Yojana
Yojana · yojana, “a measure of distance”
Grammar: neuter noun, from the root yuj (to yoke): “a yoking”, the distance travelled in one yoking of the draught animals.
Meaning: the great measure of distance of the śāstras and the Purāṇas, by which the brahmāṇḍa, the lokas, the dvīpas, the mountains and trees, and journeys on earth and beyond are measured.
In the scriptures: the Bhāgavata Purāṇa gives its measures in yojanas throughout, as the text gives them.
Maitreya tells Vidura that the brahmāṇḍa-kośa, the shell of the cosmic egg, made of sixteen vikāras, the ten indriyas, the manas and the five bhūtas, has an extent of fifty crore yojanas, and outside it, each ten times greater than the one before, are wrapped its coverings of water, fire, air, ākāśa, ahaṅkāra, the mahat-tattva and prakṛti (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 11). Bhagavān Kapila teaches Devahūti that the road to Yamaloka, full of darkness, is ninety-nine thousand yojanas long, and the Yamadūtas take the man of pāpa over it in two or three muhūrtas (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 30).
On Kailāsa, beneath which Bhagavān Śiva sat when Brahmā and the devas came to him, stood a great vaṭa tree a hundred yojanas high, its branches seventy-five yojanas long; its shade never left, no birds nested on it, and beneath it there was no heat (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 6). Śatadhanvā, after killing Satrājit, left the Syamantaka jewel with Akrūra and fled on a horse that could go a hundred yojanas (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 57).
In the Bhavishya Purāṇa: among the siddhis of a rite, one draws men and women from a distance of one hundred yojanas, and one who ties consecrated gorocana on the hand goes a lakh of yojanas and comes back (Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapter 29).
In the Brahma Purāṇa: Vyāsa tells the munis the measures of the narakas in yojanas. Mahāvīci, full of blood and vajra-thorns, is ten thousand yojanas wide; Kumbhīpāka, with its burning copper pots, a hundred lakh yojanas; Raurava, full of blazing vajra-arrows, sixty yojanas long and wide; Mahāraurava twenty-four yojanas wide; Tāmisra a lakh yojanas, and Mahātāmisra twice as wide; Asipatravana, the forest of burning swords, one yojana wide; Karambhavālukā, shaped like a well, one yojana; and Mahāpāyī a lakh yojanas (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 215).
In the Gautamī Māhātmya, Brahmā tells Nārada how Gautama Maharshi brought the Gaṅgā down to Brahmagiri. Among the varas Gautama asked of Bhagavān Śiva was this: that all who come within ten yojanas of the river, even those guilty of the great pāpas, the pitṛs who come to bathe there, and all who bathe in it, reach moksha (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 6). Bhagavān Śiva declared that within two hundred yojanas of it there would be three and a half crores of tīrthas (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 7).
When the Kṛtyā born of Pippalāda‘s eyes seized Pippalāda himself, Bhagavān Śiva commanded her not to seize any living being within one yojana of that place and to go far away to do her work, and she stood one yojana to the east of the Pippala tīrtha. To the devas who took refuge in him he said that the Kṛtyā does not harm those who live within a yojana, so they should stay there day and night; and the devas took their stand all round Cakreśvara, within a yojana, along the banks of the Gaṅgā (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 40).
When Rāma, in his forest years, came within five yojanas of the Gautamī, Yama commanded his servants to lift King Daśaratha out of naraka: Rāma’s father must not be tormented in naraka while Rāma is within five yojanas of the Gautamī (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 53).
Related terms: Krośa · Aṅgula · Brahmāṇḍa · Hasta
Sources
- Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapters 11, 30; Skandha 4, Chapter 6; Skandha 10, Chapter 57
- Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapter 29
- Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 215; Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapters 6–7, 40, 53