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62
Scientific Vision of Lord Mahāvīra
a piece of cloth is woven out of a large number of threads and each thread is made of infinite points of cotton. When the piece of cloth is torn every thread of the cloth and every point of thread needs to be torn separately and each requires an indivisible and smallest fraction of time. A time unit, however, is subtler than the subtlest moment arrived at in these abovesaid processes.
The Units of Numerable Time
The Bh. S102 and the other canons 103 mention the conventional measurements of time starting from the smallest to the largest unit of time for the purpose of human activities They are as follows:
Table No. 3
Minimum self-raised time unit
= Minimum self-raised innumerable time units = Numerable or 44462458/3773 Āvalikās =
7 Pulse beats 7 stokas 77 Lavas or 3773 inhalations 30 muhūrtas 15 days and nights 2 fortnights 2 months 3 seasons 2 ayanas 5 years 20 yugas
= = = = = = = = = = =
1 samuya 1 Avalikā 1 pulse beat inhalationexhalation) 1 stoku 1 lava 1 muhurta 1 day and night 1 fortnight (paksu) 1 month or solar (māsa) 1 season (rtu) 1 ayana (solstice) 1 year (samvatsara) 1 yuga (aeon) i hundred years or century 1 thousand years or millenium 1 hundred thousand years or 100,000 years 1 pūrvānga 1 pūrva 1 truttăng 1 trutita
10 hundred years
=
100 thousand years
=
= =
8,400,000 years 8,400,000 pūrvāngas 8,400,000 pūrvās 8,400,000 trutitāngas
=
