India, Its Life and Thought

by John P. Jones

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 young 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 era?

Let it not be assumed that the people of India in the days of the Rishis of old were purer in life or loftier in ideals than many who live in India to-day. It is true that such evils as caste, infant marriage, and many similar customs did not exist at all in Vedic days. But it is also true that not a few serious evils of ancient times, such as drunkenness, human sacrifice, and slavery, do not generally exist in India to-day.

But if we desire to know what the condition of the present time is, we should compare this beginning of the twentieth with the beginning of the eighteenth century and see what progress has been achieved. During the last two centuries numberless crimes and evils have been swept away. I need only mention such enormities as thuggee, sattee, infant murder, etc., all of which were thriving even a hundred years ago, but which are now things of the past. And what shall I say of a horde of other customs that have cursed the land, such as infant marriage, thevathasis, caste, all of which are beginning to yield to the enlightened thought of the present and will soon be driven out of the country?

I need not add, however, that all of these wonderful changes and progress have not come out of Hinduism. They have been carried out and are progressing in the teeth of constant opposition from the orthodox defenders of the ancestral faith. It is the new light of the West that has dawned upon India and has brought to it a new era. Even while the people are insisting that they are in the midst of Kali yuga and are confident that the days are "out of joint," they are nevertheless witnessing such a revolution in religious, social, and intellectual life all around them that any people who were not under the blind spell of the Hindu time-fallacy would rejoice with exceeding joy to see it.