small kalpa ［小劫］ ( shō-kō): Also, minor kalpa. According to The Treatise on the Rise of the World, each of the twenty kalpas that constitute each of the four kalpas of formation, continuance, decline, and disintegration. During a small kalpa, the life span of human beings is said to gradually increase from 10 years to 80,000 and then diminish at the same rate again to 10. Both increase and decrease occur at the rate of one year every 100 years. Calculating from this, a small kalpa would be 15,998,000 years. According to The Dharma Analysis Treasury, however, this small kalpa is called a medium kalpa. See also kalpa of continuance.