Krta Yuga

A particular age of the world in one of
the reckonings of cosmic time.
According to traditional belief, time has
neither beginning nor end, but alternates between cycles of creation and
activity, followed by cessation and quietude. Each of these cycles lasts for 4.32
billion years; the active phase is known
as the Day of Brahma, and the quiet
phase as the Night of Brahma. In one
reckoning of cosmic time, the Day of
Brahma is divided into one thousand
mahayugas (“great cosmic ages”), each
of which lasts for 4.32 million years.
Each mahayuga is composed of four
constituent yugas, named the Krta Yuga,
Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali
Yuga. Each of these four yugas is shorter
than its predecessor and ushers in an
era more degenerate and depraved than
the preceding one. By the end of the Kali
Yuga, things have gotten so bad that the
only solution is the destruction and
recreation of the earth, at which time
the next Krta era begins.
The Krta Yuga is the first of the four
yugas, and at 1,728,000 years, it is by far
the longest. It is also considered to be
the best of all the yugas, symbolized by
gold, the most valuable of all metals. In a
dice game played in ancient India, the
side designated Krta was the one for the
winning throw, representing the best
possible option. In the mythic descriptions of the Krta Yuga, people live
extremely long times, are of tremendous
physical stature, and by nature, are completely virtuous.