Page:Hindu Feasts Fasts and Ceremonies.djvu/154

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138
APPENDIX A.

a course, is viewed as another turn which Kali has taken to corrupt womankind. The several Government and Municipal taxes are considered to be the miseries of the mighty reign of Kali without the least consideration that the subject is bound to pay to the State for his own protection. The Hindu mind is ever ingenious in looking upon everything from a Kali point of view. But we must, at the same time, mention here that it is only the Hindu who lives in remote villages and who has not had the advantage of a free education who thinks thus. Every educated Hindu, of course, takes the right view of the case. Thus ends our description of the Kaliyuga in general and of the evils there of as found in the Puranas and as prevailing among the people.

In addition to this belief there is yet another, and a strong one, that the year 5000 of the Kaliyuga (April 1899—April 1900) will be a year of doom and ruin. The famine that is threatening now a great portion of India, the grain riots everywhere, the failure of monsoons, the bubonic plague in Bombay, the several fires and, floods in almost all the great rivers (Mahanadis) this year, such as the Krishna.