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[ The Six Aras
their importance altogether. All the rivers of the world except those which take their rise in the Chulahema Mountains are dried up; watery places are turned into deserts; and the oceans recede from their posts. To be brief, this Ara is in every respect more inferior, more calamitous, and more provocative of sins than the preceding four Aras. Towards the end of this Ara, there are no saints to be seen with the exception of one monk and one nun, who, too, depart for heaven at the close of the period.
THE SIXTH ARA DUKHAMA DUKHAMA. This Ara begins at the end of the fifth Ara, Its duration too, is 21000 years. This is the worst of all the Aras and is full of quarrels and miseries, sin and disquietude from beginning to end. A search for peace and happiness is in vain. Beings that are still alive cry for food and water day and night, but do not get them. They are, as it were, baked all the twenty four hours in the blazing furnaces of unbearable sorrows, miseries, troubles, passions, desires and feelings of anger, avaries, infatuation, pride, self-importance, fear doubt and animosity. They know no rest. Wherever we cast a glance we find people weeping, sighing, mourning and writhing about in acute pain. There is no trace of bushes and crops on the ground; it becomes hotter than a bakestone in an oven by only a little heat of the sun. The winds are hot and dry in all the seasons, and they blow very fiercely like the blazes of fire in the day time. While the days are so hot the nights are extremely cold and unbearably. chilly. Where it is difficult to come out in the open even for a single moment, at such a fatal time, people of this Ara, in order to
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