ung boy or girl
happens to break, in eating or dress, the orthodox rules of caste, his
or her parents will say, 'Oh! it is all the result of the _Kali
yuga_.' If a Hindu becomes a convert to any other religion, or if any
atrocious act is committed, the Hindu will observe, 'Oh! it is the
ripening of Kali.' Every deviation from the established custom, every
vice, every crime, in fact, everything wicked, is set down by the
ordinary Hindu to the ascending power of the Lord of the Kali age."

Nor is this merely a superstition of the ignorant. We remember how, in
the year 1899, when it was said that great calamities were due, the
Dewan of Mysore promised to place the matter of preparing for these
calamities before the Maharajah. For was it not the five thousandth
year of _Kali yuga_?

Now it does not occur to one in ten thousand to ask whether this is
really so. It is accepted as a dogma which must not be questioned; and
all the evil and falsehood which this involves must be a dread of the
soul and a bondage of the mind whether it become a fact of experience
or not.

But, accepting the universally received belief of India that _Kali
yuga_ is now five thousand and eight years old, who can tell us what
was the condition of things in India before this? Everything before
that time is absolutely prehistoric. The best authorities, and indeed
all authorities, claim that the Vedas were first sung, that the Rishis
of India came into existence, that the Sanscrit tongue and the Indian
Aryans who spoke it and the religion of Hinduism which they brought or
cultivated,--all of these find their origin during the last five
thousand years. All the evidences of history unite to assure us that
there is practically nothing existing at the present time in this land
which is not in some way the child of these last fifty centuries of
_Kali yuga_. Who, then, can dogmatically tell us that these centuries
have been better or worse than the eras preceding them? We know no
more about the _Dwapara_ and the other previous eras, if any such ever
existed, than we know about the inhabitants of other planets, if such
there be. It is therefore futile, yea more, thoroughly wicked, to
impose upon the people a chronological system which is so pessimistic
and hopeless in its tenor as this.

But even looking back through the probably four thousand years which
embrace all that we really know about India, what do we see to
encourage this pessimistic view of our