Sources
The model follows Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam Canto 5, chapters 16 to 26, in the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust translation, with a few verses from Cantos 2, 3 and 10. Where Canto 5 gives no figure, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (Book 2, chapters 5 and 7) fills the gap. Every figure in the side panel carries a tag: SB for the Bhāgavatam, VP for the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, Calculated for a number worked out from the text's own figures, and Purport for Śrīla Prabhupāda's commentary. Beyond the shell the model also draws on the Brahma-saṁhitā, the Caitanya-caritāmṛta and the Bhagavad-gītā, tagged BS, CC and BG.
All distances are in yojanas. The BBT translation converts one yojana to about 8 miles; other traditions use other values.
Two views, one cutaway
Schematic compresses distances so every tier can be seen and clicked. The order of everything is exact. The spacing is not: each island and ocean ring grows by one step for every doubling of its real width, and heights are stretched near the disc and squeezed far above it.
True proportions draws radii and heights on one linear scale, 1 unit to 1,000,000 yojanas. The seven islands shrink to the inner fifth of the disc, the golden land becomes the widest band, and every planet from the Sun to Dhruvaloka sits within 3.8 million yojanas of the disc.
Cutaway removes the quarter of the large layers nearest you, so you can see the lower worlds and the water inside. The missing quarter turns with you as you move around the model. Nothing in the text is being removed; it only lets you see inside. It is off while you explore a single world.
Moving around. Use the Rotate and Pan buttons at the bottom left. In Pan, dragging moves the view without turning or zooming; holding Space pans too. Drag the coloured height ruler, use Shift + scroll or PageUp/PageDown to glide up and down the universe. Scrolling zooms toward whatever is under the mouse. Arrow keys pan, F frames the selected item, Home resets the view. Press / to find any world, island or planet by name; diacritics are optional. The address follows what you select, so you can share a link that opens on that place.
Spotlight. Clicking anything dims the rest of the model and draws your choice bright and whole on top (the cutaway never slices it), with a trail at the top showing where you are. A selected planet is followed as it moves. If you zoom or pan so far that your choice leaves the screen, a “Bring it back” button appears. Clicking empty space or dragging never clears your choice. Back (the arrow in the navigation tools, or Esc or Backspace) returns to exactly the view you came from, one step at a time, including the zoom, angle and whatever you had selected. Whole universe leaves completely.
Layers shows or hides parts of the model itself. Panels shows or hides each panel of the page separately, so you can clear the view. Drone plays a soft tanpura-style sound in the background.
Symbols. Trees, lotuses, cities, rivers and serpents inside each world are symbols placed where the text mentions them. They are not to scale, and where the text doesn't say where something is, the placement is only illustrative.
Drawing choices that are not in the text
- Islands are drawn slightly raised above the oceans so land and water read apart. The text gives no heights for them.
- The four lakes around Meru are named in 5.16.13 but not placed, and the four celestial gardens of 5.16.14 are named without directions; their positions are illustrative. So are the gardens and lotus lakes drawn in each varṣa (5.17.13) and in each lower world (5.24.8–10): the text says they are there, not where. The same holds for cities, trees and serpents inside each world, and the seven peaks on the middle islands.
- The nine varṣas are tinted different colours only so they can be told apart.
- The Gaṅgā's route between the stops named in 5.17.1–4, and where it enters the shell, are illustrative.
- The eight smaller islands of 5.19.29–30 are named but not placed; they are spaced evenly in the salt ocean, with Laṅkā to the south. Where along the Śiśumāra's coil each part falls, and where the Sun chariot's second axle joins the first, are also illustrative.
- In Day mode the Sun circles Meru once a day and the disc is shaded into a lit and a dark half, with light ending at Lokāloka (5.20.37, 5.21.8–9). Placing the Sun's northern course toward Meru and its southern course away from it is an interpretation.
- The band of twelve signs shown with a planet starts from an arbitrary point, so the sign it shows is for illustration.
Where sources differ, or the translation needs care
- Venus and Mercury. SB 5.22.12–13 puts Venus 200,000 yojanas above the nakṣatras and Mercury 200,000 above Venus. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa (2.7) has the reverse. The model follows the Bhāgavatam.
- Spacing of the planets. By SB 5.22–23, Dhruvaloka is about 3,700,000 yojanas above the Sun. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa gives 1,400,000. The model follows the Bhāgavatam.
- The Sun's height. Canto 5 places the Sun at the vertical middle of the universe, in antarikṣa, "between Bhūrloka and Bhuvarloka" (5.20.43), and says it travels on top of Mānasottara (5.20.30), but gives no height above Bhū-maṇḍala. The model uses the Viṣṇu Purāṇa's 100,000 yojanas and, after it, draws Bhuvarloka as the sky up to the Sun. The mileage "above earth" added in the BBT translation of 5.22.13–17 implies 200,000 instead, and the purport to 5.22.11 implies 300,000.
- Jambūdvīpa's width. The BBT translation of 5.16.5 reads "one million yojanas"; 5.16.7 and 5.20.2 give 100,000, which every other figure depends on.
- Brahmapurī. The BBT translation of 5.16.28 gives ten million yojanas a side, which cannot fit on Meru's 32,000-yojana summit. The chapter summary gives 10,000.
- The Sun's orbit. Mānasottara lies 15,750,000 yojanas from Meru's centre by the widths in SB 5.20, a circle of about 98,960,000 yojanas. SB 5.21.19 gives the orbit as 95,100,000.
- The seven upper worlds. SB 2.5.38–39 names all seven, Bhūr, Bhuvar, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapa and Satya, placing them from the legs to the head of the universal form. SB 5.21.2–3 gives the order of the first three: the earthly sphere below, heaven above, and between them the sky called antarikṣa, with the Sun in its midst (also 5.20.43). SB 5.20.37 makes Lokāloka the outer border of the first three, so they share one width; the Viṣṇu Purāṇa agrees that Bhuvar is as broad as Bhūr. Canto 5 gives no heights for where one world ends and the next begins. The boundaries drawn here, Bhuvar up to the Sun and Svar from the Sun to Dhruvaloka, and the heights of Mahar-, Jana-, Tapo- and Satyaloka, come from the Viṣṇu Purāṇa 2.7. SB 5.24.5–6 also uses the words in a narrower sense: the earth reaches as high as large birds fly, and antarikṣa as high as wind blows and clouds float. Which three worlds are destroyed at the end of Brahmā's day, and who moves where, comes from SB 3.11.29–30.
- Lower worlds and water. The depth of each lower world (10,000 yojanas) is from the Viṣṇu Purāṇa 2.5. Canto 5 gives no depth for the Garbhodaka water; Prabhupāda's purports describe the lower half of the universe as filled with it.
- Interpretations. Linking our planet with Bhārata-varṣa comes from Prabhupāda's purports. Reading Bhū-maṇḍala as the plane of the planets' orbits comes from Richard L. Thompson (Sadāpūta Dāsa). Both are marked as interpretations wherever they appear.
Beyond the universe
On a first visit the model opens with a short descent from the whole creation into our universe; any touch, scroll or key skips it. Zoom out past the shell, or press Beyond, to leave the universe the way Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna did in SB 10.89. Each step outward is drawn about ten times larger than the last, so the whole creation fits one zoom. None of it is to scale.
- The seven coverings (earth, water, fire, air, ether, false ego, the mahat-tattva, then pradhāna) are drawn as a cross-section on a log scale, each tenfold step one band (SB 2.2.28–30, 3.11.41, 6.16.37, 3.26.52). Their order differs between lists; the model follows SB 2.2.28–30.
- The Causal Ocean, the Virajā, is what lies just outside the sevenfold coverings (purport to SB 2.2.28), the border of the spiritual and material worlds (CC Madhya 20.269): our universe and countless others float in it (SB 3.20.15 and purport), clustered together up and down with Mahā-Viṣṇu lying above the cluster (purport to SB 2.2.28, after Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī). They came from His pores (BS 5.48; CC Ādi 5.70). Ours is the smallest (CC Madhya 21.84–86). How many are drawn, and where, is illustrative. On Arjuna's way out the chariot reached the brahmajyoti before the water (SB 10.89.51–52); the Gaṅgā entering where Lord Vāmana's toe pierced the covering (SB 5.17.1) is read by the model as the water touching the shell. The model lets the light fill everything and puts the water against the shell.
- In the Causal Ocean lies Mahā-Viṣṇu on Ananta Śeṣa, in a palace of jewelled pillars (SB 10.89.52–56). He and the Ananta beneath the lower worlds are shown as devotional paintings set into the scene, turning to face you. The view opens on the present: the first half of our Brahmā's life is over and the second half is current (SB 3.11.34). Since the universes come out together with His out-breath (CC Ādi 5.68), the model reads this as every universe being out now. Play the breath shows a whole breath as a time-lapse: the universes come out of His pores, last one lifetime of Brahmā, and go back into His body as He breathes in (BS 5.48; CC Ādi 5.68–70). How long they stay within Him before the next out-breath is not given; the pause is the model's.
- Scale of creation, the rail at the side, marks each level from our universe out to the whole creation. Drag its marker to move through them, or click a level to go there.
- The brahmajyoti, the Vaikuṇṭha planets and Goloka are placed one above another as BS 5.43 ranks the realms. On Arjuna's way out, the light comes before the water (SB 10.89.51–52); seen from the spiritual side, the light lies between Vaikuṇṭha and the ocean (CC Ādi 5.51). The model lets the effulgence fill everything and does not choose between them. Maheśa-dhāma (BS 5.43) is named but not placed, so it is not drawn. Kṛṣṇa is not drawn.
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