Nimesha

Nimesha · ni-mesha, “the blink of an eye”

Kalā has other meanings too: see all meanings of Kalā.

Grammar: masculine noun, from ni and the root mish (to wink): the closing of the eyelid, the blink of an eye.

Meaning: the blink of an eye, the smallest and root measure of time, from which the larger measures are counted.

In the scriptures: in the Brahma Purāṇa, Vyāsa, about to teach the munis the naimittika pralaya, first gives the measures of time. The blink of a man’s eyelid, the nimesha, is the root measure of all. Fifteen nimeshas (the text adds “eighteen” in brackets) are a kāshṭhā; thirty kāshṭhās make a kalā, and fifteen kalās a nāḍikā; two nāḍikās are a muhūrta; thirty muhūrtas are a day and night (ahorātra); thirty ahorātras a month; twelve months a year. Three hundred and sixty such years are a year of the devatās, twelve thousand years of the devatās are one caturyuga of the four yugas, and a thousand caturyugas are a day of Brahmā, a kalpa (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 232).

In Brahmā’s first yajña. Brahmā tells Nārada that when he performed the first yajña on the Gautamī, by the Purusha Sūkta, the seasons became its materials and the Vedas its seven paridhis (enclosing sticks), and Kalā, Kāshṭhā and Nimesha were remembered as the samidh (sacred twig), the vessel and the kuśa (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 91).

Related terms: Kāshṭhā · Kalā · Muhūrta · Ahorātra · Kalpa · Pralaya

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 232; Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 91