time, calendar, and cosmology
What is Kali Yuga and when did it begin according to tradition?
The four ages
Hindu cosmology divides time into four great ages, called yugas. They run in a cycle, from the most pure to the most troubled. Krita or Satya Yuga comes first, an age of truth and wholeness. Then Treta Yuga, then Dvapara Yuga, and finally Kali Yuga, the age we are in now. Each age is shorter and dimmer than the one before it. Kali Yuga is the last and the hardest. The tradition describes it as a time when dharma, right order and moral life, has weakened to its lowest point. Conflict, confusion, and short lives are among the qualities the Puranic tradition links to this age.
When it began
The tradition places the start of Kali Yuga at the moment Krishna left the world. Traditional reckoning puts this at a date corresponding to around 3102 BCE in the modern calendar. This starting point, called an epoch, is used in classical Indian astronomical texts to calculate the positions of planets and the passage of time. It has been a fixed reference point in Hindu timekeeping for a very long time.
How long it lasts
The tradition gives Kali Yuga a total length of 432,000 years. By that count, we are still in the early part of it, with the vast majority yet to come. At the end of Kali Yuga, the cycle closes and begins again. This vast scale of time is one of the most striking features of Hindu cosmology. Human history, even recorded history going back thousands of years, is a tiny fraction of the full span.
How people relate to it today
Many Hindus are aware of Kali Yuga as a backdrop to daily life. It is sometimes invoked to make sense of hardship, moral decline, or the difficulties of the times. Some take the traditional timeline literally. Others treat it as a symbolic framework, a way of saying that we live in an age that calls for extra effort to live well. The idea that goodness is harder to sustain now, but still possible and still worth pursuing, is a thread that runs through how many people understand it.