Chapter 8 · Verse 17·Spoken by Krishna
सहस्रयुगपर्यन्तमहर्यद्ब्रह्मणो विदुः। रात्रिं युगसहस्रान्तां तेऽहोरात्रविदो जनाः
sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ rātriṁ yuga-sahasrāntāṁ te ’ho-rātra-vido janāḥ
Those who know that the day of Brahma lasts a thousand ages and his night also lasts a thousand ages, they truly know day and night.
Word by Word
Saved for this reading session
Three movements · tap a label to switch
Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
his verse gives the cosmic measure of time for Brahma, the creator-deity (also called Prajapati, the four-faced one, or Viraj), the highest being within the created order. One day of Brahma lasts a thousand 'yugas'. The commentators are nearly unanimous that 'yuga' here does not mean a single age but a 'chaturyuga' or 'mahayuga', a full cycle of four ages (Krita/Satya, Treta, Dvapara, Kali). So a day of Brahma is a thousand four-age cycles, and his night is exactly as long. Several cite the Puranic rule directly: 'a thousand four-yuga cycles is called the day of Brahma'.
Braided from 16 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
The single point of the whole calculation is that even Brahma, and even his world (Brahmaloka or Satyaloka), the loftiest and longest-lived attainment in the universe, is bounded by time and therefore subject to return. The reasoning is explicit in many sources: because the worlds are measured out in time, they have an end; what has an end dissolves; what dissolves sends its beings back into rebirth. By such days and nights, reckoned through fortnights, months and years, Brahma lives a hundred of his own years, and then he too falls. This is the answer the verse gives to the natural objection that someone who reaches so high a world must surely be free of return.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya
The 'knowers of day and night' (ahoratra-vidah) are not ordinary people who simply track time by the rising and setting of the sun and moon. Many commentators say they are the yogins or the far-seeing ones, who through the power of yoga or insight actually behold these vast cosmic cycles of creation and dissolution. Those whose knowledge is limited to the visible motion of sun and moon are said to see too little, narrowly, and so are not true knowers of Brahma's day and night.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrī Puruṣottama · Rāmānujācārya
The practical force of the verse is a counsel of dispassion: do not set your heart on even the highest heavenly reward, because every such reward, however immense in scale, is still inside the clock and will end. Several commentators draw this out plainly. The longest-lived seat in the upper worlds is itself ringed by sleep and dissolution. Only the Lord, or the imperishable Self, stands outside this cosmic day and night; only that attainment breaks the cycle of return.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vedānta Deśika · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Dvaita
This school reads the word 'thousand' against the grain of the common arithmetic. Here 'thousand' (sahasra) means simply 'many', not literally ten hundreds; it is a synonym for 'many', not the ordinary numerical sense. On this reading the verse is not finally about the familiar thousand-chaturyuga day of Brahma at all, but about the supreme dissolution that comes only at the close of the two 'parardhas', the two great halves of Brahma's whole lifespan, together with the primal creation. The point is that only at this grand dissolution does every effect actually arise and perish; at the intermediate, smaller dissolutions not all beings are destroyed. A further, distinctive move: this school also refers the 'night' to the Lord (Hari/the great Vishnu) himself. Citing the Maha-kaurma that 'the night of the great Vishnu lasts to the end of many ages', it holds that even for Hari, whose form is wholly complete and who is eternal, the actionless state is called His 'night' and the active state His 'day', so the verse can be read as displaying the power of the unmanifest Self that is the cause of creation and dissolution. The aim of the whole passage, this school stresses, is to establish that on reaching the Lord there is no return.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school underscores that the entire ordering of day and night, from the level of man up to the four-faced Brahma, is wrought by the Lord's own resolve or will. The cosmic calendar is not an impersonal mechanism but the Lord's deliberate arrangement. Reading the verse together with the two that follow, this school draws a pointed conclusion for the spiritual aspirant: the worlds up to Brahma's, even held with their relative independence under Hiranyagarbha and the rest, are circular, caught in the kalpa-cycle. So the seeker who longs merely for lordship or cosmic splendor and reaches those worlds, however blessed, wins only a great but circular fruit and remains subject to the cycle; only aiming at the Lord himself breaks it.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
This school takes the verse as the answer to a specific objection: since texts say souls in Brahmaloka 'are liberated together with Brahma', do they not escape return? The answer is that Brahma himself is time-measured, so his world cannot be the final liberation. The technical computation is passed through only briefly, because the school's interest is not the cosmic count but the philosophic point it carries: even the longest day of the conditioned order has its end. There is a constructive note, though: at the close of Brahma's hundred-year life, those who have been freed along with him reach the imperishable (akshara) by gradual succession, by a long ladder and not a single step. So Brahmaloka is not direct liberation but a real station within time from which a further, graded rise is possible; and the 'pusti' (grace-path) devotee is told to fix his bond on no such return-bound fruit.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
This devotional stream reads the verse as deflating the supposed safety of the upper worlds against scriptural praises of Brahmaloka as 'fearless' or 'sorrowless'. If even Brahma, the lord of that realm, falls at the end of his hundred years, how much more its lesser dwellers? One commentator adds the vivid detail that fourteen Indras come and go within a single day of Brahma, to show how short even a chief god's reign is against this clock. But the stream then turns the teaching to its own consoling point: for the Vaishnava, the devotee of the Lord, there is no such fall, and even that very Brahma is granted liberation. So the verse warns against trusting any time-bound heaven while affirming that devotion to the Lord lifts one clear of the cycle.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This reading dwells on a subtle implication: it is not other and other beings that are sent forth in each new cosmic day, but these very same living beings. Day after day the same beings wake and follow out their own activity; night after night the same beings, their stir of movement stilled, abide as mere potency. Creation and dissolution are thus a repeated coming-to-be of the same beings, and the only real difference between cosmic states is one wrought by time, marked by the sense of 'long' and 'quick'. Since this bounding by time reaches even the Prajapatis, it stands settled that they too are of the nature of arising and passing away.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
The modern commentators expand the verse in distinct directions. One reads 'day' as evolution, projection, or manifestation of the universe and 'night' as involution or pralaya, the dissolution back into the Unmanifest (Mulaprakriti), where the universe lies latent like a tree in its seed; he stresses that Brahman itself, like gold unchanged by the ornaments made from it or the ocean unmoved by its waves, remains untouched by this eternal rhythm of cosmic day and night. Another draws a direct moral lesson: our own twelve-hour day is less than an infinitesimal fraction of this vast cycle, so worldly pleasures pursued in it are as illusory as a mirage and our time is better spent serving God through service of mankind; yet because our span is so small a drop in eternity, one who fails of Self-realization here need not despair but can bide his time. Another notes the textual history, that the verse appears without a prior explanation of how a yuga is computed and must be read against tables found in the Mahabharata, the Manu-Smriti and Yaska's Nirukta, and clarifies that the 'avyakta' of the next verse means the imperceptible Prakriti of Samkhya, not the supreme Brahman. The non-sectarian devotional voice underlines that however great any lifespan, it has a measure of time; even the highest enjoyments, being born of contact, are causes of sorrow alone and have a time-limit, and only the Lord is beyond time, so one who truly knows the nature of time gives not the slightest importance even to the divine enjoyments reaching up to Brahmaloka.
Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If even the highest, longest-lived heaven dissolves and sends its inhabitants back, then what kind of attainment actually lasts and breaks this endless wheel of creation and return?
Start by letting the verse do its intended work, which is to dismantle a false hope. The natural assumption is that reaching a very high, very long-lived world must mean safety. The whole point here is that this is not so: because every world, up to and including Brahma's own, is measured out in time, it has an end, and what ends sends its beings back into rebirth. Even Brahma falls at the close of his hundred years. Scale, however vast, is not the same as freedom.
Śaṅkarācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas
What lasts is what stands outside this cosmic day and night altogether. The commentators point beyond every time-bound heaven to the Lord, or the imperishable Self, as the one attainment not ringed by sleep and dissolution. Reaching that is what breaks the cycle; reaching anything less, however blessed, wins only a great but circular fruit. For the devotee of the Lord in particular, there is no such fall, and the cycle is broken.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas
And this does not make the high worlds worthless or the climb hopeless. On one reading, Brahmaloka is a real station within time from which those freed along with Brahma rise by gradual succession to the imperishable, a long ladder rather than a single step. The practical counsel that follows is simply not to set your heart on any reward that expires, but to aim, directly or by that graded path, at what is genuinely beyond time.
Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Let the sheer scale of this verse work on you. A thousand four-age cycles is only one day for Brahma, and he lives a hundred of his own years before he too dissolves. Against that, our own day of a few waking hours is almost nothing. The lesson is not despair but proportion. However great any lifespan or any enjoyment, it has a measure of time stamped on it; and the highest pleasures, because they are born of contact between the senses and their objects, are in the end causes of sorrow, not lasting rest. Only the Lord is beyond time. So one who truly understands the nature of time stops handing his heart over to rewards that expire, and gives not the slightest importance even to the most splendid enjoyments that reach all the way up to Brahmaloka. Hold your longing for what is timeless, and let the time-bound be seen for exactly what it is.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.