8.17 A day of Brahma Krishna speaks
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 a thousand ages make one day of Brahma, and a thousand ages his night, know day and night.
Explanation
The scale, given as arithmetic rather than as an image.
A thousand ages to one day of Brahma, and a thousand more to his night. The number is not offered to be pictured; it is offered because it cannot be.
Placed directly after even Brahma's world returns, it does something specific: it takes the largest span the tradition can name and makes it one unit of something that still ends.
Going further
Word by word
- sahasra
- one thousand
- yuga
- age
- paryantam
- until
- ahaḥ
- one day
- yat
- which
- brahmaṇaḥ
- of Brahma
- viduḥ
- know
- rātrim
- night
- yuga-sahasra-antām
- lasts one thousand yugas
- te
- they
- ahaḥ-rātra-vidaḥ
- those who know his day and night
- janāḥ
- people
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A thousand ages to one day of Brahma, and a thousand more to his night.
The scale is doing something specific here. Arjuna has just asked an intensely personal question about the moment of his own death, and the answer widens to cosmological time before returning. Whatever comfort this offers is the cold kind: the frame is so large that the thing being feared changes size inside it.