History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.770.1

v6.c82.770.1

The beliefs that in the dim past there was an ideally perfect society followed by a gradual degeneracy and decline in standards of morals, health and length of life and that the cycle of decline would be followed in the far distant future by a golden age of perfection in morals &c. have been dealt with in H. of Dh. vol. III pp. 885 ff The word '*yuga*' has been shown there as having probably several meanings, viz a short period of time (Ṛg III. 26 3), a cycle of five years and also a long period and a period of thousands of years Prof. Mankad in Poona Orientalist (vol. VI. pp 211-212) assigns as many as ten meanings to the word One cannot agree with him in all that he says. For example, he appears to be wrong when he says that in Śākuntala IV (yugāntaram ārūḍhaḥ savitā) yuga means ¼th of a day; yuga does not, so far as I know, mean ¼th anywhere, it means 'four' in some cases In Śākuntala 'yugāntara &c ' should be taken to mean that 'the sun has come up in the sky as much as the length of a yoke (from the eastern horizon)' That is the sense of 'yuga' in Ṛg X 60 8, X 101 3 and 4. In the Mahābhārata, in Manu and the Purāṇas the theory of *yugas, manvantaras* and *kalpas* has been elaborated at great length The four yugas are named Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Tiṣya or Kali and concern only Bhārata-varṣa 1081a But it has been shown (at pp 886-890 of the H. of Dh. vol III) that originally these were the names of certain throws of dice in gambling and that from the 4th century B. C.