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history of - First use of time travel in fiction


Where was the first literary appearance of time travel? I know H.G. Wells coined the term "time machine", and according to wikipedia he popularized the concept of time travel.


Since they don't give him credit for inventing time travel, I assume that means someone else did, and I'm curious as to who it was.


To be clear, I'm leaving the definition of time travel deliberately broad. I don't require any specific device or technology. If you can think of a book/story where a person was thrown through time, either forward or backward, by a deity, technological marvel, random act of nature, or something else, that counts.


However, the subject must actually travel through time, not just have a misperception of the amount of time that passed. So "John slept for 1000 years but to him it felt like a single night" is not a time travel story because John's body continued to travel through time at the rate of one day per day, even if he was asleep and missed most of it.



By my rendering at any rate, don't take this as any sort of gospel.



Answer



There are some truly ancient descriptions of time travel found in various cultures around the world.


If we exclude the "prophecy" elements of texts like the bible, then probably the oldest instance of someone physically traveling through time is found in the Mahabharata, written sometime around 400BC. In it we meet a king named Raivata. Part of the story includes a reference to him spending a day with the god Brahma and his nymph consort. When he returns to Earth, he learns that he has traveled "several hundred years" into the future.



Tell me the truth.' Pramlochá. answered, 'You say rightly,' venerable Brahman, 'that I came hither at morning dawn, but several hundred years have passed since the time of my arrival. This is the truth.' The Muni, on hearing this, was seized with astonishment, and asked her how long he had enjoyed her society: to which the nymph replied, that they had lived together nine hundred and seven years, six months, and three days. The Muni asked her if she spoke the truth, or if she was in jest; for it appeared to him that they had spent but one day together: to which Pramlochá replied, that she should not dare at any time to tell him who lived in the path of piety an untruth, but particularly when she had been enjoined by him to inform him what had passed.



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