Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c9.30

c9.30

As regards ‘the future’, then, these statements offer two limits of commencement, an upper, the end of the Bhārata battle, and a lower, about a century later.⁶ Everything prior to the former was ‘past’, everything posterior to the latter was reckoned as definitely ‘future’, and the interval between them was intermediate, regarded sometimes as ‘past’ and sometimes as ‘future’. The Matsya, Vāyu and Brahmāṇḍa contain the undoubtedly oldest account of the kings of the Kali age and assert the lower limit. The Bhaviṣyat and Bhaviṣya, by including the story of Kṛṣṇa’s son Sāmba, took the earlier limit. The Viṣṇu, Garuḍa and Bhāgavata, which were later than the Bhaviṣyat, practically adopted its view. Āpastamba’s citation of the Bhaviṣyat is perfectly compatible with either reckoning, for it merely indicates that ‘the future’ had already begun before the third century B.C.