Nāḍikā
Nāḍikā, “a measure of time”
Grammar: feminine noun; a measure of time.
Meaning: a measure of time of fifteen kalās; two nāḍikās make a muhūrta.
In the scriptures: Vyāsa, explaining to the munis the naimittika pralaya, first gives the measures of time in order. The blink of a man’s eyelid, the nimesha, is the root of all. Fifteen nimeshas are a kāshṭhā (the text adds “eighteen” in brackets). Thirty kāshṭhās are a kalā, and fifteen kalās are a nāḍikā. Two nāḍikās are a muhūrta, and thirty muhūrtas are a day and night (ahorātra). From there the count rises: thirty ahorātras are a month, twelve months a year, three hundred and sixty such years a year of the devas, twelve thousand deva-years a caturyuga, and a thousand caturyugas a day of Brahmā, a kalpa, at whose end the naimittika pralaya comes (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 232).
Related terms: Muhūrta · Kalā · Kāshṭhā · Nimesha · Kalpa
Sources
- Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 232