VCA 3.A. Bhū-maṇḍala, or Middle Earth

The Vedic literature describes the material cosmos as an unlimited ocean situated within a small part of the unlimited spiritual world. Within this ocean there are innumerable universes, or brahmanḍas, which can be compared to spherical bubbles of foam grouped in clusters. Each of these universal globes consists of a series of spherical coverings and an inner, inhabited portion.

Within the inner region of the brahmanḍa, the most striking feature is Bhū-manḍala, or the earthly planetary system. Bhū-manḍala is described in the Fifth Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam as a flat disc with a diameter of 500 million yojanas, or 4 billion miles (using 8 miles per yojana). The surface of this disc is marked with a series of ring-shaped oceans and islands surrounding a central island called Jambūdvipa.

The total surface area of our familiar earth planet is some 197 million square miles, and, according to modern information, the total surface area of the sun is about 2.4 million million square miles. In contrast, the total area of Bhū-manḍala comes to about 12.6 billion billion square miles. In SB 2.5.40p Srila Prabhupada refers to this as the area of the universe, and it seems that Bhū-manḍala is indeed one of the most significant and frequently mentioned features in the Vedic account of the universe. Its size is on the scale of the solar system as a whole, as conceived in modern Western astronomy.

The Fifth Canto gives specific figures for the size, shape, and position of many of the geographic structures of Bhū-manḍala. The most striking characteristic of these structures is that although their description employs names for familiar features of earthly geography, such as mountains, oceans, and islands, they are all on the same cosmic scale as Bhū-manḍala itself. Thus the smallest mountains on Bhū-manḍala mentioned in the Bhagavatam are 2,000 yojanas, or 16,000 miles, high. Many mountains are 80,000 miles or even 672,000 miles high. In contrast, the diameter of the earth is about 8,000 miles, and Mount Everest, the highest known mountain, extends about 5.5 miles above sea level. References to such immense sizes are not limited to the Fifth Canto. For example, SB 4.6.32 gives a description of Lord Siva meditating underneath a banyan tree 800 miles in height and 600 miles in breadth. In SB 8.2.1 we read that Trikuta Mountain, where the elephant Gajendra achieved liberation, is 80,000 miles in length and breadth. This mountain is situated in the ocean of milk, one of the geographical features of Bhū-manḍala. In SB 8.7.9 it is pointed out that when Kūrma, the tortoise incarnation of Lord Visnu, was supporting Mandara Mountain during the churning of the milk ocean, His back extended for 800,000 miles (laksa-yojana), "like a large island." Finally, the Matsya avatara, Lord Visnu's fish incarnation, expanded from an initial small size to a final length of 8 million miles (SB 8.24.44).

Modern scholars tend to reject dimensions such as these as ludicrous exaggerations made by poets who were completely devoid of scientific knowledge. However, even common men in primitive societies can tell that the earthly mountains of our experience have heights of thousands of feet rather than thousands of miles. The highly rational philosophical discussions in the Bhagavatam indicate that it was not written by some kind of mad fanatic who was devoid of common sense. We suggest, therefore, that the descriptions in the Bhagavatam of gigantic sizes refer to an actually existing world that is built on the scale of the solar system and that contains features built on a similar scale.

We will assume that this is the case, and later on we will consider what the relation might be between this world and the earth of our experience. For the present we will give a brief overview of the most significant features of Bhū-manḍala. We will do this with the aid of a series of computer-generated illustrations that portray the features of Bhū-manḍala as they would appear to an observer approaching Bhū-manḍala from a great distance.

In the first view (Fig. 3) we are looking down on the center of Bhū-manḍala at an angle of 45 degrees from a distance of some 600 million miles. We can discern five ring-shaped structures surrounding a central region that is too far away to see clearly. Going from the outside in, these are respectively the dvipas, or islands, named Puskaradvipa, Sakadvipa, Krauncadvipa, Kusadvipa, and Salmalidvipa. Puskaradvipa has inner and outer radii of 100.4 million and 151.6 million miles, and each successive ring, going inward, is half as wide as the one preceding it. To give an idea of the scale, the distance from the earth to the sun is currently accepted to be 93 million miles.

The intervals between the dvipas are occupied by oceans, each of which has the same width as the dvipa that it surrounds. The oceans surrounding the five dvipas we have mentioned are said to be composed respectively of clear water, yogurt, milk, ghee, and liquor. Of course, these substances are celestial counterparts of the corresponding ordinary substances of our day-to-day experience. In Figure 4 we have moved in to a distance of about 150 million miles from the center of Bhū-manḍala. Now Krauncadvipa, Kusadvipa, and Salmalidvipa have expanded in apparent size, and the ring of Plaksadvipa has become visible within Salmalidvipa. We can also begin to discern the central island of Jambūdvipa within Plaksadvipa. In Figure 5 we have moved in to a distance of 15 million miles, and in Figure 6, at a distance of some 3 million miles, we can obtain a detailed view of Jambūdvipa.

Jambūdvipa is described as a disc-shaped island 100,000 yojanas, or 800,000 miles, in diameter. (For comparison, the currently accepted diameter of the sun is 865,110 miles.) The most striking feature of Jambūdvipa is a central structure called Mount Meru, which is 84,000 yojanas high. This structure is generally referred to as a mountain, although it clearly has a unique form quite different from that of a typical mountain. The upper surface of Mount Meru is said to be occupied by Brahmapuri, the city of Lord Brahma, and by cities belonging to eight other demigods.

Jambūdvipa is divided into nine regions, or varsas, by a series of mountain ranges. In Figure 7 we see a more detailed view of the central region of Ilavrta-varsa, which contains Mount Meru and is square in shape. To get some idea of the scale of this figure, we should note that the low mountain chain stretching from A to B in the figure is called Gandhamadana and reaches 16,000 miles in height. This is twice the diameter of the earth.

Of the nine varsas of Jambūdvipa, eight are described as places of heavenly enjoyment. These are intended for persons who have returned to earth after using up their allotted time on the heavenly planets but who have some remaining pious credits entitling them to enjoy great material opulence. The inhabitants of these varsas are described as living for 10,000 years by earthly calculations, as having the bodily strength of 10,000 elephants, and as having a standard of pleasure like that of the human beings of Treta-yuga (SB 5.17.12). These regions are also said to contain beautiful gardens that are visited by important leaders among the demigods. The Bhagavatam refers to these eight varsas as bhauma-svarga, or the heavenly places on earth (SB 5.17.11), while Srila Prabhupada describes them as "the lower heavenly planets" and contrasts their inhabitants to those of "this earth" (SB 5.17.13p).

The remaining varsa of Jambūdvipa is called Bharata-varsa. It is described as the field of fruitive activities, in which human beings struggle with adverse conditions and elevate or degrade themselves by their actions. Bharata-varsa is the southernmost region of Jambūdvipa, and it is illustrated in Figures 8 and 9, in which we view Jambūdvipa from the southeast at a lower elevation. In shape, Bharata-varsa is a semicircular piece of land bounded on the south by the salt-water ocean and on the north by the Himalayan Mountains. Bharata-varsa is the only part of Bhū-manḍala at all reminiscent of the earth, and it is frequently identified with either the earth or with India in Srila Prabhupada's books.

Yet the Himalayas bounding Bharata-varsa are described in the Fifth Canto as being 80,000 miles high, and Bharata-varsa itself runs some 72,000 miles (9,000 yojanas) from north to south. This naturally leads us to ask, What is the relationship between the earth of our experience and Jambūdvipa and Bharata-varsa, as described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam?