Treta Yuga is the second age, of 1,296,000 years, three units of 432,000, and in it dharma stands on three legs. Sacrifice and ritual appear because virtue is no longer spontaneous, the texts say, and human lifespan and stature are reduced; the Ramayana is placed in this age, with Rama as the seventh avatara of Vishnu. The name comes from treta, a triad, referring to the three legs and, in some readings, to the three sacred fires. The descending ratio is often connected with the throws of the Indian dice game, in which krita is the winning throw of four and the others descend from it, and the connection is made explicitly in some of the older sources; if so, the entire cosmology of the ages rests on a metaphor from gambling, which several scholars have noted with some relish.
Two further avataras of Vishnu are traditionally placed within this age alongside Rama: Vamana, the dwarf who reclaims the three worlds from the king Bali, and Parashurama, the axe wielding sage said to have rid the earth of a corrupt warrior class, an act some tellings repeat twenty one times over. Accounts differ on where Parashurama's own deeds fall within the age, and some place them late enough to bridge into the Dvapara Yuga that follows, one more instance of the scheme's ages not being as cleanly bounded in the texts as the round figures suggest.