Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/451

 Colour Symbolism. 143

The evidence afforded by India is particularly rich and significant. In the Mahd-bhdrata ^ we read of an ascetic, named Uktha, who performed a penance lasting many years with the view of making " a pious son " equal to Brahma. In the end " there arose a very bright energy (force) full of animating (creative) principle and of five different colours.'"

In the same ancient work it is stated :

" Six colours of living creatures are of principal import- ance, black, dusky, and blue which has between them ; then red is more tolerable, yellow is happiness, and white is extreme happiness. White is perfect, being exempted from stain, sorrow and exhaustion ; (possessed of it) a being going through (various births), arrives at perfection in a thousand forms. . . . Thus destination is caused by colour and colour is caused by time. . . . The destination of the black colour is bad. When it has produced results, it clings to hell." ^

Destination being caused by colour and colour by time, the Creator assumes different colours in the different Yugas (World's Ages). The Creator says :

" My colour in Krita Yuga is white, in the Treta Yuga

yellow ; when I reach the Dvapara Yuga, it is red, and in

the Kali Yuga black."

In the Mahd-bhdrata the Kali Age is referred to as " the Black or Iron Age." Hesiod's Ages (in his Works and Days) are metal ages, but are evidently also coloured ages, for almost everywhere golden is yellow, silver white, copper or bronze red and iron black. The Doctrine of the World's Ages obtained in more than one ancient land, the only differences being in the sequences of the colours or metals. Of special interest in this connection are the following ■examples :

1 Vana Parva, section ccxx.


 * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. i. p. 151.