Dvapara Yuga is the third age, of 864,000 years, two units of 432,000, in which dharma stands on two legs. The texts describe disease, discord and desire entering the world, the Veda divided into four parts because no one can any longer hold it whole, and the lifespan further shortened. The Mahabharata war is placed at the end of this age, and the death of Krishna is traditionally taken to mark its close and the beginning of the Kali Yuga. The name comes from dvapara, the throw of two. The four ages together make a mahayuga of 4,320,000 years; a thousand mahayugas make a kalpa, a day of Brahma, followed by a night of the same length, and the whole is contained in the life of Brahma of a hundred such years, so that the scheme reaches figures of the order of 311 trillion years.
Tradition credits the division of the Veda in this age to the sage Krishna Dvaipayana, known as Vyasa, arranger, who is said to have taken the single Veda handed down from the earlier ages and organised it into the four now known, entrusting each portion to a disciple: Paila received the Rig Veda, Vaishampayana the Yajur Veda, Jaimini the Sama Veda and Sumantu the Atharva Veda. The Puranas describe this dividing of the Veda as a recurring task rather than a single event, performed by a Vyasa in every Dvapara Yuga because unaided human memory can no longer hold it whole; the Vyasa of the present cycle, also credited with compiling the Mahabharata and the Puranas, is by far the most famous holder of the title. Some tellings pair Balarama with Krishna as a further avatara of this age, his elder brother and companion through the Mahabharata's events.