Hanuman Chalisa was composed by Gosvami Tulasidasa. He was a great devotee of Lord Ramachandra who lived in the 16th century. He composed the Rama-charita-manasa, the epic story of Lord Rama retold in the vernacular language
The Quest of Astronomers to Find the Distance of Sun
Archimedes, a Greek mathematician and philosopher, estimated the distance of Sun from Earth as 10000 times the radius of Earth
- Hipparchus gave an estimate of 490 times Earth’s radius
- Ptolemy considered the distance to be 1210 times Earth-sun distance
- Johannes Kepler realized these distances were significantly low
- Kepler’s law of Planetary Motion allowed astronomers to calculate the relative distance of the planets
Hanuman Chalisa
Distance between Sun and Earth = 12000 x 1000 yojanas = 96 million miles = 153.6 million kms
- Assumptions
- assumed yuga to mean the number 12000 based on the time calculation system of Vedic period
- approximated 1 yojana = 8 miles based on what Srila Prabhupada has mentioned in his purports
- However, there is still disagreement among scholars as to whether it is 5 miles or 8 miles
Srila Prabhupada writes in one of his purports:
Modern scientific calculations are subject to one change after another, and therefore they are uncertain. We have to accept the calculations of the Vedic literature. These Vedic calculations are steady.
- Whether or not modern ones are better may remain a mystery for others, but as far as we are concerned, we accept the VedIC calculations to be correct.
The distance between Sun and Earth is yuga-sahasra-yojana = 12000 x 1000 yojanas
Yojana is a Vedic measure of distance and approximately equals to 8 miles (according to the 14th century scholar Parameshvara, the originator of drgganita system).
