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Question -20
Different people propose different dates for Kali Yuga. What is the exact date of Kali Yuga?
Answer:
There is only one functional date of Kali yuga which is used for all purposes - civil, religious, legal and so on. This yuga is computational, starting from the exit of Krishna from his mortal coils. This year marks 3 events namely,
1. The exit of Krishna from the earth
2. Yudhishthira stepping down from the throne
3. Parikshit, the only surviving progeny of the Pandava-s becoming the king.
Kali Yuga's first king was Pariskhit.
All the above three events occurred in the year 3101 BCE, in the year Pramathi.
From then onwards the present time scale came to be known as Kali Maha yuga whose total duration is 4,32,000 years.
This date is computational, because it is determined by the conjunction of all the planets (except one of the nodes) at the beginning of sidereal Aries. It will take 4,32,000 years for the same planetary combination to repeat in the same point of Aries.
Due to its non-repeatability for such long scales, this scale is used as the Era of Time for all purposes. Inscriptions found anywhere in India are aligned to this date and not to any other date. For all economic transactions and religious activities, only this time scale is used.
For the question why there are other dates floating, the only answer is that they happened to be individual derivations as against the universally accepted date of 3101 BCE followed by kings and religious people.
That date was the day when Krishna left this world. It was the last day of Caitra, an Amavasya day which coincided with the Sun entering the sidereal sign of Mesha (Aswini star) when all the planets except Rahu congregated near Aswini. No other date except 3101 BCE match with these details. This date fulfils another stipulation that it must be 3139 years before the Shalivahana Shaka started.
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