期刊名称：Fragments : Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts
印刷版ISSN：2161-8585
电子版ISSN：2161-8585
出版年度：2011
卷号：1
出版社：MPublishing
摘要：At some risk to my scholarly gravitas, let me go so far outside my own limits of knowledge as to quote from the textual domains where Tom Trautmann serves as expert guide. A prophecy from the Vishnu Purana (ca. 100 BCE–400 CE):
Wealth and piety will decrease day by day, until the world will be wholly depraved. Then property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification. Earth will be venerated but for its mineral treasures. . . . When the practices taught by the Vedas and the institutes of law shall nearly have ceased, and the close of the Kali age shall be nigh. . . . [Brahma] will, then, reestablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the Kali age shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The men who are, thus, changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age (or age of purity). As it is said: “When the sun and moon, and (the lunar asterism) Tishya, and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the Krita age shall return.” (Wilson 1840: 483–84)
