Yuktibhāṣā and Vedic cosmography

Summary of how the 16th‑century Yuktibhāṣā relates to traditional Vedic/Puranic units such as kala, yojana, and manvantara.

Yuktibhāṣā what it is

Yuktibhāṣā is a 16th‑century Malayalam treatise of the Kerala school that presents mathematical proofs and detailed astronomical procedures. It consolidates results and reasoned derivations (yukti) from Madhava, Nilakaṇṭha, Parameśvara, and others.

Vedic and Puranic cosmography in brief

Classical Vedic‑Puranic cosmography expresses enormous cyclical time scales (yugas, manvantaras, kalpas) and uses traditional linear measures such as the yojana when giving distances and durations. A manvantara is a named cyclic period inside that scheme.

How Yuktibhāṣā treats traditional units and scales

• Practical vocabulary: Yuktibhāṣā works with the same classical toolkit of Indian astronomy (traditional measures and calendrical units) when those units are the convenient formal language for computation.
• Methodological focus: The text emphasizes deriving, demonstrating and correcting numerical procedures and planetary models rather than rehearsing Puranic cosmological narratives.

Where it conforms and where it innovates

Conforms

It accepts and uses the conventional computational vocabulary (units like yojana, calendrical cycles, familiar epochal frameworks) as practical instruments for calculation.

Innovates and departs

In methodology and models it is strongly empirical‑rational: it offers new algorithms, corrected planetary schemes (building on Nilakaṇṭha) and rigorous yuktis that change how distances and motions are calculated, even while sometimes leaving traditional large time‑scales as background context.

Iconolater or iconoclast nuance

Labeling Yuktibhāṣā strictly as either an iconolater (devotional preservation) or an iconoclast (destructive refutation) is too binary. It is better described as a pragmatic reformer:

• Preserves useful traditional units and the cultural cosmological vocabulary where helpful.
• Undermines unquestioned authority by replacing dogma with demonstrable mathematical and observational argument.

In short: Yuktibhāṣā is iconoclastic in method because it privileges yukti (reason) and numerical correction, but not necessarily iconoclastic in cultural form since it does not systematically reject Puranic time‑scales and language.

Recommendation

For primary evidence of this stance consult modern annotated translations and commentaries on the Ganita‑Yukti‑Bhāṣā and related Kerala‑school works; they show how classical units are embedded within an explicitly rational program of computation and correction.