Viyahapannatti 7.6.359

7.6.359

“Venerable Sir! In Jambūdvīpa continent, during this descending cycle (avasarpiṇī), when the very miserable era (duḥṣama-duḥṣamā) has reached its utmost extreme, what kind of appearance, condition, and manifestation will there be in Bharata expanse?”
“Gautama! The time will be filled with cries of grief, filled with lamentation, filled with uproar. Through the nature of that time, harsh, rough, dust-soiled, unbearable, tempestuous, terrifying, and cataclysmic winds will blow. Here [the directions] will repeatedly be filled with smoke, and everywhere the quarters will have rising dust, fouled with dust particles, darkened by layers of obscurity, and bereft of light. Through the dryness of that time, the moons will emit excessive cold, and the suns will blaze with excessive heat.
Furthermore, again and again, numerous sapless clouds, noxious clouds, alkaline clouds, sour clouds, fiery clouds, lightning clouds, poisonous clouds, and thunderbolt clouds—carrying undrinkable water, waters whose transformation stirs up diseases, illnesses, and afflictions, and having repulsive water—will unleash abundant rain marked by the fall of sharp torrents driven by violent winds, through which the population residing in villages, mines, towns, poorly-walled towns, isolated hamlets, towns with earthen walls, coastal or riverine emporia, and trade cities in Bharata expanse, as well as quadrupeds, cattle, and sheep, flocks of sky-faring birds, and mobile creatures roaming through villages and forests, and diverse kinds of grass and plant life such as trees, clumps, shrubs, creeping plants, climbing vines, grasses, knotweeds, green herbs, sprout-buds, and shoots, will be destroyed; mountains, hills, hillocks, uplands, and mounds, with the exception of Mount Vaitāḍhya, will be shattered; and water-fissures, pits, impassable terrains, and uneven hollows and elevations, with the exception of the Gaṅgā and Sindhu [rivers], will be made level.
“In that era, Venerable Sir, what kind of appearance, condition, and manifestation will the soil of Bharata expanse have?”
“Gautama! The ground will be like hot coals, like smoking ashes, like dust-ashes, like a heated baking-pan, possessing a radiance like that of glowing [iron]; it will have abundant dust, abundant grit, abundant mud, abundant moss, and abundant quicksand, and it will be difficult to traverse for numerous creatures moving on the ground.”