The Age of Kali
About a year ago, I read a collection of Essays titled The Age of Kali. The content of these essays is specific to the Indian subcontinent; these essays are replete with a vast subject matter; however, there is central thread that binds the volume: it is the idea that India is currently in a severe state of degradation. According to the author, William Dalrymple, many Indians believe the reason for this degradation, is that the world has entered into the fourth Yuga, The Age of Kali. The Age of Kali is (according to Wikipedia) the age of the male demon…(and is also,) the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas described in the Indian scriptures”.
Concerning my tastes, I think would be fascinating to do a cultural study on the prevelance of this myth (The Age of Kali), and how it has shaped contempoary India. As you probably all know though, the end of the semester gets a little chaotic, and I really do not have the time for such study. So, for this blog, I will simply give an outline of what The Age of Kali is, so I can give a novice description of Hindu eschatology.
The Four Yuga’s:
Like the creation myths in the first book of Ovid, according to Hindu texts, the world is divided into four ages. Each of these ages that the world goes through are much like what one would consider seasons in a grand universal expanse of time. I might be incorrect in this next statement—but the central difference between the creation myths in the Greco-Roman tradition, versus the Hindu tradition, seems to be that the Greco-Roman creation Myths are embedded in a linear past, whereas the Hindu Yugas are cyclical, and repeat existences like seasons of a year. Eliade states that “the essence of this theory is the cyclical creation and desestruction of the world and the belief in the perfection of the beggenings”. Much like the Greco-Roman creation myths, human experience during these seasons varies, yet the first Yuga, the Satya Yuga, like the golden age, it is a realm of perfection.
Even in description, The Satya Yuga is similar to the golden age: “no law and compulsion then were needed”, and, according to my research, what men experience during this Yuga is an exisitance close enough to the gods, I which they can understand the ideal states of things: Truth’s are not saturated by malice.
The Treta Yuga is less than the first, and is like the age silver (“an age inferior to golden times/ but if compared to tawny bronze, more prized”). Also, human life while it is not as long as the Satya Yuga still stretches almost 10,000 years—according to some estimates.
During the Dvapara Yuga, humans are venerable, yet no human is wholly truthful, they have lost the divine intellect. One could note that this is the Yuga where castes begin to emerge. The Final Yuga is the Kali Yuga which will get a longer description.
The Age Kali: According to some interpretations, the age of Kali began around 3102 BC. There are other Hindu theologians, like Swami Sri Yukteswar, that think the length of each of the ages has been misinterepertad, and the world has moved out of the Age of Kali, and into Dvapra Yuga during the 17th century. Regardless of weather we are, or weather we are not in this age, there are some intreasting mythic eschatological symbols we can discuss.
To begin, the Indian concept of Dharma is certainly very relevant when discussing the four Yuga’s. Dharma is, by the most widely accepted Hindu definition, “a person’s righteous duty…(which should accord to) class, occupation and gender”.
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