\|/Doubts & Discussions about Lord Shiva Part-1\|/ - Page 39

the brand new promo shows about Tarkasurs boon given to him by Shiva...but isnt this supposed to be during Parvatis time?and that is why Bramha Ji wanted Shiva and Parvati to get married?

i hope the show isnt doing a deviation from the actual story!

There was an asura (demon) named Tara. Tara's son was Taraka.
Taraka wished to defeat the gods. He therefore went to a place named Madhuvana and began to perform very difficult tapasya. He gazed at the sun and stood there with his arms raised. He stood on one leg and that too, only on the toes of his feet. A hundred years passed. For those hundred years, Taraka drank only water and had no food to eat. For the next hundreds, he gave up that also and lived only on air. A hundred years were spent in performing tapasya inside water, another hundred years on earth and a hundred years more inside fire. For a hundred years he performed tapasya upside down, standing on his hands. And for yet another hundred years, he hung upside down from the branches of a tree.( He performed tapasya for 700 years)

The meditation was so difficult that Brahma was pleased. He appeared before Tarakasura and said, I am pleased with your tapasya. What boon do you want?

If you are pleased, replied Tarakasura, grant me two boons. The first boon should be that no one created by you should be as strong as me. The second boon should be that I should be killed only by Shiva's son.

Shiva at that point of time had no sons. Sati had died and although she had been reborn as Parvati, she had not been married to Shiva.

Brahma granted Tarakasura the two boons. The demon went to a city named Shonitapura and began to live there. All the other demons made Tarakasura their king. Thanks to the boon. Tarakasura was so strong tha the easily defeated the gods. He conquered the three worlds and drove the gods out of heaven. He stole all their belongings and employed the gods as his servants.

The despondent gods went to Brahma and asked him to find a solution to the Tarakasura problem. I can't, said Brahma. It is because of my boon that the demon has become so powerful. Besides, my boon says that Tarakasura can only be killed by Shiva's son. Shiva has got to have a son. He is now performing tapasya in the Himalaya mountains. Parvati is also in that region. Do something so that these two fall in love with each other

So I'm guessing this serial ain't gonna show Simhamukha & Surapadman?

Hinduism perceives time to flow in great cycles called yugas. There are four yugas and depending upon the yuga the duration varies. The four yugas along with their duration in earthly years are:

The yuga cycle

Satya Yuga 1,728,000

Treta Yuga 1,296,000
Dvapara Yuga 864,000

Kali Yuga 432,000

__________

Total 4,320,000 One yuga cycle.

I say earthly years because Hindu scripture gives the years as divine years'time according to the calculation of the Gods. Notice that the basic number is 432,000, the age of Kali yuga, and so dvapara is twice that number, treta is 3 times that number and satya is four times that number. One rotation of these four yugas is called a yuga cycle which is a total of 4,320,000 years. A thousand yuga cycles is called a kalpa and therefore a kalpa is 4,320,000,000 years. Time moves on in these great cycles, yuga after yuga, kalpa after kalpa, eternally.

To give an example how such huge numbers are used, consider the lifetime of Brahma, the four headed creator God. Brahma's life span is calculated according to yuga time. One kalpa is said to be the 12 hours of Brahma's day, so his 24 hour day is two kalpas in length. That means 24 hours of Brahma's time is 8,640,000,000 earthly years! His year is 365 days long and he lives for a 100 years. I leave it to my readers to do the math. My calculator does not have enough places to calculate the vast lifetime of Brahma. I am amazed by size of the numbers that the early Hindu thinkers were dealing with.

.It is said that we are now living within the Kali yuga, which started about 5000 years ago. Each of these yugas is said to have a certain quality of life. Kali yuga is the worst of times because it is the time of quarrel and deceit. The level of morality and spirituality is greatly decreased and the maximum span of life one can expect is only 100 years. In the previous yuga, Dvapara Yuga, life is said to have been much better. The lifetime of a human being during the Dvapara Yuga could be as much as 1000 years. Life was more vibrant and spirituality was greatly increased. It is described how a human being stood as much as 12 feet tall and how the trees and animals are much larger as well. The Treta yuga was an even better time with the maximum life span as much 10,000 years. Spirituality is even higher, and finally, in the best of times, the Satya Yuga the life of a human being could be up to 100,000 years! The Mahabharata and the Puranas are full of stories from the various yugas describing scenes of people living for huge periods of time. The great sage Vishwamitra, for example, mediated in water for 60,000 years before his meditation was broken by the beautiful Menaka. Their union brought about the famous Shakuntala, the heroin of many famous stories and plays in Sanskrit. Similarly, in many of the Puranas, ten avataras of Vishnu are said to repeatedly appear throughout the yuga cycles. Rama always appears during the Treta Yuga, Krishna appears at the end of Dvapara, and Kalki, the final avatara comes at the end of Kali Yuga to destroy all things and prepare the way for the next Satya Yuga. There are, therefore, many appearances of Rama, Krishna, and the other avataras. This is all takes place within the great cycles of yuga time.