Sanskrit
सहस्रयुगपर्यन्तमहर्यद्ब्रह्मणो विदुः । रात्रिं युगसहस्रान्तां तेऽहोरात्रविदो जनाः ॥
sahasrayugaparyantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ rātriṃ yugasahasrāntāṃ te'horātravido janāḥ
Translation
The people who know the day of Brahmâ, a thousand ages in duration, and the night a thousand ages in ending, they know day and night.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Having just invoked “the world of Brahma” as something that still returns, Krishna now supplies its timescale: a single day of Brahma equals a thousand yugas, and the night another thousand. The number matters less than the function — it recalibrates human notions of permanence, making even Brahma’s vast lifespan look small next to the higher, genuinely eternal reality verses 20-21 are about to introduce. The point of the huge number is to make even a cosmic age feel small: Time at this scale still runs in days and nights, and whatever is measured by them is not the akṣara of BG 8.20–BG 8.21.
Study deeper
Word by word
- sahasrayugaparyantam aharसहस्रयुगपर्यन्तं अहः
- a day that lasts a thousand yugas (sahasra-yuga-paryantam + ahaḥ)
- yad brahmaṇo viduḥयद् ब्रह्मणो विदुः
- which they know as Brahmā's (yat + brahmaṇaḥ + viduḥ)
- rātriṃ yugasahasrāntāṃरात्रिं युगसहस्रान्तां
- a night ending after a thousand yugas (rātrim + yuga-sahasra-antām)
- te'horātravido janāḥतेऽहोरात्रविदो जनाः
- they, the people who know day and night (te + ahaḥ-rātra-vidaḥ + janāḥ)
Commentary
Site Commentary
A thousand ages for a single day of Brahma isn’t a number meant to be verified or even really imagined — it’s a number meant to break a habit of mind. Once ordinary permanence looks laughably brief next to Brahma’s, the chapter has quietly done the real work of preparing you to accept, two verses later, that even Brahma’s scale is itself not permanent.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When a fear or worry feels unbearably permanent, try deliberately placing it against a much larger timescale — not to solve it, but to loosen the grip that "permanent" has on your thinking before you decide what to actually do about it.
Professional
- When your team is anchored on a metric that feels enormous — a huge backlog, a massive incident count — reframing it against a genuinely larger scale can recalibrate the team's sense of what's actually a big deal, before you decide what response the number warrants.
Family & Social
- When a problem in your family feels like it will last forever, naming an even larger timescale it sits inside — a lifetime, a generation — can loosen its grip on the present moment, making it easier to respond to calmly rather than urgently.
Ask yourself
A few ways to take this verse past reading. Ticks and the note stay in this browser.