Krita Age

The Krita Age is a mythic era used to place ancient events within the poem’s larger temporal frame. Its clearest appearance marks the conflict between the children of Diti and Aditi as belonging to a time before the age had passed; the canonical framing also associates the age with the legend of the churning of the Milky Sea.

A Marker of the Ancient Past

The poem invokes the Krita Age while introducing an account of the powerful children of Diti and the children of Aditi. The wording places their story before the age’s passing, making the era a chronological landmark for a remote mythic past rather than a date tied to the poem’s human-scale events.

Place in the Poem’s Timescale

Elsewhere, the narrative marks time through nearer signs, including the return of spring and the observance of dawn rites. The Krita Age operates on a different scale: it locates legendary events within an epoch, without supplying a calendar or further chronology for that epoch.

Mythic Association

The canonical framing connects the Krita Age with the churning of the Milky Sea. Together, this association and the reference to the children of Diti and Aditi give the age a mythological function in the poem: it situates divine and ancestral narratives in a past distinct from the unfolding human story, while the available passage leaves the age’s duration and detailed chronology unspecified.