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ŚRI MAHAVIRA'S NIRVĀŅA and the sun will burn exceedingly hot. The people, afflicted by excessive heat and cold, will experience misery. Then the clouds will be without water. Clouds of acid and clouds of vinegar, clouds of poison, fire, and lightning will rain what is similar to themselves. Because of this there will be cough, asthma, gout, leprosy, dropsy, fever, headache, and other serious diseases of humans. The animals will feel pain-those of water, earth, air. There will be destruction of fields, forests, gardens, creepers, trees, and grass. Except Vaitādhya and Rșabhakūța, the Gangā and the Sindhu, all the mountains, caves, rivers, et cetera will be leveled. The earth will be reduced to ashes, resembling embers and charcoal; sometimes with much dust, sometimes with thick mud. Men and women will be a cubit in height, bad-colored, harsh-spoken, afflicted with diseases, violent-tempered, hunch-backed, snub-nosed, shameless, without clothes. Men will live for twenty years and women sixteen. A woman will conceive at the age of six and then will have a painful child-bearing. She will be an old woman at sixteen with many children and grandchildren.
There will be cave-dwellings in Mt. Vaitādhya, but there will be seventy-two caves in the ground of both banks of the rivers.259 In each bank of the rivers there will be nine caves and in those animals will come into existence only enough to preserve the species. At that time humans and others will become completely devoted to eating meat, cruel, devoid of discernment. Then the water of the rivers Gangā and Sindhu, a mere chariot-path, will flow, filled with moving fish, turtles, et cetera. Going there at night, after dragging out the fish, et cetera, they will abandon them on the dry ground and will eat them, cooked during the day by the heat of the sun, at the next night. In this way they will always eat, because at that time there will be no curd, et cetera, nor flower, nor fruit, nor rice, nor a bed, seat, et cetera. Such
259 165. The Ganga and the Şindhu. See Jamb. p. 171a. 44 M
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