Dear Artur,

I mistakenly sent my previous reply only to you, and not to the list. I have just resent it to INDOLOGY. I'm surprised that your reply to me was returned (it didn't reach me), although the Berkeley server has been having problems the last few days, so maybe that is the reason.

In response to your comments below, it is true that kāla can also be used for the destruction of the world, and it is so used in the Gītā passage you quote, although in that passage there is an explicit mention of the destruction of the lokas. But the fact is that it is a formula in the epics to refer to yugānta when comparisons to the end of the world are meant. I have worked on this, and I will send you privately an article that discusses it.

This doesn't prove that you are wrong, of course, but I think it is very unlikely that these verses refer to the end of the world.

You quote from MW:
abhy-adhāvata prajāḥ kāla ivāntakaḥ - "he attacked the people like
Time the destroyer". (Ra 3.2.9.)
 You seem sure that MW here has the meaning of the end of the world in mind, instead of death, but that appears unlikely, as before the example you quote he writes:

"...time (as destroying all things) , death, time of death (often personified and represented with the attributes of Yama, regent of the dead, or even identified with him: hence kālam-i or kālaṃ-kr̥," to die "' MBh. &c. ;kāla in this sense is frequently connected with antaka, mr̥tyu..."

Anyway, please consider this as a difference of opinion.

I'm sorry if you took the last sentence in my previous reply as an offense. It wasn't meant that way.

Regards,

Luis
_____

on 11/19/2011 4:50 PM Artur Karp wrote: 
Dear Joanna,

A couple of clarifications here.

Since Viradha is vyāditāsya ("open-mouthed"), I feel entitled to see
here a definitely satirical allusion to the image of the ultimate
Finisher, the Saturn-like Vishnu, described in the Bhagavadgita
(XI,24) as vyāttānana ("open-mouthed").

Yes, Pollock has "like Death attacking peple at their fated hour". But
Monier-Williams, SED, p. 278, comments, more old-fashionedly, on kāla:

abhy-adhāvata prajāḥ kāla ivāntakaḥ - "he attacked the people like
Time the destroyer". And this rendering reminds me of the famous
phrase: kālo 'smi loka-kṣaya-kṛt "I am Time, the destroyer of the
world" (Bhg. XI,32).

The Viradha episode mixes horror-like images with satire. Viradha,
despite his outward resemblance to Time, the world destroyer, is
ultimately found out to be a foolish monster, his rage - an expression
of empty pretences.

Everything about him is confused - as the sequence 3-4-2 in place of
the expected (and sacred, mentioned already in the Śatapatha-brahmana)
4-3-2?

Regards,

Artur Karp

PS. My letter in answer to Louis Gonzalez-Reimann remarks (mostly
negative) re has provoked a mechanic reaction: "Delivery to the
following recipient failed permanently:
    reimann@berkeley.edu.". Etc.

A.