In that ancient age, people moved freely across the earth, visiting rivers, lakes, oceans, and mountains. The world was gentle to them—heat and cold were mild, and their lives unfolded in harmony with nature. Their senses found natural satisfaction in whatever they encountered, and among them there was no opposition, no hatred, and no envy. They wandered wherever they wished, dwelling on mountain slopes and by the sea, without fixed homes. Free from desire, their minds were always joyful. Yet, as time passed, new beings appeared: flesh-eating spirits, serpents, demons, envious people, as well as animals, birds, crocodiles, fish, and reptiles. These were of lower birth or born from eggs, and sprang from unrighteousness. In those days, there were no roots, fruits, or flowers, nor were there seasons or years to mark the passage of time. Time itself was always pleasant—neither too hot nor too cold. As the days and nights flowed on, wondrous accomplishments arose among the people. In the morning and at midday, they found satisfaction, and whenever they wished, their needs were effortlessly fulfilled. For those who desired, exertion of the mind would arise, and through the subtle power of water, delightful accomplishments would manifest. Then, another kind of being appeared—one that granted every desire. Their bodies required no purification, and they remained perpetually youthful. Offspring were born in pairs, without any intention, sharing the same form and dying at the same time. They lived together without desire or aversion; all were equal in appearance and lifespan, with no sense of superiority or inferiority. For thousands of years, humans lived with fixed lifespans, free from suffering and calamity. Yet, with the changing of time and fortune, the earth would sometimes be entirely so, and as is the way of all beings, they eventually came to destruction. Gradually, all those wondrous accomplishments vanished everywhere, and when all was lost, people fell from the sky. In that era, wish-fulfilling trees appeared in abundance, known as 'house-trees.' All enjoyments came to them from these trees. At the beginning of the Tretā Yuga, people lived on these trees. But as time went on, passion arose among them. Month by month, as seasons changed, conception occurred repeatedly. With the rise of passion, those house-trees responded. On some, branches of great trees fell, and fruits bore garments and ornaments. On those same trees, honey rich with fragrance, color, and taste was produced—strong, unfermented, and found in every hollow. This is how people lived at the dawn of the Tretā Yuga. But again, as time moved forward, greed began to fill their hearts. They seized the trees, driven by a sense of ownership, and because of this misconduct, even the great house-trees vanished. With their loss, pairs of opposites arose: cold and heat, hunger and thirst, and more. To protect themselves from these hardships, people began to build dwellings for the first time. They took refuge in deserts, fortresses, mountains, and caves, seeking strongholds in forests, hills, and by water. They also constructed artificial fortresses, measuring them with their own fingers, and set down standards of measurement for practical use, as had been done before. The smallest measure was the paramāṇu, the finest particle, then a mote of dust, earth-dust, the tip of a hair, a nit, a louse, and then a barley-corn. Each was said to be eight times the size of the previous. Eight barley-corns made an aṅgula, or finger’s breadth; six aṅgulas made a pada, or foot; and a vitasti, or span, was twice that. Two vitastis made a hasta, or cubit, measured from the wrist to the fingertip; four hastas made a bow’s length, a staff, and a nāḍikā, or water-clock measure. Two thousand bows made a gavyūti, and four times that was called a yojana—the supreme reckoning for distance. Of the four types of fortresses, three arose naturally, while the fourth—the artificial fortress—was built with great effort. There were cities, small fortified towns, settlements shaped like a mortar, branch-towns, and hamlets. Villages had arrangements for cattle-pens and separate dwellings, with raised embankments and moats surrounding them. A city was to have a diameter of half a yojana, and its width one-eighth of its length, sloping eastward or northward, with pure bamboo gates. A small fortified town was half that size, a hamlet a quarter, and a mortar-shaped settlement even less, measured by its end portion. A city or hamlet without walls or moats was called a kharvaṭa. A branch-town was another type, inhabited by ministers, vassals, and landholders. There were also villages, mostly inhabited by Śūdras, who prospered by their own skill in agriculture and lived amid arable land. Any other settlement made for a particular purpose, apart from cities and villages, was known simply as a residence. A hamlet, mostly lawless and without fields, occupied by powerful men on foreign land, served as a refuge for those favored by the king. A ghoṣa was where cowherds, with their herds and goods loaded on carts, lived wherever they wished, without a marketplace. Thus, people made cities and other settlements for themselves, and built residences for pairs of families to live in. As before, their houses were built near trees, and remembering all these ways, they constructed their dwellings accordingly.