have the supposed
infelicity to live. This is the time of evil, _par excellence_, in
which the cow has been reduced to the last extremity and has to stand
upon one leg! The gradual deterioration of the ages finds here its
culmination. Of this fourth age there is a description in the
Vishnu-purana, which is translated as follows:--

"Hear what will happen in the kali yuga.
The usages and institutes of caste, of order and rank, will not
prevail,
Nor yet the precepts of the triple Veda.
Religion will consist in wasting wealth,
In fasting and performing penances
At will; the man who owns most property,
And lavishly distributes it, will gain
Dominion over others; noble rank
Will give no claim to lordship; self-willed women
Will seek their pleasure, and ambitious men
Fix all their hopes on riches gained by fraud.
The women will be fickle and desert
Their beggared husbands, loving them alone
Who give them money. Kings, instead of guarding,
Will rob their subjects, and abstract the wealth
Of merchants, under plea of raising taxes.
Then in the world's last age the rights of men
Will be confused, no property be safe,
No joy and no prosperity be lasting."

"Women will bear children at the age of five, six, or seven, and men
beget them when they are eight, nine, or ten. Gray hair will appear
when a person is but twelve years of age, and the duration of life for
men will only be twenty years."

Now the idea in all this is that each _yuga_, or era, has its fixed
character. Rather than that the men of a _yuga_ should impart their
character to the age in which they live, the age itself has a
pronounced moral bent which is transferred to all who happen to live
under it. Thus we see in the theory a perversion and contradiction of
the facts; for an ethical character is assigned to days and hours
rather than to moral beings, who alone are capable of such values.

Therefore, for a thorough consideration of the system as a whole, it
is only necessary that we consider the character assigned to this evil
age in which we live. There is nothing more deeply wrought into the
consciousness of the people of this land at the present time than the
conviction that this time in which we live is indeed _Kali yuga_, that
it is irremediably bad, and that it taints with its own character
everything that has life.

Pandit Natesa Sastri remarks: "In India when a yo