Note on Kali and Dvāpara and their connection with the dice

Note: this text is extracted from Book IX, chapter 56:

“And the kings and the gods, Indra and the others, returned by the way that they came, after due honour had been done to them by the King of Vidarbha. But Indra and his companions saw on the way Kali and Dvāpara, and knowing that they had come for Damayantī, they said to them: ‘It is of no use your going to Vidarbha; we come thence; and the svayaṃvara has taken place. Damayantī has chosen King Nala’. When the wicked Kali and Dvāpara heard that, they exclaimed in wrath: ‘Since she has chosen that mortal in preference to gods like thyself, we will certainly separate that couple.” After making this vow they turned round and departed thence’”

Kali is the side of the die marked with one point. Dvāpara is the side marked with two. They are personified here as demons of gambling. They are also the present—i.e. the fourth and the third Yugas or Ages of the World.——There are in the orthodox Hindu chronological system four Yugas or Ages of the World. They are in order Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali, and correspond roughly to the Gold, Silver, Brass and Iron Ages of the classics. The Sanskrit names are called after the sides of a die in descending order of their value in play. Thus Kṛta is the side with four dots, while Kali, being the side with only one dot, is always a certain loser.

The connection between dice and the different eras of the world is perhaps not at first evident. It is well explained by H. Jacobi in “Ages of the World,” Hastings’ Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. i, p. 200 et. seq.

The general idea, the same in all Brāhmanical sources, is that the character, or, if the expression may be used, the proportion of virtue, and the length of each Yuga conform to the number on the side of a die, after which it is named. In the Kṛta Yuga, virtue (dharma) was fully present in men, with all four feet, as it is expressed, but it diminished by one quarter or foot in every succeeding age, till in the Kali Yuga only one foot of dharma remains. The same proportion holds good with regard to the duration of the several ages.

The Kṛta Yuga lasts 4000 years, to which a dawn and a twilight of 400 years each are added; the same items in Tretā are 3000 and 300; in Dvāpara 2000 and 200; in Kali 1000 and 100 years. [Thus the die with its points of 4, 3, 2 and 1 came to have the symbolical meaning.]

The period of the four Yugas together, technically called a Mahāyuga or Caturyuga, though commonly a Yuga, lasts 12,000 years (Manu, i, 69 et seq. = Mahāhhārata, III, xii, 826 et seq.). The years in this statement are interpreted as Divine years, consisting each of 360 human years, giving thus a total of 4,320,000 years in each Mahāyuga. The usual descriptions of the Kṛta Yuga reveal to us a happy state of mankind, when life lasted 4000 years, when there were no quarrels nor wars, when the rules of caste and the precepts of the Vedas were strictly obeyed, when, in short, virtue reigned paramount. In the Kali Yuga just the reverse prevails. There is a confusion of castes and āśramas [i.e. the four ascetic stages of student, householder, anchorite and mendicant]. The Veda and good conduct gradually fall into neglect; all kinds of vices creep in; diseases afflict mankind; the term of life grows shorter and shorter, and is quite uncertain; barbarians occupy the land, and people kill one another in continual strife, till at the end of the Yuga some mighty king extinguishes the infidels.

We can thus clearly see the connection between Yugas and dice, and understand that if Kali possessed Nala he was bound to lose everything, whether Dvāpara possessed his opponent or not. Moreover, there seems to be considerable doubt in the original texts as to whether Dvāpara entered into Pushkara at all, or merely stood by watching Nala being gradually ruined. The description of Nala’s entire loss of all restraint through the influence of Kali, as described by Somadeva, is an addition of his own and not in the Mahābhārata. See further Appendix II, p. 276.—n.m.p.