A palya is a length of time used in Jainism to describe when the Lord Adinath ("First Lord") came to India, 100,000,000,000,000 palyas ago.Pratt, James B. (1917). Book review, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. X, p.303. Harvard University Press. .Sharma, Suresh K. and Sharma, Usha (2004). Cultural and Religious Heritage of India: Jainism, p.85. Mittal Publications. . A palya is defined as the time it takes to build a cube of lambswool 1 (or possibly 100) yojans high (between 4 and 9 miles or 6.4 km and 14.5 km), if one strand was laid down every century.
The concept of Palya was born of the desire to quantify relative dimensions in time and space in proportion to the achievement of Nirvana or some similar enlightened state.
See also Rajju Religious cosmology Hindu cosmology Jain cosmology
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