Sep 21 2009
What will our Apocalypse look like?
The Hindu version of the Apocalypse is not very apocalyptic, in the sense that it does not involve a revelation at all. Moreover, what Hindus mean when they imagine the end of the world is an apocalypse, not the Apocalypse.
Hindus of the Vedic period (about 1000 BCE) tended to believe that time is cyclical and that there are four yugas (or eras) the world goes through before going meeting destruction.
The first is Sathya Yuga—an era when the bull of Dharma (righteousness) is standing firmly on all four legs and mankind is inherently good. Then there is the Threta Yuga when the bull is on three feet, the Duapara Yuga when the bull is on two feet and, finally, the Kali Yuga when the bull is struggling on its last foot. In the Kali Yuga, people are said to become atheistic and morally bankrupt. The human condition is to become so despicable that the only hope it has is an apocalypse and this devastation comes from an avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu named Kalki (and yes, he is on a white horse too).
However, if morals are the basis for gauging the distance between human life and total destruction, In Vedic India, marrying a prepubescent girl is perfectly within their construct of dharma and refusing to stay within the boundaries of one’s caste was considered adharma (not righteous). This distant culture followed a moral code that we would disagree with at the least and be disgusted by at the worst. Looking at our society, the Hindus of the Vedic era (even Hindus of the present era) believe that Kalki is near.
My point here is that different cultures of different times have different apocalyptic stories. Even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Elizabeth Rosen mentions, that the story of the Apocalypse has changed: we seem to place more emphasis on the Destruction and not on what is supposed to come after. The Watchmen by Alan Moore is a more likely story in our present day than John’s Revelatory Visions. Moreover, the character of the newsvendor in The Watchmen referred to the Book of Revolutions instead of Revelations—telling because the events of the book were partially a reaction to the political climate at the time.
Finally, Rosen says that stories about the End are as significant as stories about the Creation in the psyches of culture. As our ideas about where we come from change, so do our ideas about where we are going.
Here is a picture of Kalki, the tenth reincarnation of Vishnu, on a white horse.
Priya, you completely read my mind this week – I was just starting to get a little impatient with the pervasiveness of the Judeo-Christian version of the apocalypse in our readings, movies, and Western pop culture in general.
I’ve been wondering whether human beings really do have an inherent fascination with “the” or “an” End – and if so, what are the apocalyptic beliefs of other cultures?
Thanks for writing about the Hindu version of the apocalypse. Do you know, what constitutes a change from one of the four yugas to the next? How do we know which one we’re in or how to predict when the next one will start?
I guess I’m wondering because we’ve talked a lot about the Christian/Western belief that the world is *always* right on the verge of ending, despite the fact that it never has. I know you said that Hindus of the present era believe that Kalki is near – do you know if that’s a recent phenomenon?