Dear Artur,

4-3-2-1 is not the same as 3-4-2-10. And you're ignoring the elephant head. With it, the numerical sequence would be 3-4-2-10-1.

If you want to see an intentionally distorted numerical sequence here (I don't), one could see 1+2+3+4 = 10.

As for taking antaka to mean "the end of the world," there is no context for such a reading here. Antaka looks here like the usual reference to death (the 'ender' of life), just as Pollock takes it in his translation. Kāla, time, is commonly used in the epics as a synonym for death, as time eventually takes everyone's life away. If the 'end of the world' were meant, one would expect the term yugānta. See for instance, a few sargas down the line, at 3.23.26:

yugāntāgnir iva

These comparisons to yugānta appear several times in Vālmīki (and many, many times in the Mahābhārata), but even they don't necessarily imply a reference to the theory of the four yugas.

If one gets too 'creative' with these sorts of interpretations one can find almost anything in a text (including shish-kakob, to follow Joanna joke).

Regards,

Luis González-Reiman
_____


on 11/19/2011 12:27 AM Artur Karp wrote: 
Dear List,

In Ram. III, 2 there appears a hideous rakshas, Viradha. Described as
a monstrosity, he is garbed in animal skins, splattered with blood and
marrow.

Now, in III, 2.7 he is shown as carrying on an iron spear dead
animals: three lions, four tigers, two wolves and ten [spotted]
antilopes (plus a huge elephant's head):

trīn siṃhāṃś caturo vyāghrān dvau vṛkau pṛṣatān daśa

The numbers of these animals seem to form a sequence,  3-4-2-10.
Considering that Viradha (who, surprisingly, presents himself as a
defender of ashramic values)  is compared twice to "the one who ends
[the world]", antaka:

III, 2.6: trāsanaṃ sarvabhūtānāṃ vyāditāsyam ivāntakam
III, 2.9: abhyadhāvat susaṃkruddhaḥ prajāḥ kāla ivāntakaḥ
.
shouldn't we see in the sequence a deliberate, satirical distortion of
the numbers 4-3-2-0 of the kali-yuga's 432 000 and the catur-yuga's 4
320 000 years?

Artur Karp
Poland