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. [1] [2] 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.
A palya is the length of time it would take to empty a well a mile square stuffed full of fine hairs, if one hair were removed every century. [1]
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.