Maitreya had heard a great deal by now. Creation, the lineages, the order of the manvantaras, the deeds of the royal lines, Parashara had told him all of it in detail, from the first stirring of the world down to the last of the dynasties, and one thing was left. He folded his hands. “Now I wish to hear from you, exactly as it is, the withdrawal of the world that is called the mahapralaya, which comes at the end of the kalpa.”
“Hear, then, how beings are withdrawn at the end of the kalpa in the prakrita pralaya,” Parashara said, “and take the measure of time first. One month of men is one day and one night of the pitris. One year of men is one day and one night of the gods. Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali, the four yugas, together make twelve thousand divine years, and two thousand of those sets of four make one day and one night of Brahma. In every manvantara, apart from the first Satyayuga and the last Kaliyuga, all the other chaturyugas are alike in form. As Brahma creates the world in the first Satyayuga, so in the last Kaliyuga he withdraws it.”
Maitreya stopped him there. “Describe to me in detail the nature of that Kali, in which Bhagavan Dharma, who stands on four feet, is almost lost.”
The Face of the Kali Age
“Hear briefly, then, what happens in that time,” Parashara said. “In Kaliyuga the conduct of men does not follow the dharma of varna and ashrama, and it does not carry out the trayi-dharma of the Rik, the Sama and the Yajus. Marriages made by dharma do not remain, nor the relation of guru and disciple, nor the order of life between husband and wife, nor the rite of offering to the gods in the fire. Whoever is strong will be master of all, whatever family he was born into, and he will take girls from every varna. The twice-born will be initiated by any means at all, with whatever article is at hand, and any rite done any way will pass for prayaschitta, the atonement. Whatever comes out of anyone’s mouth will be taken for shastra. Every bhuta and preta, every spirit of the cremation ground, will be a god then, and every way of living will be an ashrama. Fasting, the hardships of pilgrimage, the giving of wealth and tapas, each done according to a man’s own taste, will be taken for dharma.”
“People will be proud of wealth for a little money, and women will be proud of their beauty for their hair alone. When gold and gems and jewels and fine clothes grow scarce, women will adorn themselves with their braids and nothing else. A woman will leave a husband who has no wealth; in Kaliyuga the man with wealth will be the husband of women. Whoever gives the most wealth will be master of men, and the giving of wealth will be the ground of mastery, where once it was noble birth. All the wealth a man gathers will go into building houses, his mind will be set on gathering more, and all his property will be spent on his own enjoyment, with nothing held back for a guest. Women will be svairini, going their own way after handsome men, and men will go after wealth gained unjustly. A man will not give up his own interest for a single damri, even when his friends ask it of him. Shudras and the rest will claim equality with Brahmins, and a cow will be honored for her milk and for nothing else.”
“Then all people, pressed by hunger, will keep their eyes on the sky for fear of drought. For want of food men will live like tapasvis on roots and bulbs and fruit, and in their distress at the drought some will kill themselves. With joy and happiness gone out of the age, those who have no strength to help themselves will know famine and distress and little else. People will eat without bathing; they will leave off the worship of the fire, of the gods and of the guest, and they will give the dead neither the pinda nor the water. The women of that time will be greedy for the pleasures of the senses, small in body, great eaters, bearers of many children, and unfortunate. Scratching their heads with both hands, they will disregard the orders of their elders and their husbands and answer them back. They will be bent on filling their own bellies, small-minded, impure in body, speakers of harsh and false words, and women of good family will go on wanting wicked men and will conduct themselves badly with them.”
“Brahmacharis will study the Veda without the vows that go with it. Householders will neither perform the havan nor give proper gifts to men who deserve them. Vanaprasthas will leave the roots and bulbs of the forest and take food from the village, and sannyasis will stay bound by affection for their friends and their people. Kings will not protect their subjects; they will seize their wealth under the pretext of taxes. Whoever has many elephants, horses and chariots will be king, and whoever is weak will be a servant. Vaishyas will leave farming and trade and their own work and live by crafts, taking to the livelihoods of shudras, and base shudras, wearing the marks of the ashramas, will take to the begging of sannyasa and live by pashanda, by hypocrisy, respected by the people. Harassed by famine and taxes, people will leave for whatever country has wheat and barley in plenty. With the Vedic path lost and hypocrisy everywhere and adharma growing, the span of a life will be short, and because men do terrible tapas against the shastra, and because of the fault of the king, children will die as children. Girls of five, six or seven years and boys of eight, nine or ten will have children. At twelve the hair will begin to gray, and no one will live more than twenty years. Dull-witted, wicked-minded, wearing marks that stand for nothing, the people of Kaliyuga will perish in a short time.”
How to Recognize the Decline of Dharma
“Maitreya, whenever a great loss of dharma is seen, the wise should infer from it that Kali has grown. Whenever pashanda is seen to grow, whenever the men who follow the Vedic path grow fewer, whenever the works that righteous men have begun fail, the learned should know that Kali has the upper hand. Whenever men leave off worshiping Bhagavan Purushottama, the lord of yajnas, with yajnas, know that this is Kali’s influence; when there is no love left for the teaching of the Veda, and love for hypocrisy in its place, the wise should know that Kali has grown. Overcome by pashanda, people in Kali will not worship Bhagavan Vishnu, the creator and lord of all, Jagatpati. They will say, ‘What is there in these gods, in these twice-born, in the Veda, in this purity that comes from water?’”
“With Kali’s coming the rain will carry little water, farming will yield little, and the fruit will have little substance in it. Clothes will mostly be of hemp, the trees will mostly be the shami, and the four varnas will mostly be like shudras. The grains will be very small, goat’s milk will be nearly all the milk there is, and ushira, the khas root, will be the only unguent left. A man’s mother-in-law and father-in-law will be his gurus, and his heart-stealing wife and her brother will be his friends. Following their fathers-in-law, people will say, ‘Who is whose father, and who is whose mother? Every man is born and dies according to his own karma.’ People of little intelligence, overcome by the faults of speech, mind and body, will do sinful acts again and again, every day. Whatever sorrows can fall on men who have no strength, no purity and no shame, all of them will be present in Kaliyuga. When the world is without the study of the Veda and without the vashatkara, without svadha and svaha, the calls that carry the offering to the gods and to the ancestors, then dharma will remain here and there, in some places only.”
“And yet, Maitreya, this wicked age carries one great virtue. The most excellent heap of merit, which men gain in Satyayuga by great tapas, men gain in Kaliyuga by a little effort.” Parashara paused there, and went on. “Hear exactly what the great-minded Vyasadeva said on this very subject.”
Vyasa’s Three Dips
“Once a conversation arose among the munis on the matter of merit. At what time does even a little merit give a great fruit, and who can perform it with ease? To settle the doubt, all those best of munis went to the great muni Vyasa to ask him, and when they arrived they found my son half-bathed in the Ganga. They sat down under the trees on the bank of that great river to wait for him to finish.”
“Vyasa had dived under. He rose out of the water and said, so that the munis heard it, ‘Kaliyuga alone is best. The shudra alone is best.’ He dived again, rose, and said, ‘Shudra, you alone are good, you alone are blessed.’ He dived a third time, stood up out of the river, and said, ‘Women alone are good, they alone are blessed; who is more blessed than they?’”
“When my son had bathed and finished his daily rites and come back to them, the munis approached him, and when greetings had passed and they had taken their seats, Satyavati’s son asked them why they had come. ‘We came to ask you a doubt,’ the munis said, ‘and it can wait for now. Tell us one more thing first. While you bathed you said again and again that Kaliyuga is best, the shudra is best, women are good and blessed. What is that? We wish to hear all of it. If it is no secret, tell it, and after that we will ask you the doubt we carry.’ Vyasa laughed. ‘Hear why I said sadhu, sadhu, again and again.’”
Why the Kali Age, the Shudra, and Woman Are Blessed
“‘The fruit that a man gains in Satyayuga by ten years of tapas, brahmacharya, japa and the rest, he gains in Treta in one year, in Dvapara in one month, and in Kaliyuga in a single day and night. So I called Kaliyuga best. The fruit gained in Satya by dhyana, in Treta by yajna and in Dvapara by the worship of the gods is gained in Kaliyuga by kirtana of the name of Keshava, Shri Krishna. In Kaliyuga a man attains great dharma with little labor, and so I am greatly satisfied with Kaliyuga.’”
“‘Now why the shudra is best. The twice-born must first study the Veda keeping the vow of brahmacharya, and then perform yajna in the proper form with wealth earned by their own dharma. Useless talk, useless food and useless yajna are each a cause of their fall, so they must be restrained at every hour. For them any conduct against the rule is a fault; they cannot take even food and drink as they wish. Because every act of theirs is dependent on a rule, they gain the worlds of merit with very great hardship. The shudra, who has the right only to the paka-yajna, the cooked offering made without mantras, gains a good end by serving the twice-born, and so he is more blessed than the other castes. For him there is no rule about what may be eaten and what may not, what may be drunk and what may not, and so I called him sadhu.’”
“‘Now why women are best. Men must always give the wealth they have gained by their dharma to a worthy recipient and perform yajna in the proper form. Gaining that wealth is great hardship, guarding it is great hardship, and the pain men suffer when they put it to an improper use is well known. By these and other hard means men gain, one after another, the auspicious worlds such as Prajapatya. Women, by serving the husband in body, mind and speech and being his well-wishers, gain without effort the same auspicious worlds as their husbands, the worlds men gain with great toil. So I said a third time that women are sadhu. I have told you the secret of my words. Now ask what you came for, and I will tell you all of it clearly.’ The rishis said, ‘What we had come to ask, you have answered in this very question.’ Krishna-dvaipayana’s eyes bloomed with wonder, and he laughed and said to the ascetics gathered round him, ‘I knew this question of yours by divine sight; that is why I said sadhu, sadhu to you. For men who have washed away all their faults with the water of their own qualities, dharma is accomplished in Kaliyuga by a little effort. For shudras it is accomplished by devotion to the service of the twice-born, and for women merely by serving their husbands, without any effort at all. So in my view these three are blessed, since in Satya and the other yugas even the twice-born had to bear great hardship to accomplish dharma. I have told you, without being asked, what you came intending to ask. What else shall I do for you now?’ They worshiped Vyasa and praised him again and again, and, convinced by his words, went back where they had come from.”
Then Parashara said, “Maitreya, I too have told you this secret. In this most wicked Kaliyuga there is this one great virtue: merely by kirtana of Krishna’s name a man is freed of his bonds and attains the supreme state. Now I will tell you what you asked me, the withdrawal of the world, the prakrita and the avantara pralaya.”
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)