12

Appendix 12

It should be stressed that the disinclination of philologists to allow for the “essential” connection of Chronos and Kronos rests upon the stern belief that the “god” Saturn has nothing to do with the planet Saturn, and upon the supposition that an expert in classical philology has nothing whatever to learn from Indian texts. Were it not so, they might have stumbled over Kāla, i.e., Chronos, as a name of Yama, i.e., Kronos, alias the planet Saturn.

Indians have indeed, written more about their Kāla — and the Iranians about their Zurvan — than the Greeks about Chronos, but with the translated Vedas being what they are, we won’t claim the relevant texts to be transparent, nor the scholarly interpretations to be particularly elucidating, all of the experts starting, as they do, from the unfounded conviction that “astrology” must be a “late” phenomenon.

To throw “identifications” around, does not lead anywhere, in our opinion, so we do not mean to simplify by nailing down, once and for all, Kāla/Chronos as being the very same as Yama/Kronos/ Saturn. To recognize Kronos/Saturn as *auctor *temporum is quite sufficient for the time being, [1] and so are the Indian notions, according to which Yama is often called Kāla; in other passages he is the commander of Kāla (and Kāla, in his turn, the commander of Mrityu, Death). [2]

Kāla plays his unmistakable role already in Rigveda 164, but the *Atharva Veda *dedicates to this “god” two whole hymns (19.53 and 19.54), and it is worth recalling Eisler’s statement (Weltenmantel, p. 499): “Zu dieser Kāla-Lehres des Atharvaveda ist später nichts mehr dazugekommen; die jüngeren Quellen führen nur die Vorstellungen weiter aus.”

Here are some verses from these two hymns dedicated to Kāla, without the numerous notes and comparisons with other translations, as treated by Bloomfield and Whitney (Atharva Veda, trans. by Bloomfield [1964], pp. 224f.):

19.53: (1) Time, the steed, runs with seven reins (rays), thousand-eyed, ageless, rich in seed. The seers, thinking holy thoughts, mount him, all the beings (worlds) are his wheels.

(2) With seven wheels does this time ride, seven naves has he, immortality is his axle. He carries hither all these beings (worlds). Time, the first god, now hastens onward.

(3) A full jar has been placed upon Time; him, verily, we see existing in many forms. He carries away all these beings (worlds); they call him Time in the highest heaven.

(4) He surely did bring hither all the beings (worlds), he surely did encompass all the beings (worlds). Being their father, he became their son; there is, verily, no other force higher than he.

(5) Time begot yonder heaven, Time also (begot) these earths. That which was, and that which shall be, urged forth by Time, spreads out.

(6) Time created the earth, in Time the sun burns. In Time are all beings, in Time the eye looks abroad . . .

(8) . . . Time is the lord of everything, he was the father of Prājapati.

(9) By him this (universe) was urged forth, by him it was begotten, and upon him this (universe) was founded. Time, truly, having become the brahma (spiritual exaltation), supports Parameshtin (the highest lord).

(10) Time created the creatures (prajāh), and Time in the beginning (created) the lord of creatures (Prajāpati), the self-existing Kashyapa and the tapas (creative fervour) from Time were born.

19.54: (1) From Time the waters did arise, from Time the brahma (spiritual exaltation), the tapas (creative fervour), the regions (of space did arise). Through Time the sun rises, in Time he goes down again.

(2) Through Time the wind blows, through Time (exists) the great earth; the great sky is fixed in Time. In Time the son (prajāpati) begot of yore that which was, and that which shall be.

(3) From Time the Rks (= the Rig Veda) arose, the Yajus (= the Yajur Veda) was born from Time; Time put forth the sacrifice, the imperishable share of the gods.

(4) Upon Time the Gandharvas [3] and Apsarases are founded, upon Time the worlds (are founded), in Time this Angiras and Atharvan rule over the heavens.

(5) Having conquered this world and the highest world, and the holy (pure) worlds (and) their holy divisions; having by means of the brahma conquered all the worlds, Time, the highest God, forsooth, hastens forward.

Where we alternately read once “beings,” and “worlds,” the Sanskrit word is bhuvana, from the radical bhū- (= Greek phyō-) as discerned from the radical as-, bhū- meaning “to be” in the sense of perpetual change, “coming to be and passing away,” as- being reserved for the changeless, timeless existence beyond the planetary “instruments of time,” the organa chronou of Plato’s Timaeus. As a matter of fact, Plato would have understood at once the verbs bhū- and as-, and he might well have applauded the utterance of the vanquished Daitya King Vali: [4]

“O Indra! Why are you vaunting so much? All persons are practically urged on by Kāla in engaging themselves in an encounter. To the heroes, glory, victory, defeat and death gradually come to pass. This is the reason that the wise behold this universe as being guided by Kāla, and they therefore neither grieve nor are elated with joy.”

Nor is there much “primitive belief” to be squeezed out of such statements as “many thousand Indras and other divinities have been overtaken by Kāla in the course of world periods.” [5] But the classicists usually prefer to keep silent about the most revealing sentence of Anaximander, handed down to us by Cicero (De Natura Deorum 1.25): “It is the opinion of Anaximander, that gods are born in long intervals of rising and setting, and that they are innumerable worlds (or the — much discussed — innumerable worlds.

Anaximandri autem opinio est, nativos esse deos longis intervallis orientis occidentisque eosque innumerabiles esse mundos)”; and if they do not keep silent, they claim it to be “much more natural” to understand these intervals as being in space than in time (Burnet), by which means every way to understanding is effectively blocked.

This much only for the time being: a broader discussion of Iranian Zurvan would wreck our frame; we do not think, however, that Zurvan / Chronos represents a “Zoroastrian Dilemma”; to style it thus (with Zaehner) is one more mistake: it is not the “beliefs” and “religions” which circle around and fight each other restlessly; what changes is the celestial situation.

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1. We do not think it is an “accident” that this originator of time begins with the letter X, representing the obliquity of the ecliptic in Plato’s Timaeus.

2. See J. Scheftelowitz, Die Zeit als Schicksalsgottheit in der indischen und iranischen Religion (1929), pp. 18ff. See also Burgess (Surya Siddhanta, p. 5), who generalizes: “To the Hindus, as to us, Time is, in a metaphorical sense, the great destroyer of all things; as such, he is identified with Death, and with Yama, the ruler of the dead.”

3. See A. Weber (*Die Vedischen Nachrichten über *die Naksbatras, Pt. 2, p. 278, n. 3) about the Gandharvas as representing the days of the “year” of 360 days, according to the Bhagavata Purana 4.29.21 (Sanyal trans., vol. 2, p. 145); the Indians reckoned with several types of “years” at the same time, and so did the Maya.

4. Bhagavata Purana 8.11 (Sanyal trans., vol. 3, p. 126).

5.Quoted by Eisler, Weltenmantel, p. 501. What the author (pp. 385f.) has to say about “anthropomorphic, most primitive empathies” (?Einfuhlüngen), connected with Ouranos, Gē, Helios and Selene, which are, allegedly, miles away from the “step of highly abstract conceptions about eternal Time,” is not only a contradictio in adjecto, but plain thoughtlessness.