What the Puranas Actually Say About the Third Age
The Vishnu Purana describes the Dvapara Yuga as the third of the four world-ages, a period in which the quality of sattva has diminished enough that dharma stands on two legs instead of four. The metaphor is a bull, in the Krita Yuga it stands on all four, in Treta on three, in Dvapara on two, and in the Kali Yuga on one. What the texts are measuring is not virtue in the moral sense. They are measuring the degree to which truth is self-evident to the people living inside it.
