The Bhagavata Purana

by G. V. Tagare | 1950 | 780,972 words | ISBN-10: 8120838203 | ISBN-13: 9788120838208

This page describes The Evils of the Kali Age which is chapter 2 of the English translation of the Bhagavata Purana, one of the eighteen major puranas containing roughly 18,000 metrical verses. Topics include ancient Indian history, religion, philosophy, geography, mythology, etc. The text has been interpreted by various schools of philosophy. This is the second chapter of the Twelfth Skandha of the Bhagavatapurana.

Chapter 2 - The Evils of the Kali Age

[Sanskrit text for this chapter is available]

Śrī Śuka began to narrate:

1. Thereafter, day after day, under the force of the inexorably powerful Time, righteousness, truth, purity, (both physical and mental), forbearance, mercy, duration of life, physical power, and sharpness of memory shall go deteriorating.

2. In the Kali age, wealth alone will be the deciding factor of nobility of birth, righteous behaviour or merits. And only brute force will be the only standard in the arrangement or decision of what is righteous or just.

3. Mutual liking (and not family pedigree, social status etc.) will be the criterion of selecting a partner of life in marriage; cheating is the order of the day in business relations; satisfaction of the sexual pleasure is the only consideration of masculine or feminine excellence and worthiness and wearing of the sacred thread (Yajñopavīta) (and not the pious behaviour or Vedic or Śāstric learning) is the outward index of Brāhmaṇahood.

4. External marks (such as a staff, deer-hide) and not the observance of the vows and restrictions of a particular Āśrama (or stage of life) has been the only index of a particular Āśrama of a person and is the only guide to greet mutually when they meet each other. Justice has become weak and partial through the inability of the party to bribe these administering it[1]; and garrulity has been the hall-mark of scholarship.

5. Want of affluence is the cause of one’s impiety or bad name while hypocrisy is the index of goodness. Mutual consent and not the Śāstric way) is enough for marriage. And mere toilet alone is a substitute for bathing.

6. To go to distant place of sacred waters (and not attendance on one’s preceptors or elders) is looked upon as pilgrimage and wearing long hair a sign of beauty. The highest purpose of life is to fill one’s belly and arrogant audacity (and not the statement of the facts as they are) is regarded as veracity.

7-8. Maintenance of one’s family will be looked upon as skill; It is for self-advertisement of one’s fame of piety that righteous deeds are to be performed; In this way the whole world will be populated by wicked people: and lie who among Brāhmaṇas, Kṣatriyas, Vaiśyas and Śūdras, becomes the mightiest will be the ruler.

9. When the subjects are deprived of their women and looted of the wealth by greedy, merciless, robberlike Kṣattriyas the subjects will seek shelter in mountains and forests and subsist on leaves, roots, meat, honey, fruits, flowers and seeds (and such forest-products).

10. Being oppressed by draughts or famines and heavy taxation and being subjected to excessive cold, biting winds, (blistering) sunshine, (driving) downpour of rain, snowfall, mutual rivalry, the people are going to perish.

11. People will be tormented by hunger, thirst and diseases and will be overpowered with anxieties. And the maximum span of human life in the Kali age will be fifty (lit. thirty plus twenty) years.

12. When through the evil effect of the Kali age, the physical bodies of embodied beings become emaciated and reduced, the prescribed ordinances of the Vedic path pertaining to different classes of people and stages of life become lost.

13. When (in the Kali age) religion will be predominantly heretical, and kings will be as good as robbers and men will be earning their livelihood by theft, (economic offences) mendacity, wanton violence to life and such other pursuits.

14. When all classes of the society (Varṇas) will be as good as Śūdras, cows will be reduced to the size of she-goats (in yield of milk also); (stages of life) will merge in the householder’s stage of life (there being no celibates or recluses) and the term ‘relative” will connote the relations of the wife only.

15. Medicinal herbs will have minimal efficacy; big trees will be stunted (and would afford neither shade nor relief) like the Śamī trees; the clouds will be giving lightning flashes an clapping of thunders (but no rain) and the houses will be desolate (as there will be no hospitality as it was in previous ages).

16. In this way, when people have undergone such hard- ships—just at the end of the Kali age, the Lord will incarnate himself in his Sāttvika form for the protection of religion.

17. Lord Viṣṇu is the Creator and Preceptor of the mobile and immobile creation. He is the Controller of the world and the inner Soul abiding in all beings. His advent (on. the earth) is for the protection of the path of righteousness and for wiping out all the Karmas of the righteous and to lead them to Final Emancipation from Saṃsāra.

18. It is in the houses of Viṣṇuyaśas, the noble-souled Brāhmaṇa chief of the village called Śambhala[2], that Lord Kalki will be incarnated.

19. 20. The Lord of the Universe, endowed with eight Spiritual powers (like aṇimā, etc.) and excellences (like solemnity of vows or truthfulness) was unsurpassed in splendour and glory. Riding on a fleet horse called Devadatta, he would traverse over the whole earth on the horse; will massacre with his sword capable of subjugating the crores and crores of robbers and wicked miscreants who posed themselves as kings.

21. (To indicate the beginning of the Golden Age—Kṛta Age) Thereupon, when the entire class of robbers, thieves and such enemies of the society is annihilated both in the town and in the country, the minds of the rural and urban population become pure by the touch of the wind wafting the sacred fragrance of pigments on the person of Lord Vasudeva.

22. When the glorious Lord Vasudeva, the very embodiment of strength, is enthroned in their heart, their progeny will naturally be extremely powerful.

23. When Lord Hari the Protector of righteousness, will descend on this earth as Kalki, there will be the advent of the Kṛta Age (Golden Age), and the children who will be born thereafter will be of pious (Sāttvika) disposition.

24. When rhe Moon, the Sun and the Jupiter are in conjunction in the same zodiacal house and the star Puṣya is in ascendance, the Kṛta age dawns.[3]

25. All the kings belonging to the Lunar and Solar dynasties who have ruled in the past, or are reigning at present or will govern in the future, have been briefly described to you.

26. The period commencing from the birth of your worship to the coronation of Nanda would come to one thousand one hundred and fifteen years.[4]

27-28. Of the seven stars comprising the constellation the Great Bear, two of those asterisms come to view first., in the east (viz. Pulaha and Kratu). Midway between them in the north-western line, is noticed a star or a constellation (of the group of Aśvinī, Bharaṇī, etc.) at night. Those Heavenly Sages i.e. the stars Pulaha and Kratu remain associated with that intervening constellation for a period of one hundred human years. Those Sages (stars) are now associated with Maghā during your reign.

29. When (the Maghās were in that position) the selfilluminating personality comprised of pure Sattva of Lord Viṣṇu who came to be known as Śrī Kṛṣṇa retired to his region, Kali immediately entered the world and people began to take delight in sinful ways.

30. While the Lord of the goddess Lakṣmī used to touch the earth with his lotus-feet, till then Kali did not dare to encroach upon the earth.

31. When those seven Divine Sages (Ursa Major) enter the constellation Maghā, there will be the advent of Kali lasting for twelve hundred celestial years (i.e. 432,000 human years).

32. When these Great Sages (the asterisms, constituting the Great Bear) will proceed from Maghā to Pūrvāṣāḍhā, Kali will be more powerful since the ascension of king Mahāpadma Nanda.

33. Experts in ancient Lore have stated that on the very day—nay at that very hour—Lord Kṛṣṇa retired to his region, the Kali Age has set in.

34. At the termination of the period of one thousand divine years of the fourth i.e. Kali age, the Kṛta age will dawn again and the minds of men will get the revelation of the Self from within.

35. Just as the career or ups and downs in the history of Manu’s race has been described, in each age, the history of Vaiśyas, Śūdras and Brāhmaṇas in various ages should be understood to be similar to them (age after age).

36. It is only the names of the noble-souled persons described so far and of whom (neither kingdom nor race survives except) the legendary account enshrining them remains, (nothing but) their fame only survives, on the earth.

37. Devāpi, the brother of Śantanu, and Maru, the descendant of the Ikṣvāku race—both of them possess very great Yogic powers and are still living in village called Kalāpa (Near Badarikāśrama in the Himalayas).

38. At the end of the Kali age, both of them, under the instructions and command of Lord Vāsudeva, will come forward and will promulgate and establish the ancient religious order with its institution of Varṇas (Classes of people) and Āśramas (Stages of life) once again as before.

39. This cycle of four Yugas (Ages) viz. Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali runs in this order on the earth for the sake of created beings.

40. O king Parīkṣit, these kings described by me and many others (not mentioned by me) all claimed that the earth was theirs. But ultimately they had to leave it and passed away.

41. The physical body which (when alive) is designated as King is ultimately called worms (if buried or left uninterred and is turned into worms), or “Excrement” (if eaten by beasts or birds of prey and after digestion or non-digestion thrown out as faeces) or Ashes (if cremated). It is for this body that one perpetrates sins and commits violence against living beings. Does he not know that this sinful conduct leads to hell?

42. How will this entire earth held under their own (undisputed sovereignty) by my forefathers and now held under my sceptre, pass on the same way to my son and grandson and his race?

43. Rulers who are unwise (indulge in such thoughts anxiously), look upon their physical body made up of heat, water and food as their Soul, and the earth as their personal property, ultimately quitting them both, sink into oblivion.

44. O Parīkṣit, All those lords of the earth who enjoy the earth by dint of their personal power, have been reduced by Time to mere themes of stories when people narrate the past events.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Poverty will prevent the party from getting justice—Bhāvāratha Dīpikā

[2]:

A village near Moradabad in Rohilkhand, 80 miles to the cast of Delhi. It is ‘Sambalaka’ according to Ptolemy.—GDAMI, p. 176

[3]:

Bhāvāratha Dīpikā: Here the simultaneous entry of these planets is indicated. Otherwise every twelfth year when the Jupiter is in the zodiacal sign of Cancer, there arc at least two or three New Moon days when this phenomenon occurs. Hence Simultaneous entry of these three planets is the sine qua non of Kṛta Age.

[4]:

As Bhāvāratha Dīpikā notes this statement is ambiguous. But the author of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is not much at fault, as we have not yet been able to fix tḥc date of the Mahābhārata War. Pargiter on the basis of various statements in Purāṇas has tentatively suggested 950 B.C. as the date of that war. But Jayaswal, A.C. Das and other Indian scholars favour 1500 B.C. Pusalkar in BVB’s Vedic Age (p. 273) concedes 1400 B.C. as the date of the Kuru- Pāṇḍava War. The discussion of the date of the Mahābhārata war is beyond the scope of this note. But I still believe in Ray Chaudhari’s evidence presented in his Political History of Ancient India from the Accession of Parīkṣit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty, p. 9, 1923, and regard Parīkṣit as belonging to 900 B.C. This date has no relation with the composition of the present text of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as shown in Intro, to Volume I of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

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