A Human-Scale Ramayana

The conventional divine-year reading of Puranic Yuga chronology places the Ramayana 800,000 years in the past. This paper corrects the figure: applying the Manusmriti’s own conversion rule then reconverting from day-counts to solar years yields a Mahayuga of roughly 11,800 years, placing Rama’s Treta Yuga in the archaeologically attested period 4,969–1,421 BCE and its participants firmly within human lifespan range.