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A yojana (Devanagari: योजन; Khmer language: យោជន៍; Thai: โยชน์; Burmese: ယူဇနာ) is a measure of distance that was used in ancient India, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. Various textual sources from ancient India define Yojana as ranging from 3.5 to 15 km.

Edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE)

Ashoka, in his Major Rock Edict No.13, gives a distance of 600 yojanas between the Maurya empire, and "where the Yona king named Antiyoga (is ruling)", identified as King Antiochus II Theos, whose capital was Babylon. A range of estimates, for the length of a yojana, based on the ~2,000 km from Baghdad to Kandahar, on the eastern border of the empire, to the ~4,000 km to the Capital at Patna, have been offered by historians.

....And this (conquest) has been won repeatedly by Devanampriya both and among all (his) borderers, even as far as at (the distance of) six hundred yojanas where the Yona king named Antiyoga (is ruling), and beyond this Antiyoga, (where) four kings (are ruling), (viz, the king) named Tulamaya, (the king) named Antekina, (the king) named Maka, (and the king) named Alikyashudala, (and) likewise towards the south, (where) the Cholas and Pandyas (are ruling), as far as Tamraparni.

— 13th Major Rock Edict. Translation by E. Hultzsch (1857–1927).

Yojana in geodesy

Hindu units of length

Units

In Hindu scriptures, Paramāṇu is the fundamental particle and smallest unit of length.

Variations in length

The length of the yojana varied over time and locale, its length has been estimated as:

• 13 km (8 mi) - 14th-century mathematician Paramesvara.
• 13 km (8 mi) - A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada throughout his translations of the Bhagavata Purana.
• 10.8 km (6.7 mi) to 13.2 km (8.2 mi) - From The Ancient Geography of India, 1871, Alexander Cunningham, estimated by comparison with Chinese units of length.
• 8.0 km (5 mi) - 1997, Thompson, from dividing the earths diameter by the yojana circumferences offered In the Surya Siddhanta and Aryabhatiya (late 4th-century to 5th-century CE)

See also

• Hindu cosmology
• History of measurement systems in India
• Hindu units of time
• Palya
• Rajju
• List of numbers in Hindu scriptures

References

Notes

1. Some cells are left empty because those astronomers did not explicitly give a value. The values not mentioned in the table can be approximated using the value of π prevalent during their period.
2. Trasareṇu is also known as Rathāreṇu or Rathadhuli. Each scripture gives number of Paramāṇus in a Trasareṇu differently. In Ayurvedic scriptures, 1 Trasareṇu is 30 Paramāṇu; In Vasushastra texts, one Rathadhūli is 8 Paramāṇu
3. As per Manusmriti and Arthashastra, eight Trasareṇus equals one Liksha.
4. The angula is defined in the Śulbasūtras as the length covered by 14 grains of millet arranged width-wise; Kautilya and later authors prefer 8 grains of barley (yava).

Sources

1. MISTI (2021). រង្វាស់រង្វាល់ខ្មែរបុរាណនិងសម័យ (PDF) (1st ed.). Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation (MISTI). p. 15.
2. ^ Thapar, Romila (1997). Aśoka and the decline of the Mauryas (PDF) (Revised ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 250–266.
3. ^ Gupta, C. C. Das (1951). "A NOTE ON AN EXPRESSION IN ROCK EDICT XIII OF AŚOKA". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 14: 68–71. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44303939.
4. Inscriptions of Asoka p.43
5. Inscriptions of Asoka p.43. Published in India in 1925. Domain.
6. www.wisdomlib.org (2014-08-03). "Paramanu, Paramāṇu, Parama-anu: 30 definitions". www.wisdomlib.org. Retrieved 2023-09-17.
7. Jha, Ganganatha (2016-12-11). "Manusmriti Verse 8.132". www.wisdomlib.org. Retrieved 2023-09-17.
8. Bühler, George. The Laws of Manu.
9. "लिक्षा". learnsanskrit.cc.
10. "यूका". learnsanskrit.cc.
11. Kalita, Kushal (2021-07-01). "The Matsya Purana (critical study)". www.wisdomlib.org. Retrieved 2023-09-17.
12. "Issues in Indian metrology, from Harappa to Bhāskarāchārya" (PDF). Gaṇita Bhāratī. 37: 125–143.
13. "Sanskrit Dictionary".
14. Shrivastava, Shailaj Kumar (2017). "MEASUREMENT UNITS OF LENGTH, MASS AND TIME IN INDIA THROUGH THE AGES". Self Published.
15. "Paurusha, Pauruṣa: 21 definitions". www.wisdomlib.org. 2017-04-17. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
16. Shamasastry, Rudrapatna (2020-01-09). "Kautilya Arthashastra Measurement of Space and Time [Chapter 20]". www.wisdomlib.org. Retrieved 2023-09-17.
17. ^ Richard Thompson (1997), "Planetary Diameters in the Surya-Siddhanta", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11 (2): 193–200
18. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.57.18 (translation) "one yojana measures about eight miles"
19. Alexander Cunningham, Measures of Distance. Yojana, Li, Krosa. in The Ancient Geography of India: I. I. The Buddhist Period, Including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang, Trübner and Company, 1871, pp. 571–574
20. O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Aryabhata I", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

1. jālāntaragate bhānau yat sūkṣmaṃ dṛśyate rajaḥ | prathamaṃ tat pramāṇānāṃ trasareṇuṃ pracakṣate ||132 ||
   The small mote that is seen when the sun shines through a lattice-hole they declare to be the ‘triad,’ the very first of measures.—(132)

Further reading

• East-India Register and Directory. W.H. Allen. 1819.
• The Artha Shaastra of Kautilya, Penguin Books
• Valmiki Ramayana
• Dictionary of Historical and Related Terms

• Customary units in India
• Hindu astronomy
• Obsolete units of measurement
• Units of length