End-times in the East

Eschatology in
Hinduism and Jainism
Lorin Geitner

The west is not alone in having beliefs about the final days, and the fated end of
all things.
In Hinduism, for example, the universe goes through four distinct phases: the
Krita or Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dvapara Yuga, and the Kali Yuga, which total
out to a span of 432,000 years 1 . In the course of these Yugas, or ages, humankind
gradually becomes further and further alienated from the Gods and from divine law. On
at least nine occasions so far, it is believed that the god Vishnu has incarnated in order to
redeem humankind. These incarnations, or avatars, have taken the forms of Matsya, a
fish, Kurma, a tortoise, Varaha, a boar, Narasimha, a man/lion, Vamana, a dwarf, Rama
of the axe, defender of the Brahmins, Rama, king of Ayodhya and hero of the epic the
Ramayana, Krishna, and, most recently, the Buddha 2 . According to this cosmology, we
are currently in the fourth, and most decadent age, the Kali yuga, and Vishnu is expected
to incarnate one final time, as the avatar Kalki. In this role, though, he wont so much be
a redeemer as an expediter, setting the groundwork which leads to the end of all things,
and bringing final judgment to humankind. 3
The Jains, a relatively small but influential religion, are perhaps not quite so dire
in their estimation of the current situation of humankind. For the Jains, four distinct ages
1

Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Harper & Row, New York, NY
1962) 13-16
2
Geoffrey Parrinder, Ed., World Religions, From Ancient History to the Present (Facts on File, New York,
NY 1973) 222-223
3
Ibid., 223

have already passed: in Susama Susama, the first, Edenic age, peopled by giants who
stood six miles in height, who had all their needs fulfilled by wish-fulfilling trees, lived to
great old age and, on their deaths, entered immediately into the Jain equivalent of heaven.
The next era, Susama, was exactly half as prosperous: people grew to a comparatively
piddling height of four miles, and had somewhat shorter life-spans, but still had their
needs seen to by the wish-fulfilling trees and all who died immediately went to heaven.
The pattern of steadily declining height, ease and length of life, and righteousness
continued through the ages of Susama Dusama and Dusama Susama. Finally, we have
come to our own current era, Dusama, which is entirely evil. No more great world
teachers will come and, although righteous people still live, no one can attain moksha
(liberation or enlightenment), without going through at least one re-birth. Still, for the
Jains, this current era is, at least, only the penultimate era before utter corruption sets in:
the age to come, Dusama Dusama, will be a period in which Jainism, as a religion,
entirely disappears, people will live for no more than twenty years, contagion will run
rampant, and virtue disappears. 4
So, for both of these religions, the question of whether the end-times are upon us
is, at best, moot. In Hinduism, we are already in the final epoch, and in Jainism, if things
arent as bad as they can be, yet, our current age is far removed from the golden age, and
the final era is inevitably, inexorably approaching.
But, if all this seems a rather dire and pessimistic -- even as compared to the
current prevailing beliefs in Christendom -- in some ways, these beliefs are actually
comparatively optimistic: for another common trait shared by Hinduism and Jainism, in

Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism (Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, India 1984) 272-275 and
Walther Schubring, The Doctrine of the Jainas (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, India 1962) 225-227

opposition to our occidental worldview, is that time is not understood as a line: there is
no one specific time when everything begins, nor is there a time when all things truly end.
Rather, time is understood as being cyclical -- when we have gone through these
descending series of ages, until, at last, we reach the nadir of ease of life, lifespan, and
righteousness, when things ultimately bottom out, this leads, just as inevitably, to
renewal: In Jainism, this takes the form of a series of gradually improving ages, leading
back to a golden age. 5 More dramatically, in Hinduism, the end of the Kali Yuga leads to
the destruction of the universe but this is a destruction which is also a renewal, for the
new world created from the old begins again, in the blessed golden age of the Satya
yuga. 6
Given such a cyclical understanding of the nature of time, it is, perhaps, not so
surprising to note that there is a difficulty in putting an exact date to the formulation of
these ideas in Hinduism and Jainism: when time is understood as an inevitable and
ineluctable cycle, then people tend to regard the recording of history as irrelevant. Even
so, we can say that Jainism seems to have reached its current configuration under the
influence of their great teacher, Mahavira, who was born in 599 BCE, and the Jain canon
was set sometime around 296 BCE. 7
Similarly, it is difficult to precisely date the origination of the Hindu
understanding of the succession of ages leading to the, now current, kali yuga. This yuga
is, however, described in the Vishnu Purana which has been dated by some scholars to

Steven at 276-278
Parrinder at 211
7
Stevenson, at 8 and 10
6

about 1000 CE 8 , although probably reflective of a tradition of comparable, or greater

antiquity as that of the Jains.
Still, in Hinduism and Jainism, we find a worldview that is at once more
pessimistic, and more optimistic, than Christianity because, although the end-times, in
these belief systems, are already here, or quickly coming upon us, in the long run, this is
a good thing, because, for both the Hindus and the Jains, this means we are all the closer
to returning to a golden age.

Zimmer, at 15