The world of the Mahābhārata favoured a homogeneous flow — genetic, psychological and occupational — within communities. Inter-varṇa unions and the offspring born of them were, in that setting, seen as ruinous and against the established order. So Arjuna fears that future generations will be steeped in sin through such transgressions. He lays out the sequence like a chain of certain destruction: unrest in a clan degrades the clan's conduct, which leads to injustice; with injustice unchecked, the women are corrupted and drawn into disordered unions; children born of such unions are doomed; the whole clan slides towards hellish realms; the forefathers fall from their state for want of the post-death offerings; the codes of caste and the eternal law of conduct erode; and at last the whole population sinks. Whatever we make of its sociology, the underlying anxiety — that the breakdown of the family breaks the culture, and the breakdown of the culture breaks the person — is not foreign to any age.