, even the so-called atomized calendar, CS133 may make changes by a few seconds after 3-4 million years. As we studied that there is no one with 100% accuracy and efficiency, what I mean to say is that, nowadays people are calling them as intelligentsia of the world, they tried to minimize the errors but not 100%, they can't make universality for that. They compromised on many things as per our history. Based on what you take as a base, strength or accuracy is counted.
Till now, I just gave a superficial note of the current time calculation that came to account. But do you know about the Calculation of time used in the Vedic system? They used the sun for standardization. They took the sun for standardization because when you consider the whole Planetary system, furthermore if you take the solar family into account, the most standard one is the sun.That was probably the reason why the great sages of our Vedic glory took the sun and his rays as a constant and based on that, they started calculating the time and named it the solar calendar. We know that when we open the window, we see the sun rays falling into the room. If you observe carefully, there are so many particles that keep moving in the air and don't fall on the ground. They took the smallest dust particle and started calculating time. This is how our ancestors calculated time for ages, and is still in practice without any deviations, unlike our so-called intelligentsia which we have read in our history books.