The World / India
India
Time is a wheel: the age of darkness ends, Kalki rides, and the universe dissolves into the cosmic ocean.
India contributed the archive's most complete cyclical machinery. Hindu cosmology measures time in kalpas — a single kalpa is 4.32 billion years, the length of Brahma's day — and at the end of each, the universe dissolves into the cosmic ocean while Vishnu sleeps on the serpent Shesha until the next cycle begins. Within the cycle, the four yugas run from golden to iron: the current age, Kali Yuga, is the age of darkness, marked by decay, and its end brings Kalki, the final avatar on a white horse. The flood of Manu preserves the seed of the next age. The Buddhist tradition adds the Maitreya, the future Buddha, and the kalpa's destruction by fire, water, and wind.
Traditions
Buddhist Eschatology (Dharma and the Kalpa)
draftedThe end as the decline of the teaching: the Buddha's dharma decays by stages until it vanishes, the kalpa ends in fire, water, and wind, and the future Buddha Maitreya appears to teach once more. In East Asia the decline became Mappō, a dated dark age; in Tibet it took the form of the Shambhala war.
4 myths
Hindu Eschatology (Yugas and Pralaya)
draftedThe End as a wheel: four yugas descending from gold to iron, the final age Kali Yuga ending with Kalki on a white horse, and the universe itself dissolving into the cosmic ocean at each kalpa's close.
4 myths
Stories
Kali Yuga: the Age of Darkness
draftedThe age of darkness: dharma shrinks to a quarter, lifespans to a fraction, and the world decays by a fixed schedule — an apocalypse of decline that its own believers cannot agree to date.
cyclical · decay
Kalki: the Avatar on the White Horse
draftedThe tenth and final avatar of Vishnu: a white horse, a flaming sword, a judgment of the wicked at the close of Kali Yuga — the savior whose name traveled as far as Tibet's Shambhala war.
cyclical · battle · judgment
Maitreya: the Future Buddha
draftedThe promise that ends the dark age: the dharma vanishes, the world decays, and the future Buddha Maitreya appears to teach it again — an apocalypse with a syllabus.
cyclical · decay · cosmic
Pralaya: the Dissolution of the Universe
draftedThe universe as a day: at the close of Brahma's day, fire and flood unmake the cosmos, Vishnu sleeps on the serpent Shesha, and after his night the same creation begins again.
cyclical · fire · flood · cosmic
The Flood of Manu
draftedIndia's flood: the first man is warned by a fish that grows to a mountain, builds an ark, and reseeds the world — a remnant story with an animal rescuer.
cyclical · flood
The Sermon of the Seven Suns
draftedThe Buddha's physics of the end: seven suns appear one by one, drying the world, burning it, and washing it away — the kalpa's destruction told as a classroom demonstration.
cyclical · fire · flood · cosmic