Note 71 — Chapter II
David Shea translation
Learn now the duration of a day and a night of Brahma, and of the several ages which shall be mentioned in order succinctly:
Sages have given the name of Krita to an age containing four thousand years of the gods; the twilight preceding it consists of as many hundreds, and the twilight following it of the same number.
In the other three ages, with their twilights preceding and following, are thousands and hundreds diminished by one.
The divine years, in the four ages just enumerated, being added together, their sum, or twelve thousand, is called the age of the gods.
And by reckoning a thousand such divine ages, a day of Brahma may be known: his night also has an equal duration.
The before-mentioned age of the gods, or twelve thousand of their years, being multiplied by seventy-one, constitutes a Manvantara, or the reign of a Menu.
There are numberless Manvantaras: creations also, and destructions of worlds innumerable: the Being supremely exalted performs all this with as much ease as if in sport; again and again for the sake of conferring happiness (Haughton’s Menu, p. 11. 12. 13).—D. S.