Page:Hindu Feasts Fasts and Ceremonies.djvu/153

Rh will bear children at the age of 5,6 or 7 and men beget them when they are 8, 9 or 10. Grey hair will appear when a person is only 12 years of age and the duration of life for men will only be 20 years. The Vedas, the gods, the Brahmans, the sacred waters, will all be dis- regarded. The parents-in-law will be respected in the place of parents and brothers-in-law (brothers of wives) will be one’s bosom friends. Sins will be committed daily and everything which brings down misery on human beings will be found to be prevailing to the greatest extent in-the Kali age.

This is but a part of the description given in one of the greatest of the Hindu Puranas on the evils of the Kali age. The railway carriage where a Brahman and a non-Brahman sit side by side in the same compartment and the schools where English is taught in the same way to a Brahman as to a non-Brahman, instead of exciting the admiration of the orthodox Hindu for the benefits they have conferred upon the public, are looked upon as the platforms where Kali plays most for levelling caste distinctions. Female education, though authorities exist in the Puranas themselves for such