CHAPTER XLIII.                           381

a Sudra and Candala will share with them the presents
and offerings. Men will entirely be occupied with
gathering wealth by crimes, with hoarding up, not re¬
fraining from committing horrid and sinful crimes. All
this will result in a rebellion of the small ones against
the great ones, of the children against their parents,
of the servants against their masters. The castes will
be in uproar against each other, the genealogies will
become confused, the four castes will be abolished, and
there will be many religions and sects. Many books
will be composed, and the communities which formerly
were united will on account of them be dissolved into
single individuals. The temples will be destroyed and
the schools will lie waste. Justice will be gone, and
the kings will not know anything but oppression and
spoliation, robbing and destroying, as if they wanted
to devour the people, foolishly indulging in far-reaching
hopes, and not considering how short life is in com¬
parison with the sins (for which they have to atone).
The more the mind of people is depraved, the more will
pestilential diseases be prevalent. Lastly, people main¬
tain that most of the astrological rules obtained in that
age are void and false.

These ideas have been adopted by Mani, for he says : sayingof
" Know ye that the affairs of the world have been
changed and altered ; also priesthood has been changed
since the cr<palpaL of heaven, i.e. the spheres, have been
changed, and the priest can no longer acquire such a
knowledge of the stars in the circle of a sphere as their
fathers were able to acquire. They lead mankind astray
by fraud. What they prophesy may by chance happen,
but frequently it does not happen."

The description of these things in the Vishnu-Dharma Description
is much more copious than we have given it.    People tayuga "'
will be ignorant of what is reward and punishment; 'vi^mu-^
they will deny that the angels have  absolute know-    '^"™*-
ledge.   Their lives will be of different length, and none